Obama Won The Debate Americans Needed To Hear (Romney: All Show and No Substance)

went to the East Orange City Hall this evening to listen to the Obama-Romney debate. When the debate set was tested, it was discovered that people couldn’t hear well when it was set on CNN, and then it was switched to MSNBC.

When the two candidates appeared, I saw a cool and collected Barack Obama. I saw a President who had his facts; I saw a Romney who was rude, testy, nebulous, and I saw a moderator who allowed Romney to walk all over the place without asking him questions. I saw Obama who provided facts, and spoke about what his administration has accomplished and what it intends to accomplish in the next four years.

Romney was totally incoherent at times, denying every plan he had put forward before. The moderator, Jim Lehrer, did a very poor job of not restraining Romney from interrupting Obama all the time. It was a disgraceful performance on his part. In fact, at times, you saw his eyes were closed, and he should have realized that he was too old to do the job. As far as the crowd at City Hall was concerned, Obama won the debate hands down.

It was a shock when we returned home to hear the pundits on MSNBC shouting about Romney winning the debate. Already, the same punditry class is beginning to question whether by not providing specifics on anything he has promised to do, if Romney really did himself any good. His was a performance without substance. It would appear from the commentatoriat that they prefer an individual who was all show and couldn’t provide any details of what he intends to do for the country.

I believe President Obama will rebound from whatever damage the critics believe he inflicted on his campaign. Many times in 2008, he was counted out, but rebounded. As Republican staunch Romney defender, Ari Fleischer noted, “One big caveat. Romney won, but winning debates doesn’t always mean winning votes. But in a close race, every vote counts.”

The pundits can say whatever they want, but the fact remains it is the voters who will decide. Already, according to Susan Saulny’s article in The New York Times, “At Debate-Watching Party in Suburban Ohio, Voters Are Less Than Thrilled,” and she went on to recount how those people were not swayed by Romney’s performance especially for not providing specifics. Read it below:

Jeremy Gardner, 32, a software developer and independent voter, hosted a small viewing party in a cozy living room where his two Chihuahuas were jumping around, looking truly excited.

Before the debate, the tensions were building. (There were partisans in the room.)

“I’m getting an eye twitch!” said Heather Jernigan, Mr. Gardner’s sister-in-law. An Obama supporter, she worried that even if he did well, his opponents would give his performance a negative review. “Rainbows could shoot out of his ears and it wouldn’t matter,” said Ms. Jernigan, who works for an insurer.

Brent Jernigan, 48, a business consultant who is married to Ms. Jernigan and likes Mr. Obama, is the ultimate solo fact checker. It was his fact-checking on Facebook that cost him his aunt’s friendship. What did those gathered here want out of the candidates’ performance?

“I want to see an actual plan from Romney,” Mr. Jernigan said. “I’d like to see Obama be very forceful in defending his own actions as president. And I wouldn’t be opposed to a highly entertaining moment from Romney, something like, ‘I can see Russia from my house!’ ”

After the debate, the group did not shift their views. “I don’t know the specifics of these things, so some of it didn’t mean a lot to me,” said Mr. Gardner, the host. “Like I said before we started, I hate the ‘I’m going to repeal what you did and do something that’s better!’ Who doesn’t want to hear that? Basically nothing changed for me.”

American press as of late reminds me of one of my favorite passages from 1984...

Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready made as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances. There were occasions when Big Brother devoted his Order for the Day to commemorating some humble, rank-and-file Party member whose life and death he held up as an example worthy to be followed. To-day he should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.

Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the speakwrite towards him and began dictating in Big Brother’s familiar style: a style at once military and pedantic, and, because of a trick of asking questions and then promptly answering them (’What lessons do we learn from this fact, comrades? The lesson — which is also one of the fundamental principles of Ingsoc — that,’ etc., etc.), easy to imitate.

At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum, a sub-machine gun, and a model helicopter. At six — a year early, by a special relaxation of the rules — he had joined the Spies, at nine he had been a troop leader. At eleven he had denounced his uncle to the Thought Police after overhearing a conversation which appeared to him to have criminal tendencies. At seventeen he had been a district organizer of the Junior Anti-Sex League. At nineteen he had designed a hand-grenade which had been adopted by the Ministry of Peace and which, at its first trial, had killed thirty-one Eurasian prisoners in one burst. At twenty-three he had perished in action. Pursued by enemy jet planes while flying over the Indian Ocean with important despatches, he had weighted his body with his machine gun and leapt out of the helicopter into deep water, despatches and all — an end, said Big Brother, which it was impossible to contemplate without feelings of envy. Big Brother added a few remarks on the purity and single-mindedness of Comrade Ogilvy’s life. He was a total abstainer and a non-smoker, had no recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium, and had taken a vow of celibacy, believing marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible with a twenty-four-hour-a-day devotion to duty. He had no subjects of conversation except the principles of Ingsoc, and no aim in life except the defeat of the Eurasian enemy and the hunting-down of spies, saboteurs, thought-criminals, and traitors generally.

Winston debated with himself whether to award Comrade Ogilvy the Order of Conspicuous Merit: in the end he decided against it because of the unnecessary cross-referencing that it would entail.

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