Thoughts on Monday night's debate

    Monday night’s Presidential debate showed one man who can look you in the face and outright lie, and another man, who though he isn’t perfect, seemed much more capable. Unfortunately, the one who can lie with impunity is the President as many factcheckers have discovered. Not that Romney doesn’t stretch the truth a bit at times. But let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about.

Romney stated that the President went on an “apology tour”. The President denied it. However, from my perspective, though the President didn’t and wouldn’t call it that, it amounted to an apology tour. Rush Limbaugh has done the not so hard work of compiling examples of the world wide tour of American “condemnation”. You can find it here: It wasn't just an apology tour, it was a condemnation tour
In fact that also proves many of the fact checkers wrong. Here’s what factcheck.org had to say: “Romney repeated his claim that the president undertook “an apology tour … criticizing America” after Obama became president. Obama called that “probably the biggest whopper that’s been told” during the entire campaign. And in fact, our own analysis, and that of other fact-checkers, found no “apology” in the president’s speeches.”

Obama also accused Romney of wanting the car makers to go out of business, and that Romney did not say he wanted the government to help them through the reorganization process. The full text of the op-ed that Romney wrote can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html?_r=1& . And indeed Obama was wrong.

Thoughout the debate, the President used a death stare on Romney, as one viewer put it, perhaps trying Jedi mind tricks on him. At any rate it looked very odd, especially as the camera pulled back to show Obama leaning foward, glaring at Romney anytime he (Romney) was speaking.

The President was childish and scored points on scathing sarcasm when he chided Romney after Romney had said we have fewer ships than we did in 1917. We don’t by the way, but the President’s response was really unpresidential. “We also have fewer horses and bayonets than we did back then,” the President responded. “We have things called aircraft carriers...and submarines now.”

All in all, I think it did Romney no harm with undecided people, and may have swayed more of them to his side. The President, speaking largely to his base, probably persuaded few of the undecideds that he’s the man to continue the job. We’ll find out soon enough.