I felt like I was watching the Seinfeld Show. The debate reminded me of the famous episode, in which Jerry and George decide to pitch a situation comedy show to NBC, a show about nothing, about the interactive foibles of daily life, i.e. in the episode George and Jerry share with the audience the premise of the humor of the show they were watching (then America’s most popular).  “Debate about nothing” seemed to be the Romney performance strategy last night. Again, as in the first two debates, the Governor moved to the center, but this time he pretended to oppose Obama as he adopted all of Obama’s policies, for better and for worse: on Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and drones. Romney pretended to bury Obama, as he in fact, praised his policies.

Romney expressed his opposition in his body language, in his characterization of Obama’s policies, in name calling, “apology tour” and all, as he supported substantively just about all the policies. Obama’s foreign policies can be and should be criticized by doves and hawks alike, by those who support torture as enhanced interrogation, including Romney until yesterday, and those, including me, who worry about the self-defeating sacrifice of human rights in the name of security, but Romney would have none of this. There is a pressing need for a serious foreign policy debate but Romney had a pitch planned and he professionally delivered it: a potential commander-in-chief, who is not too scary. I am impressed by his acting abilities, which did give reasons for some of his supporters and spinners to be pleased last night and leads me to despair about American democracy.

I can’t emphasize enough how strange Romney was, much stranger than George and Jerry. Of the three debates, last night’s was the most peculiar. As with the other two, it was viewed by the audience and by the performers mostly as a means to an end, deciding the election: less about competing policies and commitments, more getting votes. As with the other two debates, the performance of the candidates was more important than the substance of their positions. But what was striking to me in this debate was the raw cynicism of one of the debaters.

I have long been impressed by the dangers of cynicism in American politics. The first line of my book, The Cynical Society written in 1990: “I believe that the single most pressing challenge facing American democracy today is widespread public cynicism.” Last night, we observed a new high in cynical performance. Romney gave the audience what he thought it wanted to hear, unconstrained by principle, completely defined by interest.

We know from last night how the President conducts and will continue to conduct foreign policy. There was no hint from Romney what he would do. Cynicism is widespread in America, in the past and now, but it has limits. I believe that Romney went too far. Though he was “presidential” in his demeanor, the emptiness of his pitch made it unpersuasive. For this reason, I think, the polls suggest that the majority of viewers think he lost the debate, the overwhelming majority of independents and undecided voters think so, and as Nate Silver suggests, it may move the election just enough to significantly increase the chances of the President’s re-election. If the debate yielded a two percent movement in Obama direction, it would yield an increase from today’s seventy percent chance of an Obama victory, according to Silver’s model, to a eighty-five percent chance, one percent movement would yield an eighty percent chance and even a one half percent movement would yield a seventy-five percent chance. Obama’s debate victory last night does yield such movements, so: Obama wins!

There is a sense that the momentum since the debates has turned from Obama to Romney, while the structure of the Electoral College vote favors Obama. I think that it is now quite possible, given Obama’s command and steadiness, and the flashes of Romney as an empty suit, who will do and say anything to win, that the momentum will change.

Coming up, the last round: intensive campaign events mobilizing supporters. I think Obama can seal the deal if in his upcoming speeches and barnstorming he expresses his hopes and plans for his second term. This is the change in the campaign that I am looking for. It could have much more substance than last night’s debate. It could and should be about something.

Immediately after watching the second Obama – Romney debate, I, along with the majority of the viewers and commentators, concluded that Obama won. But as I collected my thoughts and wrote my initial response, I found that I had actually written a piece that was less about why Obama won, more about why Romney lost. I knew I had to write a follow up.

In the meanwhile, Roy Ben-Shai sent in a very different interpretation, which I thought was important to share. He thought that as the President won the battle of the moment, Barack Obama, the principled political leader who can make a difference, lost. While Romney didn’t win, the empty game of “politics as usual” did. I am not sure that I agree with his judgment, but I do see his point.

The quality of Obama’s rhetoric and argument is one of the four main reasons why I think that Obama has the potential to be a transformational president, which I analyzed fully in Reinventing Political Culture. Obama has actually battled against sound bite and cable news culture, and prevailed. But not last Thursday: Ben-Shai is right. Obama beat Romney not by playing the game of a strikingly different political leader, capable of making serious arguments in eloquent ways, establishing the fact that there is an alternative to the politics of slogans and empty rhetoric, but by beating Romney at his own game, dominating the stage, provoking with quick clipped attacks and defenses. The idealist in me is disappointed, but I must admit only a little.

Tough practical political struggle is necessary and not so evil. Democratic political persuasion can’t replicate the argument in a seminar room or a scientific journal. The rule of the people is not the rule of the professoriate and advanced graduate students, and it’s a good thing, keeping in mind the extreme foolishness of distinguished intellectuals cut off from the daily concerns of most people. Popular common sense helps avoid intellectual betrayals, untied to everyday concerns. The challenge is to somehow be tough in the day-to-day political struggle, including the world of televised debates, responding to immediate concerns, and still contribute to serious public deliberation about fundamental principles. I believe this happened in both debates, with Romney winning the first popularity contest and Obama the second, and in my judgment, Obama actually winning the implicit serious debate that is embedded within the political spectacle.

In both debates, two starkly different visions of America and two strikingly different programs for America were presented. In both debates, Romney was fundamentally dishonest, proposing a five-point program that has no substance, promising a great deal that is quite contradictory and unworkable: cutting taxes, increasing defense spending, balancing the budget, through closing unspecified loopholes and reducing deductions of the rich, and growing the economy (purportedly by cutting taxes on the job creators, i.e. the rich). It just doesn’t add up and makes little sense as a way to actually addressing the economic challenges. And as we will hear tonight, I suspect, he also promises to make America great again by “never apologizing,” demonizing China and pretending that the problems associated with the world historic civilizational transformation occurring in the Muslim and Arab worlds are all the fault of Barack Obama.

I should add, as I declare Obama wins the serious debate, I am also aware that Romney is now mounting a serious challenge. I am not as sure as I have been about my prognostications.

The commentators agree that Romney, despite the contradictions and thinness of his program, has the momentum, and the President has to tell people how the next four years are going to be different. I was struck by an exchange on The Chris Mathews Show on Sunday morning. The panel, Andrea Mitchel, Chris Mathews, Michael Duffy, Jonathan Martin and Kathleen Parker, a moderate to liberal bunch, agreed that there is a problem. Obama has to make a case for four more years. They wondered together “why has he not laid out what he is going to do?” They viewed it as “the central mystery of the last part of this campaign”: why hasn’t he laid out what he is going to do? Is entitlement reform? Is it military reform? Is it tax reform? Is it all three?” Or is it more industrial policy, auto industry? Why wait until after he is elected? Martin told the cynical purported truth: it wouldn’t be popular: cutting a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, including cutting entitlements. The auto industry bailout is popular in some key states, but not in the rest of the country. They also agreed closure on Libya is pressing. This is the mindset of the mainstream pundits. It is also the campaign line of the Romney campaign: Obama has run out of steam.

Yet, I don’t understand this slogan and this analysis. Obama promises to stay true to his principles and implement them, moving “FORWARD” (his campaign slogan). A budget deal that includes tax increases and spending cuts. This makes sense and is popular, and it is projected to reduce the deficit by 3.8 trillion dollars in a decade. He will also work to sustain a robust recovery, by investing in infrastructure and pushing education reforms. From elementary schools to universities to green industry, he sees an active role of government as a key to economic recovery. In this regard, he will work to consolidate the advances of his first term, by implementing health care reform and regulations of the financial abuses that caused the financial crisis, i.e. the Affordable Health Care for America Act and Dodd-Frank. Obama is steady. He will follow through. And of all of Obama’s announced plans comprehensive immigration reform is a new initiative that is likely to be implemented. His victory would be thanks to the Latino vote and my guess is that enough Republicans will take notice to support significant reform.

While it is quite unclear who Romney is, whether he will be the servant of the Tea Party or the Massachusetts moderate, and how his proposals add up, Obama promises a steadfast political persona, a centrist moving the center to the left, a second term that enacts this position. This choice was apparent in the two debates. If the choice is clarified, Obama wins. More tomorrow, after tonight’s debate.

Many are saying that Obama “won,” that is, we won, the second presidential debate. I find this to be untrue, at least in the bigger picture, and unfortunately so.

Let us take a brief look at the recent events that led up to this debate. Prior to the debates, Romney was heavily down in the polls. The generally accepted view was that his only chance to overturn the scores would be some remarkable (almost magical) landslide at the presidential debates. But that, it was stressed, would be highly unlikely. After all, how much difference could a debate make? We already know the positions of the sides by heart; nothing substantively new or sufficiently remarkable could be stated so as to halt, let alone counter, Romney’s overwhelming flight downwards. Or is it? Romney showed up to the first debate like his life depended on it. True enough: the contents of the respective positions are known in advance and could not make much difference. But the performance could. Romney would be aggressive, precise, and most importantly, attack Obama directly (with the minimal courtesy and respect due, of course) at every occasion. He would show the American people who the true leader is, and what a terrible mistake they are making. Obama and his camp seem to have been caught off guard, overly confident, underestimating both Romney’s resilience and the potential importance of the debate.

Romney came to the first debate, so to speak, to the kill, and one of the main reasons for Obama’s “loss” was that he did not respond in kind. Romney was attacking, speaking directly to and about Obama, yet he did not heed to Romney’s rhythm. Obama stuck to his own tempo and demeanor, while on a few occasions being taken aback. This made him look “weak” and “tired,” even confused compared to Romney’s sharpness. This, it seems to me, simply confirms Obama’s most characteristic and compelling traits, and part of his particular nobility as a politician.

Ever since his first campaign, Obama made it a point to speak positively rather than negatively, to minimize the attacks on the other party (be it domestic or foreign) and maximize the talk of promise, change, improvement, and collective efforts; to minimize the language of fear and threat and maximize the talk of hope (let us put aside for now the fact that many of his promises he failed to live up to in practice –the promises and the promising at least were good).

By “winning” so decisively, what Romney proved in that first debate is what, by now, we all sadly know: aggression, especially in politics, wins the day. If you’re not aggressive, especially when the other side is, you are “wimpy” and a shadow, “disengaged.” This is allegedly true whether your opponent is a Republican or a terrorist, a Romney or an Ahmadinejad. In my opinion, this macho ideology may well be politically effective, but it is absolutely false and contradictory. To be able to focus on one’s own strengths and vision rather than on the other’s flaws and blindness, to speak the truth instead of calling out the other’s lies, to respond and resist non-violently to the other’s violence, the more so the more the other pushes (and the other will push, if only out of panic), is a show of power and resoluteness, not weakness. It was indeed a show of power and nobility that Obama (whatever flaws he might otherwise have) refrained, in the first debate, from mentioning or manipulating the poisonous and self-destructive remarks that Romney had been making, including the particularly sad one about the “47 percent.” The best way to counter this kind of divisive and patronizing approach is to ignore it, not to honor it with mention (especially given that it is common knowledge: Obama would be saying nothing new by bringing it up).

However, sure enough, Obama and his camp have “learned their lesson”. The first debate was the perfect reminder of what the “public” wants and to what it favorably responds. The situation in the second debate (as is often the case in sports) was reversed. Obama came up as the surprising underdog, and it was now the Romney camp that was caught off guard, overly confident, underestimating the underdog’s ability to talk that talk. This, in my opinion, is the lowdown of Tuesday night’s show: Having been pushed to the corner in the previous debate, Obama was forced to play their game, in their field. In that sense, the entire second debate was set within and framed by a Republican victory; it was a reactive move, and perhaps just as panicked and out of desperation as Romney’s had been in the first. Among other things, we could see Obama nearly mimicking the “enumerating” rhetoric used by Romney in the first debate to suggest that he is not talking “abstractly” (“We will do three things. Number one… Number two… Number three…,” all with the adjacent finger counting gesture).

Obama indeed managed to win it their way, in their field. It is, I admit, impressive. But his win is at the same time his loss and ours, certainly in the longer run. The “fierceness” of this debate — already celebrated by some as the “best” one ever– no doubt set a precedent for future debates, near and the far; a future that, from where I stand, seems rather bleak. The operation code is now to be direct and aggressive. The understanding is that, if played this way, debates have true transformative pull at the polls. To use the boxing metaphor that Obama is actually rather fond of using: Each opponent must keep his (or her) face and body shielded with the one hand, and, with the other, watch for the bare and vulnerable areas of the opponent’s. Each must take advantage of the opportunities unwittingly given by the other, and be sure to strike back whenever the other does. A lot of it has to do with timing: one must time one’s blows, and the expenditure of one’s energy and ammunition. The mentioning of the 47% remark, to cite one particularly good example, was brought up right on time, at the debate’s closing statement. Well played, Mr. President, we were eagerly waiting for this punch.

Who is steering at the wheel I am not at all sure, but for some time now our ship is steadily drifting to the right, and not only in the United States, in most of the electoral democracies. Divisiveness, intimidation, aggression, and warmongering may not help to win wars (nor, perhaps, are they meant to), but they certainly help winning elections. Obama’s notable victory Tuesday night, I am afraid, only served to remind us of, and perhaps to consolidate and accelerate, this overall direction.

The debate was again very stimulating, and again I had trouble sleeping, more out of excitement this time, not because I was fighting against despair, as was the case after the first Obama – Romney confrontation.

This debate turned the election back to its substantial fundamentals. Obama’s September advantage has evaporated. It was perhaps inflated by the Democrats excellent convention performance and the Republican’s very poor one, and also by Romney’s 47% put down. Now there is a real contest between a centrist who is trying to move the center to the left (think Obamacare), and a professional candidate with unknown political orientation, clearly against Obama, though not clear what he is for.

Three competing approaches to governance, in fact, have been presented in the campaign. If Romney had won last night, he would likely win the election. Then there would be a contest between Romney, the Massachusetts moderate, and Romney, the severe conservative. There’s no telling what the result would be. But because Obama prevailed, he is still in there, and for three reasons I think that he will likely prevail. It’s a matter of authenticity, common sense and American identity.

Moderate Romney won the first debate because he performed well and because the President didn’t. That was reversed last night. The President was sharp, answering questions accurately and with authority, responding to Romney’s attacks precisely, most evident in the way he turned his greatest vulnerability, his administration’s handling of the attacks on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Romney tried to use the same technics to dominate and shape the discussion as he did the last time.  But it was off putting. He insisted on talking when moderator Candy Crowley tried to keep him within the time limit, first with success, then failing. His attempt to bully a woman didn’t look good, as was noted on social media. And then there was the unfortunate turn of phrase “binders full of women,” a phrase that took off on the web immediately, revealing as it does a patronizing approach to woman and a view from on high of human beings as pages that fit into binders.

Romney was not nearly as weak as Obama was in the first debate. But Romney’s second performance reveals the unattractive technics he used successfully in his first performance, perhaps lessening the earlier success.

In the first debate, Romney pivoted. His move to the center thrilled Republican moderates and operatives, apparently making him attractive to independents and undecided voters. It confused Obama, who responded poorly. But prepared for this now, Obama effectively responded and Romney now wasn’t able to cogently account for his proposals or for himself.

Romney was caught between his supply side fantasies of cutting taxes on the “job creators” to stimulate economic growth, and a promise that he wouldn’t favor the rich, when job creators = rich. He declared that his move to cut tax rates and radically increase military spending will be paid for by closing unspecified loopholes, but wouldn’t or couldn’t provide evidence. Obama was particularly sharp in criticizing this.

“Now, Governor Romney was a very successful investor. If somebody came to you, Governor, with a plan that said, here, I want to spend $7 or $8 trillion, and then we’re going to pay for it, but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it, you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal and neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up.”

Romney used an authoritative tone to trump such contradictions in the first debate. It didn’t work last night. And there was a big difference between his weak performance and Obama’s. Obama’s identity, his character, like it or not, is consistent. Romney’s isn’t. After campaigning for President for six years, it is still not clear whether he is severely conservative Romney or moderate Mitt. Strong performance can hide this, but the weak performance raised serious doubts.

Romney tests common sense both in the specifics of his major policy ideas and in presentation of self. His strongest move in the debate was to use every bad statistic about the economy, sometimes questionably cooked, and claim it is the fault of Barack Obama, from employment statistics to the price of gasoline. Without recognizing the larger historical and global context of hard times, it is all Obama’s fault. Some of this seems pretty compelling. It is his best argument, but I have my doubts that it can work when the alternatives Romney proposes so obviously most directly benefit the most privileged and so closely resemble the policies of George W. Bush. The Governor’s inability to distinguish himself from Bush and his policies, I think, was a notable low point in Romney’s performance

Women played a special role in this debate. There was a stark contrast in the way that Romney spoke about and to woman and the way that the President spoke: women in binders versus “women as heads of households,” as the President answered the question of equal pay for equal work. What was remarkable about the women in binders gaffe, is that it revealed a candidate who seems to be removed from America as it is and as it is becoming: less white, Protestant, Anglo, heterosexual, socially equal and mobile, and educated, than Romney and the Republicans imagine, with more suffering that demands government action. Obama and the Democrats speak to the America that is becoming, while the Republicans are in denial.

I realize this may be the most politically momentous night of my life. The differences between Romney’s and Obama’s approaches to America and its problems are stark and the choice was clearly revealed. Obama won the contest, in my judgment and according to the early polls.  As a partisan, I am very pleased. As a sociologist of political culture, I am intrigued.

In my next post, I will further consider the debate and focus on the positive vision that Obama expressed. I heard many commentators last night declare that the President has still not presented his plans for a second term. I don’t think this is accurate and will explain.

I woke up Saturday morning blown away by Charles Blow. His witty defense of PBS in his column is perfect. PBS as the enactment of the ideal of a democratic culture: refined, enlightening, open, inclusive, transforming. Blow presents not only illuminating personal reflections gleaned from the one gaffe of the Presidential debate on Wednesday, the dissing of Big Bird and PBS, as Aron Hsiao’s post yesterday analyzed, Blow also significantly addresses one of the crucial fields of contestation in American history: the perils to and promise of cultural excellence in a democracy. I have been thinking about this issue for much of my career. It was at the center of my book The Cynical Society: The Culture of Politics and the Politics of Culture in American Life. Blow shows how Big Bird and his Sesame Street friends, along with much else in PBS programing, contribute in a significant way to the health of the republic and its citizens.

Blow celebrates the character of Big Bird as it contributed to his own character. “I’m down with Big Bird.” Being black and poor in rural America, in the absence of good schools, PBS became his top quality primary and secondary schools. His uncle daily cared for him and permitted only one hour of PBS TV each day. (The same regime, I used with my kids. I wonder: how many millions were so raised?)

Blows imagination was sparked. His thirst for knowledge was quenched. He learned about science through nature programs, to his mind his SAT prep. He devoured arts programs, which he believes enabled him, a college English major without formal art training, to work as the design director of The New York Times and the art director of National Geographic magazine.

“I don’t really expect Mitt Romney to understand the value of something like PBS to people, like me, who grew up in poor, rural areas and went to small schools. These are places with no museums or preschools or after-school educational programs. There wasn’t money for travel or to pay tutors.

I honestly don’t know where I would be in the world without PBS.”

In the debate about what is the impact of democracy on cultural excellence, there are essentially two radically opposing positions, each unsatisfying: the elitist and the populist.

Elitists see a danger. Democracy weakens cultural excellence. If the majority rules in cultural affairs, mediocrity results. Distinguishing the good from the bad, the important from the insignificant and the creative from the formulaic involves hierarchical judgment. Elitists, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, want to preserve excellence in the face of the merely popular. The broad public be damned.

Populists have a problem with this. They rebel against elitism, while they defend the popular. Hierarchical judgment is seen as a defense of privilege. The tastes of the folk and the people are celebrated. The folk music coming out of the popular front in the thirties and forties, of the Weavers and Pete Seeger, express this position. It is also embraced by Seeger’s musicologist father, and the distinguished sociologist of the arts, Howard Becker. In the praise of the popular, concern for and support of “high art” is questioned.

Most of course try to square the circle, including the aforementioned, and try to figure out how the pursuit of cultural excellence and the pursuit of democracy involve a creative tension that supports both democracy and excellence. They further recognize that democracy and cultural excellence are mutually supportive, not only in tension.

Cultural work beyond elites is enriched by the insights and creativity of more diverse perspectives and cultivated capacities. In The Cynical Society I highlight the accomplishments of the American literary renaissance of the mid 19^th century, something that Tocqueville did not perceive or anticipate.

On the other hand, the rule of the people cannot be wise unless they are well informed and well educated. Excellence has to reach not only the privileged. Thus, Blow’s demand to not mess with Big Bird.

Romney made a cute comment, highlighting his antipathy towards government, shared with his fellow Republicans, in favor of minimal government. In contrast, in the view of Obama and the Democrats, the government can and should facilitate the development not only of the economy but also the society and American democracy. It is the government of the people, for the people, by the people, Obama emphasizes, not an alien force. It supports public goods, such as Big Bird and his friends. The stakes of the election for Obama are personified by Big Bird.

P.S.

As I was writing this post, I received Aron Hsiao’s “Romney’s Big Bird Moment” and decided to publish it immediately. He first brought to my attention the importance of the Big Bird gaffe in a response to my earlier post on the debate. I was pleased he expanded his at first tentative speculations into illuminating analysis tied to Chinese – U.S. history and the Republican approach to the political economy.

Big Bird went to China as educator and diplomat, showing an alternative to cold war antagonisms then and thoughtless self-destructive anti-China sentiments now. Hsiao concludes that Romney and the Republicans attempted “to liquidate Big Bird for their own gain—a startling parallel to the Bain Capital narrative that has dogged the campaign now for some time.” Hsiao thinks that “The moment may help to solidify the notion that Romney remains (perhaps intentionally) the quintessential private equity CEO, despite his presidential aspirations—a “one percenter” disdainful of publics. One who knows and exploits the prices of things without having any particular interest in their value.”

As a Democrat and strong Obama supporter, I hope he is right about the potential political impact of the Big Bird gaffe, though I am not sure. As a sociologist, on the other hand, I marvel at the power of democratic culture as revealed in a yellow muppet. As individual citizens such as Charles Blow have greatly benefited from the broad array of programing on PBS, American political culture has been enriched by the creativity that PBS has made possible.

Mitt Romney’s “Big Bird moment” in the first presidential debate of the 2012 election season is no small thing. Analysts have not yet, in my judgment, understood its full importance. Governor Romney both disrespected a great American symbol, Big Bird, and attacked a broadly respected and supported public institution, PBS. The China connection was especially provocative. Mitt’s argument against Big Bird and PBS, which leveraged popular anti-China sentiments, came off as elitist, cynical and opportunistic.

In 1983, well in advance of the warming of the Cold War, Sesame Street’s Big Bird introduced a generation of Americans to the culture of a rising China. Big Bird did this in a way that was intellectually generous, humanitarian, and even graceful at the same time. Though there are those that might regard Big Bird in China as simple children’s fare, few in America could have done the job that Big Bird did without having egregiously politicized it, even if unintentionally. In contemporary discussions of U.S. – China foreign policy, it is often forgotten that many in the current generation of American consumers, producers, business leaders, and politicians first encountered the then waking dragon of Chinese society through Sesame Street’s Big Bird.

Big Bird belongs to that rarefied sphere of public figures that are beyond criticism, politics, or reproach, as a normative matter, to be embraced and admired. In Big Bird’s case, this is not only because his cognitive development is that of a young child, and our culture constructs childhood to be a time of innate innocence, but also because he is something of a foundational cultural universal. Since the ’70s, several generations of American children have learned important life lessons from Big Bird—lessons about social norms, tolerance and diversity, culture and difference, everyday pragmatics, life events such as birth and death, and the gestalt core of human experience.

The Governor, elaborating on budget cuts that might be necessary at the federal level under his economic plan, offered Big Bird and PBS as examples of federal allocations that might have to end. “I’m sorry, Jim,” said Romney. “I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to—I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”

Beyond Romney’s unfortunate choice of symbols, his intention was to adopt a negative position with respect to one of American culture’s few deeply democratic institutions and products. As the New York Times’ Charles Blow argued in response to the Big Bird moment, PBS is the rare American social and economic equalizer, effectively offering knowledge to the ignorant and its power to the powerless in the interest of the greater public good. It is an essentially democratizing force with nonpartisan, practical intent. Its ethos is deeply compatible with American ideals and the American narrative, regardless of viewership. Romney’s argument that PBS was costly and superfluous has long been a losing one with the American public. Despite decades of attacks from the American political right, it remains an integral component of the American public life. This alone should have given Romney pause.

That he chose PBS, a comparatively insignificant budgetary item, from all the possible examples of superfluous federal programs thus reinforces a central campaign narrative that Romney has struggled to dispel—that he is an intrinsically socially and economically elite figure with anti-democratic tendencies, not someone deeply familiar with and affected by middle class concerns or in tune with its everyday practices and values. For many in Romney’s 47 percent, or in Occupy Wall Street’s 99 percent, PBS represents public, democratic access to what would otherwise be forms of exclusively elite culture.

But Romney didn’t merely target PBS. In a discussion on budgets, fiscal policy, taxation, and deficits, Romney made the bewildering choice to single out Big Bird by name and to juxtapose Big Bird with China, recalling one of the proud moments in Big Bird—not to mention PBS—history, at the same time drawing his own position and status into contrast with PBS’s approach.

Big Bird in China was in many ways the distinct opposite of Mitt’s statement. Big Bird embodied the best American aspirations for China’s future and narratively symbolized them. Big Bird, a character representing the idealized value core of the American public and the humanitarian unity and egalitarian impulses of a melting pot society, visited China and carried these values into the heart of Chinese territory and culture with him. Example and diplomatic offering were rolled into one. Romney’s parallel-but-opposite formulation elicits significant cognitive dissonance as a result and is on the decidedly unfavorable side of the comparison.

There was no particular reason to use Big Bird over any other examples, and there were very good reasons not to do so, given Big Bird’s stature and meaning for the American public as a whole. And yet Romney chose to politicize this figure, privatizing and attempting to take ownership of him. The Big Bird that had a moment ago belonged to everyday Americans was made suddenly to belong to Mitt Romney and the Republican Party, who expropriated the public and leveraged Big Bird for their own purposes. These purposes happened to be precisely to attempt to liquidate Big Bird for their own gain—a startling parallel to the Bain Capital narrative that has dogged the campaign now for some time.

Romney bit off more than he could chew when he took on Big Bird. The moment may help to solidify the notion that Romney remains (perhaps intentionally) the quintessential private equity CEO, despite his presidential aspirations—a “one percenter” disdainful of publics. One who knows and exploits the prices of things without having any particular interest in their value.

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.

As I anxiously await the debate tonight, I am struck by an Facebook exchange on a friend’s Facebook page, which addressed one of the major issues that lies in the shadows, but is nonetheless very much present: poverty and public policy.

Anna Hsiao read Ayla Ryan’s wrenching autobiographical story, “What Being Poor Really Means,” and remarked:

I guess it’s easy to take money away from starving children when they aren’t yours. Right, Mr. Romney?

Eli Gashi, a mutual friend from Kosovo and a former student at The New School wondered:

How can people vote for Romney – I dont get it

Anna Hsiao responded:

It’s pure ideology… They’re voting for his money, because that’s somehow gonna make them rich, too.

Muma Honeychild, a friend of Anna’s from Poland, whom I don’t know, insisted:

but how, really?

Anna:

Like it requires rational cause-effect thinking! We are masters of voting against our own interest – Bush’s two terms, hello….

While, Aron Hsiao, Anna’s husband and a student of mine, offered a different theory:

People mistake the absence of misfortune and a hindsight of fortuity for moral and ethical superiority. It’s a monotheist and specifically Protestant tendency, to my eye. “You’re suffering? Well, I haven’t suffered. God and the universe have punished you and rewarded me. Clearly, you have done something wrong and I have done something right.” That’s the morality of Mitt, and the morality of half of America. They will only develop “empathy” once they, too, find themselves shocked and crying out about the injustice of what has just happened to them. “Why do you failures not take responsibility for your own suffering!?” will become “Why has God forsaken me?!” and only then will they–at length–understand (and only some of them). It will only take another Great Depression to cause America to once again to loathe the idea of a Great Depression. The consciousness colonized by monotheism in most of its present guises cannot learn from mistakes, because the universe is an ordered space not of causality and physics, but of governance by fiat carried out by a moralistic, judging God. The rocks fall only on the heads of the sinners; those skulls that remain intact are the saved. They do not think to don a helmet or to place a “Beware the falling rocks!” sign; no mere helmet or sign can forestall God’s judgment.

To which I responded:

I find this exchange really interesting. I wonder. Would all of you mind if I reproduced it on Deliberately Considered? The question, repeated. The reference to a materialist and then a cultural explanation. I would add my wonder: the materialist explanation is inadequate because Romney is proposing an irrational response to the economic crisis, or at least is pretending to. On the idea of monotheism being the explanation: I would suggest my specification. Monotheism yields belief in one’s own truth, yes. A certain kind of Protestantism may be related to a lack of empathy for the unfortunate, but there are many other kinds. A good sociologist of religion might help us with this. Where is Weber when you need him?

Anna Hsiao:

Mine was merely a frustrated rant in response to what you call Romney’s inadequate and irrational response. I’d love to see a larger discussion on the subject on DC!

I replied:

“The rant” opened up an interesting discussion. I will try to turn it into something for DC.

So here it is. Thinking about inequality and abject poverty, and the kinds of albeit inadequate assistance we now provide, how could anyone support Romney – Ryan, who propose radical cuts in government support for the poor? Is it possible to think about the poor, including the working poor, and understand their situation and propose an increase in their taxes and cutting food stamps? If you pay close attention, it is clear that they do, after all, have much more “skin in the game” than the super rich, who have no moral qualms about hiding their money in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Can charity do the trick for Ayla Ryan and her family and the millions of others who have suffered disproportionately during the Great Recession, but also the bubbled booms of the preceding years? And I wonder how does all the talk about the middle class relate to this?

I hope Jim Lehrer raises the issue of  poverty and real human suffering in American tonight, but I fear he won’t.