Seven rounds Obama, one round Romney, two rounds even

Where the hell was this Obama two weeks ago?

It was a very different debate.

For one thing, in my opinion, Obama won. Decisively. It's not that Romney did anything all that wrong; in fact, he did pretty much the same things that worked so well for him in the first debate. The difference was Obama...he came to play this time. He wasn't afraid to call Romney on his false statements and exaggerations, not to mention his outright fabrications. When Romney's numbers didn't compute, Obama was not afraid to say so, and back it up.

And, to be honest, Romney let verbosity get in his way, much like Obama did the first time. Obama kept his answers/responses to the point and filled with as much specific information as you ever get in these things. Romney's answers tended to be short on specifics; big on big plans, but short on specific information about said plans.

It's worth mentioning that the moderator did her job well, that she wasn't willing to let either Obama or Romney get the better of her, and that neither her nor Obama were willing to let Romney get away with the same kind of bullying tactics that worked so well for Mitt in the previous debate. Romney's verbal strong-arm tactics, the same tactics that had served him so well the last time, failed him because neither Obama nor CNN's Candy Crowley (tonight's moderator) would stand for it.

Obama was good at working in his record where it favored him, while Romney was unable to score when and where Obama may have come up short; I put this down to Obama being better prepared. The advantage here was Obama's. Romney was unable to effectively use his experience as a governor, and whenever he tried to, Obama was able to counter with Mitt's record on multiple flip-flops on numerous issues.

One potential vulnerability for Obama should have been Benghazi, but Mitt made a serious error. I think he's been listening to too many right-wing bloggers, who have been going on and on about how Obama didn't say anything about Benghazi being a terrorist attack for all of two weeks after the attack. Unfortunately for Romney, while this may be "conventional wisdom" in the biased world of right-wing bloggers and pundits, it doesn't have much of a resemblance to reality; the fact is, Obama called it a terrorist attack, publicly, in short order. (This just goes to show you, you can't trust bloggers to get their facts straight.) Obama called him out on this; so did Ms. Crowley (correctly so, as it happens).

Just the same, I felt that Obama never did properly answer the Benghazi question; I scored that round even, despite Romney getting staggered early in the round. (So it's going to be boxing metaphors again, is it?)

If I were to score this like a boxing match...well, look at the title of this article. The whole debate looked to me like two kids in a schoolyard, where one is a bully and the other the smart kid in glasses, when the teacher puts them into boxing gloves and headgear and plops them in a ring with a timer and a referee, and the nerdy kid cleans the bully's clock. That's how I saw it, anyway...I imagine that Republican observers saw a different fight. But that's how these things go.

Now everyone gets their say, from the person-on-the-street to the self-styled "experts" and the obviously biased pundits (and I'll admit that I may fall into that category, however small-time I may be),  but none of it means much. We'll have to wait and see how the debate goes down in history to see how the debate goes down in history. Me, I think Obama won, and I feel good about that.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.