Within the Margin

If you’re an Obama supporter, or even a fence-sitter who dislikes Romney personally (there are plenty of these people), what frustrates you about tonight’s opening debate is Obama’s disinclination to eviscerate his opponent. Or, put in friendlier terms, to fact-check him until he begged for mercy.

The way I see it, Mitt Romney is running one of the more vapid presidential campaigns in the modern era. His budget numbers don’t add up, and he doesn’t even try to make them do so. He even spent a few minutes tonight singing the praises of vagueness. The same goes for his running mate, a ballyhooed cruncher of numbers who has spent recent days dodging very simple questions from friendly media outlets about the Romney-Ryan tax plan. That’s on the issues side. On the messaging/political combat side, the Romney campaign has spent months harping on an out-of-context Obama quote about how government builds infrastructure like bridges and roads that allow businesses to function. The Republican Convention featured a full day dedicated to the “You didn’t build  that” concept. That’s a full day of campaign messaging dedicated to twisting a statement into something that it patently was not. These things happen in politics, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a presidential campaign that relies so much on verbal misdirection. Or lying, but I strive to be polite. This is the campaign Romney has run, and Obama doesn’t have to stoop to that. But he can use debates to call him out on this lack of substance.

With that in mind, I think a lot of Obama supporters wanted to see the president go to town on Romney for a few things. He hit him on the lack of specificity in taxes and budgeting and health care reform, but didn’t get Romney on the ropes about any of those. I probably wasn’t alone in wanting some lines to the effect of, “How can you stake your claim for the presidency on business sense when you’re telling us numbers don’t matter? You’ve been running for president for the better part of six years. You’re telling us you don’t know which deduction cuts will offset your tax cuts to avoid further ballooning the deficit? You’re telling us you might not end up cutting the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 25%…then why have you campaigned on it all this time? You claim to be a turnaround man. When you turned around companies, did you research them first? Did you have a plan of action when you invested in them?”

And that, of course, would lead into some Bain-based attacks if Obama wanted to go that route. I don’t think he wanted to, obviously. I think he wants to be the nice guy and let the advertising in swing states handle Bain and outsourcing and the 47%. But the price you pay for that is the perception that Romney just stole a march on you. And that you sure as heck don’t care about debating. Because someone who cares about debating would have nailed Romney-Ryan to the wall for the fact that their budget relies on the same $716B “cut” to Medicare that they’re always decrying, and that Romney referenced several times tonight.

Look, I don’t think this was any sort of game-changer. Debates usually are not, despite how hyped they are by media outlets seeking eyeballs. But in the meantime, we’re going to see a good couple of days for Romney in terms of both messaging and the horserace, and that probably didn’t have to be the case.