◼ And no amount of post-debate fact-checking, spinning or dances of one’s choice (Barack Obama has cited Mitt Romney’s tap-dancing and soft-shoe) is going to alter the impression of Romney’s winning-ness. - Kathleen Parker/Washington Post
It was quite simply a knockout performance by the Republican challenger. Or, as Notre Dame professor and political observer Robert Schmuhl put it, “Romney gets a gold medal, and Obama wasn’t even in the same competition.”
Schmuhl, a professor of American studies and the author of “Statecraft and Stagecraft: American Political Life in the Age of Personality,” told me that, on optics alone, the victor was clear:
“All one had to do on Wednesday night is turn down the volume and study the body language of the two figures. After a short period of time, there was no comparison in terms of performance.”
◼ The Real Debate: The Good Father vs. The Abandoned Son - Roger L Simon/PJM
What we have before us in these debates is an almost archetypal confrontation – between a man who was and is an exceptionally good father and a man who was deserted by his.
Good fathering is the story of Mitt Romney’s life. He has five sons who are, by all accounts, devoted to him and vice-versa. These boys grew up with a father who, although wealthy and successful, worked like a demon, doted on them, and apparently devoted an extraordinary amount of time to charitable work, in which he also involved them. Indeed, I’ve never heard of a politician who did anything quite like it.
Almost the polar opposite, Barack Obama’s father abandoned him twice and then ended up an irresponsible drunken victim of multiple car crashes. This sad behavior precipitated a search by Obama that brought him in contact with several father surrogates, notably Frank Marshall Davis and Jeremiah Wright, that it would be hard to brand as anywhere near satisfactory. (Davis was a pornographer and about Wright the less said the better.) No Mitt Romneys there.
