that is made up of people who went to bed early or watched Monday Night Football instead of seeing the debate (I went to bed early btw.) Did anyone see anything that will change anybody’s mind? Did anybody see anything that will get undecided voters to finally make up their minds? Here is what I’m seeing of the post-debate spin.
Team Romney, allies and well wishers are saying that Romney looked presidential and that Obama was condescending. Team Obama and associates are saying that Obama was aggressive, in command, and zinged Romney good a couple of times. The pro-Romney spin makes sense to me. Romney needed to get out of the debate looking like a well informed, even tempered, reasonable guy. That was it. If he got through the debate without damage that was good enough since the conversation would shift back to the higher salience issues related to the economy. The pro-Obama spin seems like a waste of breath. What are they trying to prove by talking about Obama’s zingers? Is anybody on Earth voting for Romney because they think he is witty. Foreign policy is low salience this time around, and the only way the Obama campaign can make it high salience is by convincing swing voters that Romney would engage in wars of choice, extend our commitment in Afghanistan, bomb Iran, whatever. The Obama spin should have been that Romney ran but could not hide from his desire to keep thousands of American troops in Iraq forever, keep American troops in Afghanistan forever, and engage in a war with Iran that would spike oil prices, increases terrorist attacks on Americans, pull tens of thousands more American troops into the Middle East, and spike oil prices. I don’t know what impact the debate will have on the polls, but it sure feels like a nonevent and we’ll be back to talking about domestic policy soon enough. That is about as Team Romney could have reasonable hoped for.
