This year’s presidential debates are done, and ready to fade into history. What moments will be revisited in four years when news networks, magazines and newspapers recall debate highlights from years past to set up the 2016 presidential debates? Big Bird, binders full of women and, from last night’s debate, horses and bayonets - the big Internet memes from this year’s debates? Or, if Mitt Romney is elected Nov. 6, how his performance in the first debate three weeks ago - combined with President Obama’s somnambulant performance - contributed to his victory?
If there’s one thing to take away from the debates in their immediate aftermath it’s how far Romney moved to the center during the first debate on domestic issues and again last night on foreign policy. I don’t know how many times Romney said he agreed with Obama on this foreign policy issue or that, but it happened enough to make you think Romney was endorsing the president.
Obama appears to have prepared for a more belligerent Romney - on Libya, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, you name it - than the one who showed up last night. As a result, his responses sometimes seemed too fiery, too snarky in contrast to the calmly smiling Romney sitting across from him. Romney was less aggressive than in the first two debates, less hyper, less the stickler for rules (as they applied to Obama), less concerned about who was getting more response time. Obama might have been thinking, “What the ?” But he had seen this campaign jujitsu three weeks ago in Denver; he adjusted. I don’t think sleepwalking was Obama’s main problem during the first debate; I think it was blindsided confusion, puzzled paralysis induced by a Mitt Romney who rarely had been spotted since leaving office as Massachusetts’ governor in January 2007. …
Onward. In two weeks, voters in eight or nine states will determine our president for the next four years. From those of us whose votes don’t matter as much as yours, we wish you well.