Posted on 10/16/2012 4:00:58 AM PDT by Kaslin
As he prepares for the second debate, Obama faces a major dilemma:
how to be more aggressive without jeopardizing his alleged likability, the main thing he supposedly has going for him with voters.
The Barack Obama the public usually sees is not the real Barack Obama. The former is a carefully manufactured media image designed to appear eminently reasonable, highly engaged, ultra-caring, inordinately intelligent and as one who transcends the pettiness that plagues so many politicians. The real Obama is none of those things.
These things wouldn't matter as much if the liberal media hadn't insulated Obama from scrutiny and covered over his policy failures, his ideological extremism and his corruption. They've allowed the fable of his extraordinary gifts to remain largely unchallenged.
The media haven't even complained on behalf of their own interests
-- about Obama's infrequent news conferences or the tight control he exercises and careful scripting he employs when he does deign to meet with them.
That's one explanation for the pronounced disconnect between Obama's likability and the unpopularity of his policies. If the press weren't always sheltering him and spinning the news in his favor, it would be a wholly different ballgame.
But having hidden behind this shield, Obama exposes himself to severe injury when it is removed, which is precisely what happened in the first debate, as reflected in his sustained drop in the polls after it.
Much of Obama's support was soft because it was based on false images. Stripped of media protection during the debate, his profound weaknesses were exposed for 70 million to see, and there's no going back.
Unhappily for Obama, Americans also saw the real Mitt Romney, who is a far cry from the demon depicted by Team Obama.
If Obama is more aggressive, he runs the risk of appearing obnoxious and shattering the myth of his likability, not to mention that Mitt will be ready for this ploy.
Though it is true that Obama is not Joe Biden, he has shown himself quite capable of being condescending, petulant and downright nasty, as we witnessed in his treatment of John McCain and Paul Ryan.
Granted, moderator Jim Lehrer was mostly passive and Romney was effective at controlling the debate and making sure it was essentially an unfiltered contest between him and Obama -- the way it should have been.
And there's no doubt the atmosphere of the second debate will be much different. Town hall formats usually play to liberals' and demagogues' advantage, with fawning audiences applauding every nod toward socialism. Not only that, but moderator Candy Crowley has indicated that she plans on being proactive, despite an agreement between the two campaigns that she is to have a neutral role.
Though Mitt will have his work cut out for him, too, I view him as the odds-on favorite to prevail again.
As a debate opponent, Obama is made to order for Mitt. Obama is very weak on policy details -- a weakness based on years of promoting the "big ideas" and leaving the unglamorous nuts and bolts to others -- and Romney is especially strong. No matter how much he prepares or strategizes, he can't make up for years of inattention to detail and insulation from reality.
Romney is quicker on his feet than Obama. Obama is long on cliches and short on specifics. Obama is such a dogmatic ideologue he is blind to his policy failures. He's oblivious to the reality that his endless expansions of government have injured, rather than healed, the economy and that his quixotic policies of appeasement are making us weaker, so he misinterprets evidence of his policy failures as proof that he just didn't go far enough or that his policies haven't had enough time to work.
Obama is woefully inexperienced in the private sector -- in the real world, apart from politics -- and Romney has vast business experience.
Having been coddled and humored by his advisers, Obama is not in tune with his strengths and weaknesses or with the quality of his performances, as shown by his delusional belief that he won the first debate and that the transcript reinforces that fantasy. This further demonstrates that he doesn't understand the issues intimately enough to overcome his weaknesses in time for the second debate.
Obama still believes his best weapon is that he cares more than
"47 percent" Mitt -- the rich, greedy capitalist -- about the downtrodden.
But Obama's policies have devastated most of those he professes to care the most about, and Mitt gives 30 percent of his income to charity. If Obama overplays the class warfare card, I think it just might backfire on him as much as his newfound aggressiveness.
In short, Obama's tired tricks don't work well against Romney, and Romney's formidable strengths particularly expose Obama's shortcomings.
Though anything can happen, especially in the town hall format, I think Mitt will win it again going away.
I’m definitely looking forward to the debate tonight.
I hope that’s right.
I’m anxious about the debate tonight.
Pray for Mitt.
Only in his case the trick is to just around and let the MSM tell everyone how wonderful he is and describe all the great things he can do.
And then the empty suit actually believes what they say about him.
Ignorant and brutish people always mistake pushy behavior as a sign of intellect and professionalism. AS IF smart-mouth = smart!!
I work with a person like this who is so forward, unnecessarily assertive and wise-mouth that no one can stand the sight of her.... AND no one thinks she's professional!
Go ahead, “O”, make yourself even MORE ridiculous!
This is a very good article that I would like to have written.
It is what we all envision f tonights debate. Hopefully it will prove to be the case, but Obama is a slimy snake and not to be taken lightly, and the moderator is as slimy as Obama, and will be on his side.
One of Limbaugh's rare errors.
The Won knows exactly what his policies have done; that's why he enacted them.
He was raised from his mother's knee to loathe this country, to loathe Western Civilization, to loathe liberty itself.
He wants to turn this country into a third-world socialist dunghole, with most of us dead and the rest in chains.
And if he's reelected he'll do it.
Obama is out of ideas and out of steam! Praying Romney takes him out!
And no matter how a moderator ATTEMPTS to help Obama and give him clues of what the subject is, he still FAILS.
That is just the way it is with LIARS, a case of CRS.
Imagine having to remember 4 years of your own lies or those concocted for you to read off the teleprompter, there is O's problem.
And in a complete fog without TOTUS by hs side.
Look for Warlord Satellite Dish Ears to over correct. I hope that he ends up a stuttering, stammering fool.
The raging and berserker black man comes tearing out of his corner, shrieking about “the 47%” and “vulture capitalism”, neither issue of which has very much heft, but like a fragmenting slug from a high velocity .223, when propelled with sufficent force, can still do grave damage. Let us hope that Mitt has donned Kevlar personal body armor. And is agile enough to duck.
Presumedly, tonight’s debate will be free-ranging, and with foreign policy on tap, Obama will be floundering into territory in which he shall be far less knowledgeable than Romney, who has taken the initiative to at least acquaint himself with the REAL timeline of events in Benghazi, from the first requests for additional security to the actual assault on the compound, and the aftermath in the flow of the intelligence. Nowhere does this fairy tale of some obscure video that presumedly defamed the crazy old sand hermit from the 7th Century play a part, except in the febrile imagination of certain spokespersons for the Current Regime.
If Obama wants to be a smart-@$$, first he has to be smart. Otherwise, he just comes off as being an @$$.
I have confidence Mitt can handle whatever the idiot, either Zero or Crowley, throws him tonight. I read here yesterday about Romney’s numerous degrees compared to Zero’s hidden transcripts. Romney was able to take it to Newt in FL so I think he is up to the challenge and without a teleprompter, I think Zero will fail again. I’m sure Portman has prepared him will for various possibilities and Mitt knows his stuff, Zero doesn’t.
I agree. He and his campaign are not stupid: they know the format is stacked against him, and he will have prepared and planned to debate Zero, the audience, and the "moderator."
And your error is that you fail to factor in Obama’s Muslim motivations.
Arab Spring: Not about democracy or freedom, it’s about overthrowing governments and handing them to the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Iran.... Obama Osama Hussein is in full support of the destruction that will result.
Hussein is just using his leftist knowledge to position the useful idiots like the Clintons for further destruction of the west.
Pre-debate polls show Obama as the run-away winner </sarc>.
I’ve got to remember to get popcorn on my way home.
1.) Since “O” and the other half-wit on his ticket insist they were not informed that of a request for more security, this allows the American public to assume as well, that neither of these two knew much then (or knows any more NOW) about the situation and therefore... CANNOT claim any foreign policy prowess OR achievement!
2.) The equally amusing high-wire act will be the ‘moderator’ attempting to run the debate WHILE pretending that the Libyan situation was/is an abysmal public FUBAR beyond all US historic record and that “O” actually possess foreign policy capabilities and may claim ANY foreign policy successes!
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