Obama's Worst Moment

This was a pretty awful night for the President. And the reason his performance came of as being so disgracefully bad was because he didn't seem the slightest bit presidential. There was a singular commanding force on stage tonight (or this afternoon, if you're here) and it was Mitt Romney. Obama was tired, lethargic, and even appeared indifferent to the proceedings. And where Romney engaged in the fight, Obama merely endured it. He presented none of his major arguments, made no obvious effort to combat the obvious distortions of the other side, and allowed his opponent to walk right over him. I have no idea who said it (someone on Twitter, if I recall correctly), but this made me think that Obama really does have a teleprompter dependency. What happened?

I don't expect Obama to simply tear into Romney, or to engage in verbal assault, or become argumentative — that's not his style. But one would expect him to correct, even capitalise on, Romney's attempt to construct an alternative reality and have us seeing through his lens. The problem was that tonight, because of the president's weakness in debate, Romney succeeded. He got away with it. And he shouldn't have.

Tonight we saw a smart Mitt Romney, but a deceptive one. The Etch-A-Sketch on full display. In the true style of a talented politician, and a true orator, he persuaded the viewer to believe in his version of the truth. He governed the stage, and appeared in control. He was in control even over the Lehrer, whose moderation was completely lame, and whose insight was far from penetrating. It was as though he just sat back and asked them rather wetly what they thought was different about the other guy. (If PBS's funding gets cut, we'll blame Lehrer. At least it's not Big Bird's fault.) Romney didn't look down for the entire time, and wasn't compromised by the split screen format of the debate's broadcast; he appeared in control, and in a crucial move for the challenger made a sitting president look weak.

He was able to get away with elementary factual distortions. He turned around tonight and became a moderate from Massachusetts. Drop everything, find a new persona. Nobody saw it coming.

Especially not Obama.