The
general consensus from the right, left and middle (as those terms are defined
in the U.S., not world, sense) was that Obama really messed up in the first
2012 Presidential debate. After all,
Romney lied and uttered falsehoods about his positions and the President's and his
own records, all over the place (1, 2, 3).
(By the way, there is a difference between the two: when you tell a lie
you know that you aren't telling the truth.
When you utter a falsehood you may or may not know that it is.) And Obama didn't come slamming back at
him. He certainly could have. He's got the style, he is a law-school
graduate (Harvard no less), and he didn't need an overwhelming assortment of
facts to nail Mitt to the post. Just a
few would have done the job. So why
didn't he?
Chris
Matthews went almost apoplectic over Obama's generally non-responsive
mode. Ed Schultz got depressed. My colleague William Rivers Pitt laid into
Obama in his characteristically strong but literary way (4). A good friend of mine, retired teacher Ellen Diamond,
put it this way:
"Watching that debate made us ill. What just happened here? Why did Obama appear meek and defensive? Why did he not bring up the 47%, the tax evasion with non-release of tax records and Cayman Island accounts? Why did he not say something to Lehrer when Romney kept interrupting and Lehrer allowed it? Why did he keep looking down when Romney was speaking, avoiding Romney's face, while Romney kept staring at him when he was speaking? This was a disaster. As David Gergen said right after the debate: "We now have a horse race. OMG. I immediately emailed Obama with a strong critique of this debate, giving specifics, and saying that if he does not go into attack mode for the next two debates, it is all over. This made me sick. It should also be noted that the meek shall not inherit the earth. He needs to man up or begin looking for a job, and, as he well knows, the job market is not so good." (Used with permission.)
So
once again, why didn't he go after Mittens?
Well, first of all, maybe his campaign really comes from the Bob Shrum
School of Running Presidential Campaigns.
When Shrum was running Kerry's campaign, one order that went out for the
whole of the 2004 Democratic Convention was "don't mention George Bush." That was the George Bush of an increasingly unpopular
war, of huge tax breaks for the rich, and threats to privatize Social Security. But don't mention him and by the way, don't
hit back, right away and hard, at the "Swift Boat" demolition crew. And further, don't ask about or even mention
the mental box that was under Bush's jacket at back-level during the second
debate. Second, maybe Obama has learned
nothing from the Congressional GOP being have one and only one agenda item:
making him a one-term President. And so,
he just wants to conciliate with opponents.
But
then there's a third one, as in the title of this Commentary: he very carefully
and cleverly set up a rope-a-dope trap into which Romney merrily walked. "Rope-a-dope" was
a strategy worked out by the great heavy-weight boxing champion, Mohammed Ali,
for use against George Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle," at Kinshasa,
Zaire, in 1974. Ali would intermittently lie
along the ropes of the ring in a defensive position and let Foreman put it all
out there. Foreman eventually wore
himself out and Ali won by a knockout.
Well, judging by the reaction on the
first post-debate day (October 4, 2012, the day of this writing), perhaps the
Obama performance was indeed all planned.
First, almost before dawn broke on the East Coast a variety of sources
were out in force (see below), documenting Romney's lies, falsehoods and
distortions (and they may well have been lined up to do so). Second, in a speech the day after (that is on Oct. 4), a clip of
which received many plays, Obama came out swinging, noting that the person up
on the stage with him the evening before bore no political resemblance to the candidate who has been going about the country in campaign mode for the last
year or so. Third, what better way for Obama
to set the record straight than in a format in which he is in complete control,
not subject to the whims of Jim "oh how you have aged" Lehrer, who also seemed
to be up there as a Romney facilitator.
Fourth, if Obama had started to
combat Romney on the facts, since the latter are just inconveniences for the
latter, Obama would have been drawn into an endless series of he-said-he-said exchanges, which would have gotten him nowhere. Instead
he got the contrast between himself "looking Presidential" (and acting and
sounding it too) and smirking Romney looking like some boy debater, just waiting
for the opportunity to pull out one his apparently very well-rehearsed
"zingers" (none of which appeared to appear, by the way. But I didn't watch the whole thing). Obama now controls the high ground. One can just imagine the ads that will be
(hopefully) appearing, contrasting the center-right positions (definitely not
Tea-Party/Far Right) that Romney took last night with, on the one hand, the
far-right things he said during both the primaries and the presidential
campaign so far, and on the other the rather liberal things he said about, for
example abortion rights, when he was Governor of Massachusetts.
One last point, about Romney's not
telling the truth and changes of position.
Romney lives very much in the moment.
In his own mind, at any given time, he is telling the truth, as it appears
to him at that moment. He sees no contradictions
between a policy that he might have laid out last evening and a completely
opposite one he, or his running mate, laid out at a campaign stop three days
ago. As for the lies he tells about
Obama and his policies, again he doesn't see them as lies. Thus arguing publicly about them does an
opponent no good. Attacking Romney for
what for many of us can see are indeed lies and falsehoods in one's own
speeches and those of surrogates and other supporters, in settings of one's own
choice and on one's own terms, can be the most powerful way for Obama to combat
Romney. Further, there are two more
debates coming up, plus Joe Biden having a go at Paul Ryan. Biden will not play rope-a-dope, but will come
out swinging. And Ryan will be not able
to lie around his attachment to his positions, which he been making very clear
for a very long time.
As Yogi most famously said, it's never over 'til it's over. The President may just have lured Romney into just the position he wants him to be in. Then we shall see who is truly on the ropes.
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References:
1. The Progress Report, Romney's
Biggest Debate Whoppers, Oct. 4, 2012.
2. Nichols, John, "In a Debate Between
Romney and Romney, Obama was a Spectator," http://www.thenation.com/blog/170349/debate-between-romney-and-romney-obama-was-spectator?rel=emailNation"# .
3. Morrill, Barbara, "Mitt Romney: Lying to
Victory," Daily Kos, Oct. 4, 2012, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/04/1139793/-Mitt-Romney-Lying-to-victory?detail=email
4. Pitt, William Rivers, "A Nationally
Televised Presidential Fail," click here
