A More Aggressive Obama Still Won't Make the Grade

how to be more aggressive without jeopardizing his alleged likability, the main thing he supposedly has going for him with voters.

The Barack Obama the public usually sees is not the real Barack Obama. The former is a carefully manufactured media image designed to appear eminently reasonable, highly engaged, ultra-caring, inordinately intelligent and as one who transcends the pettiness that plagues so many politicians. The real Obama is none of those things.

These things wouldn't matter as much if the liberal media hadn't insulated Obama from scrutiny and covered over his policy failures, his ideological extremism and his corruption. They've allowed the fable of his extraordinary gifts to remain largely unchallenged.

-- about Obama's infrequent news conferences or the tight control he exercises and careful scripting he employs when he does deign to meet with them.

That's one explanation for the pronounced disconnect between Obama's likability and the unpopularity of his policies. If the press weren't always sheltering him and spinning the news in his favor, it would be a wholly different ballgame.

But having hidden behind this shield, Obama exposes himself to severe injury when it is removed, which is precisely what happened in the first debate, as reflected in his sustained drop in the polls after it.

Much of Obama's support was soft because it was based on false images. Stripped of media protection during the debate, his profound weaknesses were exposed for 70 million to see, and there's no going back.

Unhappily for Obama, Americans also saw the real Mitt Romney, who is a far cry from the demon depicted by Team Obama.

If Obama is more aggressive, he runs the risk of appearing obnoxious and shattering the myth of his likability, not to mention that Mitt will be ready for this ploy.

Though it is true that Obama is not Joe Biden, he has shown himself quite capable of being condescending, petulant and downright nasty, as we witnessed in his treatment of John McCain and Paul Ryan.

Granted, moderator Jim Lehrer was mostly passive and Romney was effective at controlling the debate and making sure it was essentially an unfiltered contest between him and Obama -- the way it should have been.

And there's no doubt the atmosphere of the second debate will be much different. Town hall formats usually play to liberals' and demagogues' advantage, with fawning audiences applauding every nod toward socialism. Not only that, but moderator Candy Crowley has indicated that she plans on being proactive, despite an agreement between the two campaigns that she is to have a neutral role.

Though Mitt will have his work cut out for him, too, I view him as the odds-on favorite to prevail again.

As a debate opponent, Obama is made to order for Mitt. Obama is very weak on policy details -- a weakness based on years of promoting the "big ideas" and leaving the unglamorous nuts and bolts to others -- and Romney is especially strong. No matter how much he prepares or strategizes, he can't make up for years of inattention to detail and insulation from reality.

Romney is quicker on his feet than Obama. Obama is long on cliches and short on specifics. Obama is such a dogmatic ideologue he is blind to his policy failures. He's oblivious to the reality that his endless expansions of government have injured, rather than healed, the economy and that his quixotic policies of appeasement are making us weaker, so he misinterprets evidence of his policy failures as proof that he just didn't go far enough or that his policies haven't had enough time to work.

Obama is woefully inexperienced in the private sector -- in the real world, apart from politics -- and Romney has vast business experience.

Having been coddled and humored by his advisers, Obama is not in tune with his strengths and weaknesses or with the quality of his performances, as shown by his delusional belief that he won the first debate and that the transcript reinforces that fantasy. This further demonstrates that he doesn't understand the issues intimately enough to overcome his weaknesses in time for the second debate.

But Obama's policies have devastated most of those he professes to care the most about, and Mitt gives 30 percent of his income to charity. If Obama overplays the class warfare card, I think it just might backfire on him as much as his newfound aggressiveness.

In short, Obama's tired tricks don't work well against Romney, and Romney's formidable strengths particularly expose Obama's shortcomings.

Though anything can happen, especially in the town hall format, I think Mitt will win it again going away.

I posted this last week but pardon me if I believe it bears repeating:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2941609/posts#42

I remember posting something like this during 2008. I don’t know how to search back that far otherwise I’d link to it.

Obama is not an alpha male. He’s not a leader. He’s not being courteous. In terms of fight or flight, he’s flight. No matter what happens, his reaction to confrontation during a debate is a lose-lose proposition. He’s not a natural fighter and like most people who aren’t natural fighters, fighting back will not go well for him initially.

When Romney goes on the attack, Obama will respond in one of two ways:

1 - Obama’s natural reaction to in-your-face aggression is to shrink. To be defensive. You can see it in his body language, his face, his tone...everything. He’s in a defensive posture.
He’s afraid. The deep instinct in him is to flee but he can’t flee. So he does the next best thing - he covers up. He looks away. Folds his arms. These are positions people get into when they are hiding weakness.
For those of you who are not comfortable standing up and presenting to groups, think about what you’d do with your hands. You’d stuff them in your pockets or fold them across your chest. That’s the body doing what instinct tells it to - cover up so as to minimize exposure to danger.
That’s basically what happened last week.

2 - If Obama forces himself past his instinctual reaction and fights back, I think he’s in even more trouble. How can he expect to fight against Mitt Romney’s debate points when he’s fighting against how own self?
If he does decide to fight back it will come off as childish with a dash of sarcastic When it comes to fighting back against someone who’s being aggressive to him, he’s not used to it. He doesn’t know how. Fighting back may be an instinct but doing it well is a learned skill. Plenty of guys have the fight instinct but have no idea how to actually fight. They learn it over time.

Time, Obama does not have. This is not a 5 minute Rocky montage.

Since he’ll be in an unnatural state (fighting back), his instincts will be at war with his reasoning. This, plus his inexperience with doing it, are a bad mix for him. It’ll change his voice, his inflection, cadence. It’ll mess with his ability to draw on facts quickly, forget about coming up with something new.

For debaters, a debate is a left brain activity. The left brain is used for things like logic and reasoning. As Obama be fighting this war with his own instinct, he’ll be completely in his right brain - emotion, feelings etc..I’d say it’s very unlikely that something good can come of this approach for Obama

Lastly, Obama has another enemy on the stage: Adrenaline.

He’s been on stage a thousand times so he’s used to that. He’s done his fair share (pun intended) of debating so he’s used to that too. What he hasn’t done is stand up to an aggressive enemy that’s right in his face.

The first few times he tries this against Romney, he’ll get an adrenaline rush. When that happens, he’ll have all sorts of extra physical energy and no way to release it. It’s not the kind of energy that can be channeled into mental acuity. He’ll be fidgety, shifting his weight, and unable to really focus the way he wants to.

Now all of this will happen very quickly - but it’ll happen. He’ll lose his “soaring rhetorical” voice, the deep sonorous tone we all hate. He’ll “ummm” and “uhhh” even more than usual. He’ll fidget around with a pen or piece of paper. His tone will be wrong.

He’ll try to look Mitt in the eye and may even succeed for a few seconds but he’ll look away before Mitt does.

My summation and prediction is that Romney has figured out how to get to Obama. Obama has about a week and a half left to come up with some kind of response which doesn’t make him look weak and/or childish.

I don’t think he’s going to get there. I think Obama’s in a lot of trouble these next few debates. Presidential-bid-ending kinds of trouble.

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