Posted on 10/04/2012 6:00:25 PM PDT by Hotlanta Mike
The man who went to school with both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and predicted the president would "smoke" the Republican nominee says he is dumbfounded by Obama's poor showing in the first debate.
"I'm surprised. I was shocked, actually," Sidney Barthwell, a district court magistrate in Michigan who attended Cranbrook with Romney and Harvard Law School with Obama, told The Daily. "That was not the Barack Obama I’ve seen through the years. I’m thinking the man might have had the flu or something."
Barthwell, who has remained friendly with both candidates over the years and is staying neutral in the presidential race, said earlier this year that he expected Obama to dominate in the face-offs.
“When they debate, Barack will smoke Romney,” Barthwell, 64, told The Daily in May. “Mitt Romney is smart,” he said at the time. “Having said all that, I still think he’s going to get smoked. The best he can do is hopefully come out not looking like a fool. Mitt will find out the hard way as soon as they have their first debate: You don’t debate Obama.”
Barthwell, the only black graduate of Mitt Romney's 1965 class at Cranbrook Schools, the prestigious boarding school in suburban Detroit, said Romney's former classmates have been pulling for the president.
"There’s been a lot of emails going back and forth between people in my class. The vast majority of them are very supportive of Barack and not Mitt Romney," he said. "It’s surprising to me because Cranbrook was a very conservative type of place."
Thursday, Barthwell said he barely recognized the president who appeared on stage at the first presidential debate this week in Denver. The Michigan man said his former law school classmate seemed out of it. "You never see Barack looking down all the time," he said of the president's performance Wednesday night, widely panned as lackluster, at best. "He was actually stumbling over his words. That was not the real Barack Obama in my opinion."
Barthwell also said the president was unusually reserved, even in the face of full-on attacks from Romney - a possible sign, he suggested, of Obama's acute awareness of the politics of race. "It’s possible he doesn't want to appear to be the angry-black man type," Barthwell said.
And the magistrate said it's likely that Romney -- who he described back in May as "not an athlete," "not a student leader" and "not a scholar" -- was simply better prepared for the debate. "Mitt Romney is a smart guy," he said. "He must have prepared for this debate and it was obvious."
mara.gay@thedaily.com
Romney would just debate an empty chair instead. Come to think if it, that might actually be better for Obama.
I noticed it. I thought as soon as I saw his face when he got to the podium that he looked angry. Something about his eyes looked odd. I have seen a similar look in the eyes of a drug addict.
It'll have to do because he can't blame Bush for this one!
Sidney Barthwell,...who attended ... Harvard Law School with Obama
Holy smokes, after 5 years we finally found a guy that remembers him from college....
LOL!!! Maybe all of Obama’s college friends were on the “Down Low” as well and choose to remain anonymous.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.