Who thought that debate was fun?
Oct 23, 2012, 8:06 PM | Updated: 8:06 pm
It seems the media’s number one responsibility following a presidential debate is to proclaim a victor.
Rather than determining who won, we should point out who lost: all of us.
Did anyone feel invigorated about the election and the direction our country following that snooze fest? In actuality, we feel more uninformed about foreign policy than when we started the evening. With that being said, and if we had to pick a winner, it would go to former Gov. Mitt Romney.
Barack Obama came out looking to score “cute” points. The president brought his share of pre-scripted and well-rehearsed “cute” one-liners, as the pundits and blowholes in the media like to refer to as “zingers,” and they were delivered on time with the hope that the audience would be caught up in his charm and not concerned with the actual truth. As we look at the majority of the post-debate snap poles, the president achieved his objective: kill them with cuteness rather than with the facts. There’s something we haven’t seen before (insert sarcasm font).
Then there was Romney’s performance. Romney’s showing was boring, reserved, patient, intelligent, concise and, well, presidential. How dare he keep from getting caught up in the name calling and childish nature of the Obama attack plan! Romney never fell for the traps set by Obama. Romney simply allowed Obama to fall on his own sword, or bayonet if you will, which, by the way, along with horses, are still used by our Marines.
Romney’s team reported that this was his strategy. Apparently, the objective was to pass the Commander-in-Chief threshold and simply come off as presidential. Most of us were left with a low impression of Romney’s performance.
Perhaps we have all fallen into the trappings of the “Rockstar President” mentality and have forgotten that a Commander-in-Chief is not someone to high five, but someone to respect and that is earned, not shoved down the throats of Americans by endless TV appearances, Hollywood endorsements and celerity parties at the White House, paid with your tax dollars of course.
Yet, that might be the only take away from last night’s debate. The two candidates, with nearly identical foreign policies, bored us to tears for 90 minutes. One of the candidates looked petty while the other, well, looked presidential.
By the way, did anyone catch Bob Scheiffer saying, “Obama Bin Laden?” Oops!