Nerditorial: About the First Presidential Debate

I'm not going to set off my own Bravo Sierra detector by denying that Romney won the debate. The instant polls allow for no other conclusion.

I watched the debates on C-SPAN, specifically to avoid the perception filter of cable news.

Watching the debates in this way left me with the sense that the debate was something of a draw. Obama didn't draw blood, and neither did Romney, so I was left with the impression that it was close to a non-event.

But after the debates I switched to MS-NBC to see the effect of the liberal perception filter.

And I had the nerve to actually be surprised when I learned that the debate was called for Romney.

And why was it a win for Romney? Because Romney was all full of piss and vinegar, and Obama was too chill. Because Obama didn't "go on the offense", or some such nonsense. The President wasn't being enough of an alpha-male for the likes of Ed Shultz, apparently.

And I watched on-air talent with whom I have normally agreed, like Racheal Maddow, get sucked into a narrative of style over substance and witnessed an apparent inability to see the difference between simple aggression and targeted aggression.

Nonetheless, the perception filters are firmly in place culturally, and it is through these filters that all Presidential candidates win or lose debates. It is not fair or unfair. It simply is.

Romney has been trailing too far behind for too long to suit the photo-finish narrative that the media adheres to regardless what the actual outcome of an election might be. So, since Obama didn't kick the living crap out of Romney in this debate... and since Romney didn't accidentally punch a baby on the way to the podium... obviously Romney won.

However, I submit it was a Pyrrhic victory.

That is, a victory that leaves the victor weaker and more vulnerable.

The sports metaphor that suits the situation best is that of the "rope-a-dope".

In boxing, the rope-a-dope is a strategy of allowing another fighter to go on the offensive and exhaust himself and become arm weary, while the fighter who appears to be taking a beating is actually just conserving resources and waiting for his moment to strike.

This debate is one round in a multi-round fight. And Romney did as well as he possibly could this round.

But that is not going to help Romney next time. And mostly because of what didn't happen in this debate.

This first debate was supposed to be chock full of "zingery goodness", according to the same media that declared this a win for Romney, anyway. Romney was spending time practicing some really bitchin' one liners that would turn the tide in his favor... somehow...

Well, I watched the debates and it was pretty much zinger-free.

But I did see a lot of zinger bait thrown the President's way. But the President, in rope-a-dope mode... wasn't going to take any bait.

The first real zinger bait was when Romney simply denied his entire tax plan.

Obama took on Romney's 20% tax reduction plan, which adds up to a 5 trillion dollar reduction in revenue and challenged Romney to explain how he would cover that revenue. Romney responded by saying essentially, that wasn't his tax plan.

Obama was visibly thrown by this blatant lie, and made a second attempt to get an answer from Romney, and... again... Romney denied his own tax plan.

After that, Obama dropped that entire debate arc and moved on.

Obama could have accused Romney of lying... which was the zinger bait... and then Romney would have employed whatever the hell zinger was keyed to this bait.

Damned if I know what that might have been, but it was easy to see that Obama was expected to accuse Romney of being a liar, and there was no where good that such a claim could go for Obama, even though he would have been correct.

Someone lying to your face in front of everyone, especially in front of a neutral third party who refuses intervene (like the moderator, Jim Lehrer), is a classic school yard bully tactic. You are supposed to call the bully a liar while the neutral third party stands there with his thumb in his ass and then the bully plays the passive-agressive victim like he is King Lear.

Obama, apparently being familiar with such tactics, didn't take the bait, knowing that taking the bait is always a mistake. Always.

The pundits, who want an instant winner for their professional-wrestling like narrative, found this to be akin to a wrestler who "breaks character" and doesn't grab the balsa wood chair and smash it over his opponent's head according to the script.

Well, this isn't professional wrestling, where the wrestlers are trained in the art of appearing to hurt each other in keeping with their status as the most skilled stuntmen/actors on the face of the Earth.

Its not like after the debate, and out of the sight of the public that Romney and Obama can drop out of kayfabe and share a beer when the weekend comes.

You get hit with a chair in this political cage match, your political injuries are real and you never recover from them.

I vividly recall another form of zinger bait from Romney, when he was trying to call the President a liar. Romney made reference to his five boys and how they have often repeatedly told him something that isn't true, in the hopes of being believed if they repeated it often enough... the way boys often do.

Now, it will take a while for the bulk of Caucasian-Americans to register this dog whistle, but Obama recognized it the second he heard it... and he laughed.

It took a while for me to get it, but it hit me after the debates.

Romney was calling Obama a "boy", in a powerfully passive-aggressive manner. (Consider that Romney could have called his kids "sons"... but he instead called them "boys"... even though his sons are all... um... adults.)

Was Obama supposed to take that bait?

Really?

Was Obama supposed to say, "Governor, I'm not your boy"?

In what quadrant of the galaxy would that have been a good idea?

I'm sure some really jacked up zinger was stored in Romney's frontal lobe if Obama took up that thread in the debate.

If you lean left, and you watched the debates, you probably saw a number of places where the President "should have" responded to some outrageously strange thing that Romney said. The number of WTF?!?! things that Romney said, in front of everyone and their uncle, at that debate are not easy to list.

And every one of those cognitive dissonance inducing statements made by Romney was a savory morsel of zinger bait. All Obama had to do to trigger the zinger was say whatever it is that progressives "wish" Obama would have said...

...so if there was something you think Obama "should have" said... I'm telling you now, you need to be careful what you wish for.

Because the visceral satisfaction you might have felt when Obama stepped into Romney's clumsy and transparent little verbal traps would have been fleeting.

The President appears to be the only person involved who actually watched how Romney performed in the GOP debates in months past. Romney pulled this same passive-aggressive cognitively-dissonant shape-shifting crap there, too. And it worked on such debating titans as Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum.

But Obama isn't like those debaters. For better or worse.

Anyone who wishes that Obama would go all "Hulk Smash" on Romney is reading the wrong origin story. Obama is more like Spiderman. He dodges punches, with the help of his finely honed Spidey-Sense. And in the first debate, that sense was a-tinglin' folks.

So, I believe that Romney will get a good news cycle out of this debate, and perhaps even a boost in the polls.

The most important and lingering effect of the first debate is that Romney has now painted himself into a rhetorical corner out of which he is going to have some difficultly getting free.

He is not going to defund federal education programs.

He is not going to lower taxes on the wealthy.

He is going to offer vouchers to replace Medicare.

He is going to get rid of PBS.

oh... and he hearts coal, too.

These are just a few of the things he said in the first debate that he can't pretend he didn't say in the second debate...

...or can he pretend that he didn't say them?

If someone bet me $10,000 that Romney wouldn't try and pretend in future debates, I wouldn't take that bet.

Now, Obama knows more about Romney's play book, and what Romney can and can't get away with saying and doing in future debates. I predict that President Obama will adapt and overcome in future debates.

Oh, and this is going to be a close race on election day if the media has to conspire to throw a child down a well for Romney to personally rescue. The Holy Narrative will be protected.

One more thing. Romney has some sort of Inspector Clauseau-like ability to pull defeat from the jaws of political victory like no one I have seen on the political stage in living memory. Look at how Romney has been handling his campaign when it has been going poorly. Now that things look like they might be turning his way... you can expect him to go straight to Douche-Con One.

There is more than a month to go before Election Day. Does anyone really believe that Romney is finished screwing up?

Really?

If Romney doesn't punch a baby before this is all over, I am going to be very surprised.