When the President Comes to Town

President Barack Obama reacts as Mitt Romney answers a question at a town hall style presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, October 16, 2012. (Photo: Richard Perry / The New York Times)

When the President Comes to Town
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Wednesday 17 October 2012

If you're dealing with a guy who says government doesn't create jobs right after he claims he will personally create 12 million jobs if given the top gig in government, it shouldn't be all that surprising when that guy becomes subsumed by his own demonstrable contradictions.

Such was the story of Mitt Romney on Tuesday night at Hofstra: President Obama did very well, while Mr. Romney appeared astonished at having to avoid a counterpunch for most of the event, and spent virtually the entire evening falling over every lie he has told since 1994.

The first presidential debate of 2012 was a hot mess, a collision between the GOP's hyperactive congenital-liar candidate and a president who had clearly failed to properly plug himself in to the contest. On that Wednesday night, the liar pushed the president all over the stage, the president - for reasons still passing understanding - let him do it, and the "news" media chose -for reasons of rank, abject laziness - to call the performance a win for the liar.

The error was not repeated this second time around.

I'm not sure who Mitt Romney expected to meet on Tuesday night, but he brought to the debate the same aggressive-liar/fact-avoider game plan he deployed the first time around, and it did not work out well. Ten minutes into the contest, Barack Obama punched back hard enough to scramble Romney's eggs permanently, and spent the remainder of the evening batting the former Massachusetts governor around the room like a cat in possession of a mouse and a head full of bad intentions.

(big snip)

The political "news" media needs a simple, direct story line to survive, so here it is: the bully got punched in the mouth on Tuesday night, and did not like the taste of his own blood. Mr. Romney's advisors clearly told him to double-down on the blustery, brazen tactics of the first debate, but that advice withered within the first ten minutes before a presidential adversary who was too smart, too tough, and too good to let stupidity win the day a second time.

Mitt Romney found himself in a room with the Commander in Chief, and came off by comparison looking like a guy who had lost a contact lens while trying to navigate an alligator pit in the midst of a negotiation over the exact value of his own testicles.

The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12149-when-the-president-comes-to-town