Posted on 10/04/2012 12:11:48 PM PDT by mandaladon
The Barack Obama who stood on the debate stage in Denver Wednesday night was virtually unrecognizable to the person who swept to victory in 2008 or even the man who had built a narrow-but-clear edge in the 2012 race. In the wake of the debate, Democrats conceded that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had dominated the proceedings and quickly moved on to a deeper — and harder to answer — question: What the hell was wrong with the president?
Theories abound — up to an including that Obama, who had done debate prep in Las Vegas, struggled to adjust to Denver’s altitude. (Not kidding. That is a theory espoused by none other than former Vice President Al Gore.)
Below we take on a few of the likeliest reasons for Obama’s out-of-character performance — culled from conversations with Democratic strategists and our own observations. * He’s not used to being challenged: For all of the chatter that President Obama loves to surround himself with people willing to disagree with him, the truth of the matter is that being the leader of the free world means that what you say goes pretty much all the time. And, being challenged by staff — no matter how senior those staff might be — is not the same thing as being directly confronted by someone at your level and who wants your job.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Because he sucks? Just a guess.
He wasn’t so bad...he just met his match. He’s been protected for so long by the media and his teleprompter that we’ve never known the intelligence of the real guy. Now we do. Weak.
Because he is a liar.
I agree with the article: He is not used to being challanged, and he is not that good of a debator.
They’re all piling on the moderator and blaming him, so we can expect to see a more ‘Obama-friendly’ moderator next time. Romney better bring his A+ game
Why should he have to campaign? Why should he have to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty? Isn't his greatness obvious to everyone? This election should be an afterthought.
It’s the Choom man. Smoking dope -especially as an adolescent, makes you stupid.
My daughter noticed he never took notes to organize his thoughts to respond to Romney. He doesn't even know how to debate.
Obama could hold his own against McCain, another bottom of the class man, when McCain was afraid to challenge him on anything for fear of being called a racist. But last night he faced a top of the class man in command of his facts. Barry was exposed for who he is.
obama actually did much better than I expected without his teleprompter.
He was never reduced to the “uh, ah, uh, uh, ah, I-I-I-I-I-I uh, uh” stage!!!!
clinton must have done a good job coaching obama to prevent the massive inarticulateness that we have all seen from time to time. But obama still lost to Romney big-time, as he deserved!!!!
I think there’s a good possibility that he spent weeks planning to take the debate in a certain direction, then had to toss out his playbook in the last day or two after getting his normal early look at the Sept jobs numbers (due out tomorrow morning, so we’ll see )
I think that’s what happened with his Convention speech too. He probably had a speech written based on the general consensus that that August would see 250,000 new jobs. But then had to go to a backup speech when he found out right before the speech that there were only 96,000 new jobs (and over 300,000 people gave up and stopped looking for work).
I do think the video pushed by Carlson/Drudge the night before was released not really to change voters’ minds on anything directly, but to throw Obama off his debate game. They surely coordinated with Romney’s campaign on that, knowing Romney’s plan was to get tougher on Obama in the debate than he’s been on the stump so far. The video was meant to scare Obama into trying to play the role of the “nice guy” so he didn’t confirm the impression of him being angry shown in the video. So the roles got reversed, Romney was tough and Obama was nice, which totally confounded everyone’s expectations.
Exactly - their carefully constructed myth of the “genius of obama” is being shown to be a fraud.
O has never had any of his ideas challenged from the right. In Democratic debates, it’s all about out-Marxing the other candidates.
In 2008, we had a feckless and obsequious McCain whose main concern seemed to be to not appear to be mean to the Negro.
I’m not a huge fan of Romney, but I am thinking he is the first opponent O has ever faced that could articulate traditional American ideas in the face of his Marxism.
And I do think Obama was genuinely rattled by Romney’s command of the facts. It’s clear Obama was not prepared to match Romney on recitation of memorized details.
Because he is! Don't strain the brain, the answer is simple!
Now I have a question - What took the dimwits so long to see the obvious?
/sarc
How about, he’s a product of affirmative action every step of the way and finally found out he’s in over his head? But we at the Washington comPost cannot dare say that!
What you see, what you saw last night, is all there is. He's never been better.
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