dagblog - Comments for "Barack Obama's Old Friends React to the Debate"

Rick Hertzberg's take is

AmericanDreamer — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:05:00 +0000

In reply to Barack Obama's Old Friends React to the Debate

Rick Hertzberg's take is online at The New Yorker's website: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/10/15/121015taco_talk_hertzberg

Nothing he wrote will come as a surprise to anyone here. My favorite excerpt, for its clarity, brevity, and therefore aptness of use going forward. for the duration, by those who want him to win:

.....

Perhaps he was stunned by the audacity of the challenger’s heroic, and obviously unanticipated, ideological self-reinvention. By the end of the ninety minutes, Romney had retrofitted himself as the defender of Medicare, the advocate of Wall Street regulation, the scourge of the big banks, the enemy of tax cuts for the rich, and the champion of tax relief for the middle class. All these claims are spectacularly false; all went entirely, or mostly, unrefuted. A small example. After Obama noted that “Obamacare” (he has embraced the shorthand, just as the L.D.S. church eventually embraced “Mormon”) saves Medicare seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and providers, Romney accused him of cutting that amount in benefits “for current recipients.” Obama let it go, and Romney taunted him by repeating the charge—not once but five more times. In reply, Obama said little. He did not stress that there are no cuts in benefits to patients, current or future. He failed to point out that these identical savings, to the dollar, are included in the House-passed Republican budget, endorsed by Romney and authored by his running mate, Representative Paul Ryan—and that, while Obama uses the money to expand health-care services for seniors, Romney and Ryan would divert it to high-end tax cuts.

Also this interesting thought:

Democrats can no longer credibly portray Romney simply as an extremist, tout court. They now must run against an unknowable, incurable flip-flopper in thrall to an extremist Party--a more complicated thought, but one that has the advantage of being closer to the probably truth.

What I am more inclined to do in interactions with others from here on out is to do exactly what Hertzberg says Democrats cannot do, and credibly portray Romney as an extremist, using his own words to hang him. When he denies his extreme, suddenly inconvenient ones, then the issue becomes one of the Governor's secretive and wildly dishonest campaign (even for a politician), reinforced by his continuing unwillingness to release at least 8 more of his tax returns as well as by his chronic duplicity.

And thank you for this link.

AmericanDreamer — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:57:27 +0000

In reply to Interesting, thank you.

And thank you for this link.

One of my reactions to the Remnick piece was that, for those anticipating that Obama will be more aggressive in the next debate, this information would seem to suggest either he will try to develop some pre-planned, sharper-edged remarks he thinks he'll have an opening to insert based on what is known about the debate topics, or he will conclude, if the poll results don't show Romney gaining any ground after the first debate, that he is best off sticking to his preferred style and approach to this format instead of trying to get out of his comfort zone.

Very difficult to develop in advance remarks going after Romney when one has absolutely no idea what he is going to say. He clearly has no problem departing entirely from what he has said earlier. And he has no problem offering a "program" which stands in any discernible relationship to reality, as in reality on the planet earth in the galaxy Milky Way, now. Basically, he'll say anything.

Part of what I thought I was watching was a conclusion by the Romney camp that if they were going to deceive and demagogue, they might as well go all-out and throw the kitchen sink at Obama with the hope of flustering or overwhelming him. (They may very well also have done homework on him yielding insights contained in the Remnick article and I would assume that they took a close look at his 2008 debate tapes to see what they could learn from those.) Thus, to take just a few examples from the other night, the viewer is supposed to believe all of the following coming from Romney about a hypothetical Romney Administration:

*the deficit situation is a crisis he would attack and lower now, notwithstanding $5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in unasked-for additional defense spending he has committed to and then last night denied committing to, by closing unspecified deductions

*there would be no tax cuts for upper income citizens "that increased the deficit", plus no tax increases for middle class Americans

*there are 3 ways to cut the deficit: increase taxes, reduce spending, or "grow the economy". If we just grow the economy that will reduce the deficits. Indeed, it will. Left unexplained was how any of his policies would, or might, do that, beyond the implicit and discredited supply-side, trickle down economic policies of the past which he has embraced.

*he would attack out of control health care costs, while taking the side of insurance companies and providers in opposing the $700 billion+ Medicare savings that were made by reducing their revenue flows, and characterizing an advisory governmental body set up to identify ways to get better results with lower costs as amounting to a dangerous federal takeover of health care.

*Dodd-Frank should be repealed and done over, in part because it locked in too big to fail.

*Also, we must look out for our poor.

So where does one even start with such a Molitov cocktail of incoherence and deception?

I know that when I engage another person on some matter, if what they are asserting is false or wildly off base on many, many grounds, I find it difficult to know "where to start" in responding.

The Romney camp has already said they don't intend to be constrained by fact-checkers. One of my other reactions to the other night was that, given that the Governor appears to have no sense of shame or embarrassment about what comes out of his mouth, we may find out a bit more about whether, as some maintain, we really do live in a post-truth or post-fact age.

I can grant that the debate format is not one Obama is particularly well suited for, at least in the way debate performances seem to be currently judged (although whether a "loss" hurts him in the polls is a distinct question), while also saying that it's that much more difficult for him--or anyone--when up against an opponent who will say anything like Romney did the other night.

Saw this on the body language

EmmaZahn — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:32:35 +0000

In reply to Barack Obama's Old Friends React to the Debate

Saw this on the body language at the debate this morning. How much of it is objective observation and how much is just spnning. FWIW:

Contrast in Body Language Defined Presidential Debate - Yahoo! News

"If you turn off the sound, you will feel or see what most Americans are feeling or seeing. If you turn the sound back on, the words get in the way of the nonverbal," Givens said. "You can't identify what the cues are."

It's this mute version of the debate that sticks with people, said Givens, director of the private, nonprofit Center for Nonverbal Studies in Spokane, Wash. "They remember body language, gestures, mannerisms and facial expressions."

Givens' overall impression matched the dominant perceptions circulating today (Oct. 4): Gov. Mitt Romney came across as aggressive, while President Barack Obama was more cerebral and cool — a difference widely perceived to have worked in the Republican challenger's favor.

Interesting, thank you.

artappraiser — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 19:59:13 +0000

In reply to Barack Obama's Old Friends React to the Debate

Interesting, thank you. Confirms for me, along with the other things I've been reading since the debate what I always suspected--he doesn't like hard Q & A where questions are a surprise and debates and isn't good at it unless he practices real hard (or has recently been thinking on topic.) No impromptu for him unless he knows what he'll be speaking on or has just been working on it. He likes to have time to think first. Hence, speeches are his preferred mode, if an interview, it is soft one-on-one and the type of questions are okayed.

The evidence is actually quite significant combined with the above article--presidential historian Martha Kumar has been watching him, tallying him, comparing his approach on this to other presidents. Now that he's been in his bubble, he has pretty much made sure he doesn't have to do hard Q & A, and is totally out of practice (Can't think of the last time I've seen a picture or video of him taking a question from a citizen he just shakes hands, and says hello, and I am recalling complaints from world leaders and Congresspersons that are applicable too..)

I can't find the first article I saw on this in the last day, which really lay out the numbers most strikingly, but here is Dana Milbank @ WaPo with similar:

Towson University political scientist Martha Kumar, who keeps a running tally of Obama’s media appearances, tells me he has had 19 solo news conferences in the White House as of Sept. 30. That compares to 26 for Ronald Reagan at the same point in his presidency, 59 for George H.W. Bush, and 31 for Bill Clinton. Obama had more formal news conferences than George W. Bush (13), but Bush engaged in many more informal Q&A sessions with reporters: 340 at this stage in his presidency to Obama’s 105. (Clinton had 585 at this point, the elder Bush had 309 and Reagan had 135.)

Obama hasn’t held a full-fledged news conference at the White House since March. After a Cabinet meeting in July, a reporter tried to ask him whether new gun laws were needed after the Colorado shooting — and Obama brushed off the inquiry with a joke.

In lieu of taking hard questions, Obama has opted for gauzy, soft-focus interviews with the likes of “Entertainment Tonight,” gentle appearances on late-night comedy shows, kid-glove satellite hits with regional TV stations, and joint appearances with the first lady where questions are certain to be gentle. Tough questions are rare in one-on-one interviews, because Obama has more control over the topic — and the interviewer wants to be invited back.

There's more here from a McClatchy reporter:

http://www.kansas.com/2012/10/04/2515289/obama-debate-stumble-might-stem...

and in the same vein from Michael Calderone at HuffPo:

http://www.kansas.com/2012/10/04/2515289/obama-debate-stumble-might-stem...

Reminds me of how when he was inaugurated people were looking forward to lots of JFK-style press conferences with witty repartee and I was thinking: I don't know, that doesn't sound quite right, not like him.. And now I realize he's really gotten a break about lack of press conferences, how many have I seen? If he was a GOP president the media would be complaining a lot more, maybe it would have been better for him now if they had..

Suffice it to say, I am pretty convinced that he's not that great at this, pretty sure of just the opposite, and I hope he is finding the time to practice. It's not just about winning, as he probably still will win, but his appearances in the next two will affect his general population support in his second term. Especially with the huge number of viewers the first one got.