A tale of two ads

It was the RNC perspective, it was the DNC perspective.  Erika Johnsen at Hot Air shows the first two ads to run clips from this week's presidential debate.  The RNC ad splices shots of Romney explaining what he thinks has to change and why, while the President, on split-screen, grimaces.  The DNC ad cuts rapidly among Romney, a pundit, and Jim Lehrer, as Romney tries to keep the floor, Lehrer interjects "Just a moment," and the pundit says, "He just kept going.  He just kept going.  He just kept going."  The President doesn't even appear in this little drama.

Explanations for the President's lackluster performance include altitude sickness, or distraction by his secret national security duties, or spiritual exhaustion from the strain of being forced to conduct wars.  These theories are difficult to take seriously.  A more telling consensus is that the President dislikes personal confrontation, and was at an unfair advantage because Romney lied.  (See herehereherehereherehere, and here for a sampling from the nearly 9 million search engine hits on that theme.  You would be hard-pressed to find a comments thread on the subject that omits this favorite theory.)  What did he lie about?  That's not so clear, but a central argument is that Romney misrepresented his own platform.

The latter two explanations -- a distaste for personal confrontation and an inability to confront "lies" -- are more related than they might seem at first.  Nothing in the President's background or career has equipped him to grapple with his opponents' different worldviews.  He and his set dismiss them without really trying to understand them.  Unlike Reagan, for instance, he did not start out on one end of the political spectrum and change to another over time.  He spent his life and career among like-minded political activists in academia, in community work, and in public office.  It's even possible he gets no more accurate information about Romney's platform than the average voter gets from a hostile media.  He seemed genuinely stunned by Romney's assertion that he did not propose to cut taxes by $5 trillion.  Strange!  Every time I heard Romney on that subject, he stressed that, although he wanted to lower rates, no taxpayer should get excited about the prospect of a lower bill, because the idea was to get rid of a lot of deductions in order to make the changes revenue-neutral.  That is, he proposes a flatter and simpler tax structure rather than lower taxes overall.  But unless the President is a phenomenal actor, he was surprised when Romney corrected him about his platform.  In preparation with his sparring partner, John Kerry, the President may have spent all his time preparing to respond to a caricature.

Is it really possible that the President assumed Romney would get up on the debate stage and advocate the parody of his own platform that is all anyone had been allowed to see on network TV or in the New York Times?  Maybe so.  Maybe the President really is that unused to arguing with anyone outside his bubble.  He doesn't get a charge out of meeting people on their own intellectual ground and trying to bring them around to his point of view; he's more at ease with a captive, silent audience.  As Cassandra so memorably put it, he's like a prize fighter who's used to fixed fights:  shocked and helpless the first time his handlers put him in the ring with someone ready, willing, and able to land a punch.

4 comments:

MikeD said...

The funniest bit about some of these excuses (e.g. that the President dislikes personal confrontation) might hold water... but for the fact that he debated John McCain four years ago and wasn't beaten like a drum. Why? If he's so against confrontation, how could he stand before McCain? Did McCain not "lie" in their eyes? Was McCain not "rude"? What about his own primaries four years earlier as well? Did he not face those same challenges then?

Their excuses only hold water if you have a memory that doesn't go four years back. And sadly, I think that they do. Or at least they willfully memory-hole the inconvenient things.

E Hines said...

Is it really possible that the President assumed Romney would get up on the debate stage and advocate the parody of his own platform that is all anyone had been allowed to see on network TV or in the New York Times?

You bet. As one who went to high school in Kankakee, and was on the high school debate team (fortunately for only one year), that's a standard (Illinois only? I think not) high school debate tactic. The team that goes first (analogously, the Obama campaign ads since last summer) creates a straw man and tries to suck the other team into debating that instead of either the question at hand or their own position.

It's also akin to Alinsky's tactics, which the Community Organizer who occasionally sits in our President's chair has studied.

When you can't make a case, you try to manufacture one and attack that instead.

Eric Hines

bthun said...

"As Cassandra so memorably put it, he's like a prize fighter who's used to fixed fights: shocked and helpless the first time his handlers put him in the ring with someone ready, willing, and able to land a punch. "

Which caused me to think of some lyrics:

I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles, Such are promises
All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest...

bthun said...

Make that recall another's lyrics...