The first presidential debate was Mitt Romney’s biggest opportunity to open up a door for the American people and introduce them to the candidate that Republicans had been impatiently waiting for over a year, and it was an opportunity he took. In part because of a President Obama who looked more interested in his notes than his opponent, and also because of a set some of facts that have since been picked through by the media, Romney came out like a house on fire, and Obama stood by without a hose.
The second debate erased all of this, replacing it with an image of the President as ready to fight back on the economy and call out Romney on his campaign pledges in a way that approached Clinton-like, an image of him willing to speak more openly and honestly to what he and his base believe in, and – the image of him that truly sealed the debate – one of him as a strong and passionate leader, one willing to speak decisively on foreign policy in a place where Mitt Romney couldn’t. This is not to say that Romney did not give a strong performance, because he performed, for the most part, very well. Romney stuck to what worked the first time around; the difference was that in the second meeting he faced a different opponent.
On Libya and foreign policy is where the President shined the greatest, and alternatively where Romney failed the most. It’s strange to think that an election so focused on the economy could be decided by foreign policy, but Romney has always struggled to speak well on foreign policy, while it has become Obama’s biggest strength. Speaking on being “the one to greet those coffins when they come home,” and responding to Romney’s accusations of playing politics during the Libyan Consulate attack by saying “The suggestion that anybody in my team… would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as president, that’s not what I do as Commander in Chief,” was Obama’s greatest moment and the moment in which he truly won this debate, and made sure that the next debate and the two weeks that follow will be his to lose.
The debate began with jobs and the economy, where points are scored primarily in interaction rather than argument. Romney held his ground, but when it comes down to discussing the tax code, creating jobs, and energy policy, what people really want a feel for is the tone of the rhetoric, and here Obama wins most improved, and in turn most memorable. His punchy responses on Detroit (I must add that Obama has consistently held an 8 to 12 point lead in Michigan), on gas prices, where he linked Romney to Bush by saying “So, it’s conceivable that Governor Romney could bring down gas prices because with his policies, we might be back in that same mess,” and on Romney’s tax plan, where he said “you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal and neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up,” were completely different from those we saw during the first debate, and Obama wins here through tone rather than substance.
Another big moment for Obama was in talking about fair pay for women and women’s reproductive rights. He spoke about his record with the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, spoke about his belief that women should make their own health choices, and was able to bring his daughters into the argument for an effective and relatable argument. Romney instead stumbled through a story from his governorship involving “binders full of women” and struggled to coherently distance himself from his far more conservative party-mates. While this took up a smaller portion of the debate it was one of the most important moments electorally, as women make up the largest portion of the electorate.
