As a strong supporter of Barack Obama, I found the debate last night painful. Romney performed well. Obama didn’t.
I take solace in a dial group session by a respected Geoff Garin, which found that sixty percent of the study group of undecided voters and weakly committed Democrats viewed Obama favorably for his performance, and that eighty percent of this crucial group after the debate saw the President as more likable and down to earth. And on key issues, Obama decisively prevailed on improving the economy and on Medicare, though the group did marginally shift to Romney on taxes. A small study suggested that a key target audience of the debate didn’t go along with the talking heads.
I also am somewhat relieved by Nate Silver, the statistics guru now publishing at The New York Times, who first made his name in sports, then in politics. He judged, using a football analogy, that Romney in his strong debate scored a field goal not a touchdown or the two touchdowns that Silver earlier declared Romney would have to score to win in November. He gained only a slight advantage.
Yet, as I watched the debate and then listened and read a great deal of commentary, not sleeping through most of the night, I worried that an Obama defeat seemed again to be a possibility, if not a probability. Just about all the commentators and instant polls judged that Romney won the debate, though the meaning of the victory was contested: from nothing has changed, to a reset, to the beginning of the end for Obama.
I want to believe, as also has been discussed, that the debate presents an opportunity for Obama (with the support of his powerful campaign staff), known for his impeccable timing and strategic prowess, to counterpunch in ads and speeches and in the coming debates. I certainly would like to believe that Barack Obama, as Muhammad Ali would put it, was playing “rope – a – dope,” and still “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.”
But beyond the winning and losing, and the sports analogies, I think that the debate itself was a success and a failure to the degree to which it actually provided an opportunity for the public to consider the pressing issues of the day and the alternative approaches Romney and Obama are proposing.
They mostly debated the question of the role of government in supporting economic growth and the creation of jobs, along with taxes and Medicare and Obamacare, but they didn’t debate many other key domestic issues: race, immigration, abortion, the courts, LGBT rights, the power of corporations and as I suspected yesterday, the profound problem of poverty in the United States, in a society that has been defined by not only freedom but also equality, as Tocqueville explored, but has become ever more and profoundly in-egalitarian. The moderator, Jim Lehrer, ignored all this and more. This is deeply troubling.
Nonetheless, the competing political philosophies of the two candidates and the two parties were in clear view, as a solid piece in this morning’s New York Times reports. In this regard, despite Romney’s much better performance, I am not sure that he was convincing. Indeed, the study of independents’ response suggests that he may not have been.
Romney and Obama both underscored last night, as they have been highlighting throughout the campaign, that this election posed a clear choice. Yet, note that Romney tried to fudge this when it came to his hyper–individualist, pro-corporate approach on Obamacare and Medicare, on tax justice and the means of promoting job growth, and on regulations. The fudging was a key to the success of his performance, but I am not at all sure that it was convincing.
While he made it clear that he opposed Obamacare for pragmatic and principled reasons, he pretended that he supported all that is good with Obamacare, without explaining how this would be possible. He promised he would lower tax rates, avoid any tax increases and cut deficits (also increase the military budget as Obama highlighted) simultaneously by closing unspecified loopholes and limiting unnamed tax deductions of the rich, but not the middle class. This fantasy which defies both common sense and expert opinion, he claimed, will unlock the power of the market and the job creators (aka the rich) to do their work to produce jobs (not just to enrich themselves). And most remarkably, he suggested that he would control the abuses of Wall Street, without supporting the major legislation that moves to do this, Dodd-Frank. Eliminating unnecessary, job destroying regulations is central to his economic plan, but last night he amazingly presented himself as a rational regulator. And he would do all this and be bi-partisan too.
Although he was slick in his presentation, I doubt that this was convincing to a public that has grown to be skeptical about his constancy and uncertain about who Romney really is, what he believes and what he will do. For Republican moderates, such as David Brooks and Mike Murphy, a former Republican campaign operative, , the polished technocrat on the stage last night was the real Romney. They were ecstatic on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS (support of which Romney promised to cut out, despite his professed love for Big Bird). Yet, given the performances Romney has been giving for the last two years, Romney, the severe conservative, I am not at all sure that the public will understand. No wonder un-decideds and weakly committed Democrats were apparently not as convinced as the initial commentaries were. And the instant polls were about who won, not who was convinced. A real argument did happen, but the judgment of the public is very much still out.
Maybe the night didn’t go as badly as I had first thought.
Great piece! Penetrates behind the “society of the spectacle” poetics and politics of last night’s debate and of the entire presidential campaign. Your diagnosis also applies to the European scene with, as you write, “competing political philosophies.” Thanks!
Two quick comments in agreement:
(1) “A debate” is a socially constructed situation with clear norms and roles. It is not the same situation as “the election.” Astute analysts are able to separate “winning a debate” from “winning electoral support.” It is possible for Romney to have convincingly won the debate by all accounts without having won much more support.
(2) From a similarly cultural perspective, I think that most of the serious people underestimate the importance of the “big bird moment” last night. I suspect that the cultural meaning of “Big Bird” goes way beyond a symbolism for the public broadcasting system. Ratings tell us that America doesn’t necessarily care much for PBS, but my gut and life experience in the middle class of middle America tell me that America cares deeply for Big Bird, who is a cherished and polyvocal cultural symbol, and a deeply personal one for recent generations—one that Romney has just politicized in ways that iterate the notion of his misreading/distance from middle-class U.S. culture and values. He misread the sign (in the Saussurian sense). Big Bird does not signify PBS for most people, but rather a constellation of things that run much, much deeper. My intuition is that this will be a bigger mistake than it will be understood or discussed to be, though I don’t have much evidence for this position beyond the large number of Facebook memes that have appeared since last night featuring Big Bird and/or his fellow muppet travelers as suddenly political figures.
I thought a lot about your first point last night and this morning, Aron. But overlooked your second. Indeed there is lots of talk about Big Bird today. Political observers may have overlooked that there was indeed a big gaffe, and it fits the Romney narrative, not understanding what is dear if not sacred in American life. As the day progresses I am feeling better and better. Obama seems to be counter punching effectively in his public appearances. And the severe conservative is hollowly redefining himself as a moderate, provoking questions about who this person really is.