Hopefully the President will be ready for ANYTHING next time - and being polite isn't necessary.

They expected a debate in which the moderator would have each respond to the questions with statements of policy. Instead, Rmoney disingenuously moved to the center. That gave Pres. Obama two options: 1) he could say "me too" after each Rmoney statement, or 2) he could give Rmoney's specific history of flip-flopping, followed by asking if Rmoney's staff will walk back his statement after the debate. Pres. Obama was not prepared to delivery the histories of Rmoney's flip-flops.

Why not?

is that his team expected a traditional approach by Romney. So, they did not prepare and practice the responses to his flip-flops. Romney flipped to the center and Pres. Obama was prepared to only give his own policy statements and defend them. He had no plans to attack Romney directly.

I posted on this and I have seen other posters allude to this. Posts like "The Three Faces of Mitt" and Etch a Sketch Mitt. Mitt the flip flopper. One post I asked Which Mitt will Obama have to debate. So, none of us could be in complete shock when Mitt did a 190 and became moderate Mitt. The one thing that did shock me was a couple of times Mitt attacked Obama from the left, those were truly WTF moments.

That being said, having encountered people like this in real life I know how tricky it is to deal with them. My attitude when that happens is F it, I go all out and fail to be polite, very loudly.