It Wasn't Even Close

According "the pundits."

Although Romney may have not offered details about his plans that political junkies wanted, “someone tuning in for the first time, would surely have come away feeling that Romney was the candidate with a firm grasp of what he wanted to do and Obama the guy slightly out of his depth,” points out Bloomberg Businessweek’s Joshua Green. Indeed, writes the New York Daily News’ Joshua Greenman, Romney was “more incisive, more fluid and good-natured through it all,” and managed to be tough “without being vicious or disrespectful.”

Part of the problem was that Obama got on the wrong side of what the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza calls the “fine line between sober/serious and grim/uninterested.” He seemed to be taking on the same persona that worked for him in 2008 when he was an untested leader and was eager to prove he was ready for the job. “But now that he has been in the job for four years, Obama’s demeanor came across far less well.” The Chicago Tribune throws Obama what might be the ultimate insult, describing him as “that guy at the meeting who’s surreptitiously checking his email.”

Even Democrats were not too impressed with Obama’s debate performance. “Energy and focus all in Romney’s hands on this,” writes Talking Point Memo’s Josh Marshall, pointing out that even though Romney repeatedly “left himself open to wounding hits from the president,” Obama chose to “not go there.”

John Hinderaker at Power Line, a conservative blog, is veritably giddy: “It wasn’t a TKO, it was a knockout.” Romney “was the alpha male, while Barack Obama was weak, hesitant, stuttering, often apologetic.”

All of them miss the point. Obama's real weakness was that the was trying to defend the indefensible - his record.