How and Why Mitt Romney Became Winner in First Presidential Debates 2012

On Wednesday, on the first contest of the 2012 Presidential Election, Romney won, Obama lost.

After the debate, 67% were with Romney, 25% with Obama. How and why the winner won the debate? There may be plentiful reasons, not only one. Let's seek some of vital reasons:

1. He handled the format: For better or worse, moderator Jim Lehrer mostly let the applicants sort out the controversy themselves, basically broaching wide subjects and enabling the applicants fight it out on their own conditions - with almost-endless rebuttals. This structure privileged Mitt Romney. His strategy went into the controversy with an attack attitude (as most applicants who are behind do), and by enabling all those rebuttals, Lehrer provided Mitt a chance to perform. He did. Obama was not as focused on fighting, which works less well when there is so much back-and-forth.

2. Obama appeared frazzled: He did not have an Al-Gore-sighs time, but Obama was clearly not having local plumber on stage. His head was down when Romney was discussing, his reactions were stopping at times, he often nodded her head (as if displaying approval) or smirked when Mitt Romney was discussing, and he even admitted some factors to Mitt Romney on issues like lack reduction and not being a "perfect" president. None of these were by themselves huge minutes (as Gore's sigh was), but the totality recommended an applicant who was not really comfortable. And he was not.

3. The state policies of preemption: Mitt realized going into the controversy that he was going to be assaulted for increasing taxation on the middle-class (according to an oft-cited study) and favoring the rich, so what he did was preemptively guarantee that he would not increase taxation on the middle-class, duplicating that over and over and indicating that it's Obama who would increase taxation on the middle-class. He also made a point to highlight the poor (think: "I'm not worried about the very poor"). By setting the conditions of the tax cut controversy, Mitt Romney balanced out the profits that Obama might have been able to make on a class issue that forms suggest Obama is successful.

4. Obama did not get his big discussion factors in: If you would have informed us before the controversy that Obama would discuss the auto bailout and Osama bin Packed only once and would not discuss Bain Capital or Romney's "47 percent" feedback at all, we would have informed you were insane. Yet that is exactly what occurred. Obama seemed susceptible with not interesting too much with his rival, but the controversy was all about interesting with one another, and Obama did not even sign-up the biggest strikes on Mitt Romney.

5. The Hopes were low: There happens to be reason the strategies spend so a while decreasing aims for the debate; objectives matter. And forms revealed that, going into the controversy, the American public, by a large edge, expected Obama to win. With the bar relatively low for Romney, it was that much easier to clear. It is not to say Romney did not have a excellent controversy. He did. But applicants will always be evaluated on a bend, and Romney defeats the bend.

6. Mitt Romney prevented a stumble: Romney's strategy has been colored by the periodic gaffe which shows the applicant to be out of touch or simply uncomfortable. There were a couple questionable minutes on that depend (Big Fowl, anyone?), but the GOP nominee's performance was mostly gaffe-free. Without a "47 percent" or "I'm not worried about the very poor" time, Mitt allowed for the post-debate research to focus on other things, which is what he needs.

Romney's growing Latino problem: Two new forms launched Wed revealed Obama taking at least 70 % of the Latino elect - strengthening an unpleasant pattern line for Conservatives.

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Two-Minute Answers In Presidential Debates Are Without Substance - Trite and Canned

It was mid-October in 2012 and the third presidential election debate had taken place, it was the second one amongst those running for president, and following the first and only debate between the vice presidential candidates. One thing I noted was the rules for these debates were very stringent, only 2 minute answers would be allotted to each question. Although on almost all occasions the candidates were plus or minus a few seconds either way, and usually a little bit over, I still felt as if very little real intellectual information was being exchanged. This is a problem, and I'd like to speak to it if I might.

You see, we already have a real challenge with attention spans here the US, and our evening news has been reduced to nothing more than debatable nonsense. The reality is that many of the issues that face us on the political scene, or those challenges we face as a nation moving forward cannot even be summarized in 2 minutes, nor can they be adequately discussed in order to pick a president in this way. These answers because of their brevity are without substance, and they are often trite, canned, and nothing more than the political rhetoric we get in the 30 second ads we see on TV where one candidate is condemned for some ambiguous thing and then the other has the balls to approve this message.

Those aren't messages, and in fact they insult the intelligence of the American people. I would submit to you that these presidential debates are insulting the intelligence of the combined and collective wisdom of Americans. That's not good enough, and we need a national discussion, a serious dialogue and debate on these issues. If all we get are tit-for-tat political rhetoric attacks on personal character, or innuendos many of which have no merit at all, we will never get to the bottom of what our nation needs to. And if we don't people are placing their bets and their votes on hyperbole, hypocrisy, and one line gotcha comments.

If this is the way we choose a president, we do not deserve a great leader, and perhaps that's why we haven't been getting them lately. These debates remind me more of a reality TV series where there are two people left on the island, and one of them has to go, which one will it be, click, ask them another question, see what they say, tell them they are a rotten scoundrel, and see who gets in the last word. That's nothing more than a Jerry Springer Show - it's not even fit for my television, why are they wasting my time. As a swing voter having my intelligence insulted in this way is unacceptable.

We live in the greatest nation ever created in the history of mankind, and we deserve more. This isn't good enough, this is not the America I was promised or brought into. If the American people are so naïve to think that these are realistic debates on important topics, or that this is all there is to running the executive branch of the federal government which is spending $1 trillion per year, then no one should vote. How can someone placed their bet, or believe they are getting the facts, or that these candidates are debating the reality? Based on what I've seen I'm disgusted.

The human species has a lot going for it, and the United States is the only superpower. If we are to lead the world into prosperity, liberty, and freedom around the globe we need to walk the talk, and we need to do better than this, and we need to show the world that we can't lead, that we know what we're doing. This has been nothing short of a disgrace, it is unacceptable. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it. I can be reached by e-mail.

Lance Winslow is the Founder of the Online Think Tank, a diverse group of achievers, experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, academics, dreamers, leaders, and general all around brilliant minds. Lance Winslow hopes you've enjoyed today's discussion and topic. http://www.worldthinktank.net/ - Have an important subject to discuss, contact Lance Winslow.

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How Important Are Presidential Debates?

Almost immediately after he claimed the Republican Party's presidential nomination, Mitt Romney retreated to a Vermont hideaway to begin preparing for the three debates in the race ahead of him.

I suspect that when the histories of this year's campaign are written, much will be made of that fact.

If Romney wins, and particularly if the debates are seen as a turning point in the campaign, his approach will be vindicated. He will be seen as the methodical, data-driven businessman who translated his success from commerce to politics.

But if Romney loses, his focus on debate preparation will be viewed as a strategic miscalculation, akin to a football coach who keeps his best players off the field for three quarters to avoid injury and fatigue, planning to win the game with a late rally. It's a strategy that could work, but that probably won't.

Romney was focused on, or possibly obsessed with, these debates for a long time - even before the GOP convention in August. He was reported to have begun his training back in early summer.

Clearly, Romney believes these debates can help put him in the White House. Let's ask ourselves the question Romney has probably asked: How much did past presidential debates matter? Let's also ask the question Romney should have asked, but probably didn't: how much past presidential debates have mattered to candidates like Romney.

On at least three occasions, televised debates have been seen, in hindsight, as crucial to a challenger's successful campaign. The first and most famous was in 1960, when John F. Kennedy - young, inexperienced and, significant at the time, Catholic - went up against Richard Nixon, the two-term vice president and presumed political heir to war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Pollsters tell us that many Americans who heard the debate via radio thought Nixon performed better. But those who watched on television saw a haggard, perspiring vice president next to a handsome, confident young senator who seemed at least equally at home on the debate stage, and presumably on the world stage, as his competitor. After months of the Obama campaign trying to portray Romney as unqualified for the position he seeks, Romney probably longs for some of that Kennedy magic.

But Romney is not Kennedy, and more significantly, Obama is not Nixon. Obama will look and sound as good as Romney, at least if you disregard the content of his words. Moreover, his attacks on Romney have only partly been about Romney's experience; Obama has generally focused on Romney's successful background and privileged upbringing. I doubt it ever occurred to Nixon, a man of humble origins, to attack Kennedy's family wealth and his father's stewardship of his political career. Such attacks would not have gone over especially well in Republican circles anyway.

Kennedy was a charming man and a skilled communicator. The camera played to his strengths and revealed Nixon's relative weakness. Romney cannot expect to replicate that advantage.

In 1976, Gerald Ford committed one of the most famous gaffes in debate history by asserting that the Soviet Union did not dominate its fellow Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe. He made this point about Yugoslavia, which was not a Warsaw Pact country; about Romania, which was a member, but had a mercurial leader who often went his own way within the maneuvering room Moscow allowed; and also about Poland, a country that was directly under the Soviet thumb - and which was well-known to a large Polish-American community.

Ford's brain freeze came just eight years after the Soviets and their reluctant allies had marched into a liberalizing Czechoslovakia, and just 20 years after Soviet tanks rolled through the streets of Budapest. The haunting broadcast of the Hungarian rebels' fruitless pleas for Western help was still practically ringing in our ears. ("This is Hungary calling. This is Hungary calling. The last remaining station. We are requesting you to send us immediate aid, in the form of parachute troops over the trans-Danubian promises. For the sake of God, let freedom help Hungary!")(1)

Without uttering a word, Jimmy Carter was able to present himself as the man better prepared to confront the Soviets at the height of the Cold War, and he went on to win the election.

But was the debate responsible for Carter's win? Illinois is home, then and now, to America's largest Polish population, and Chicago had a powerful Democratic machine - but Ford won Illinois anyway. He also won his native Michigan, along with Connecticut, New Jersey, the three northern New England states, and - except for Texas and Hawaii - every state from the Great Plains westward, including California. Carter defeated Ford by taking key industrial states, including New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and by winning the entire South except for Virginia. Mississippi put Carter over the top in the Electoral College. It's not likely that Southern voters were voting against Ford because of their deep concern for Poland; it's much more likely that Carter won the South because he was a peanut farmer, and former governor, from Georgia.

Ford's gaffe, as it turned out, mattered much more to pundits than to actual voters.

Ronald Reagan is probably the role model Romney is looking toward most directly. His closing speech in the final 1980 debate was also seen as a major turning point in the campaign.

But, like Kennedy, Reagan was a skilled communicator, a man of casual warmth and charm that came across naturally on camera. Romney, data-driven and detail-oriented, is more like Carter than Reagan in temperament, though not in approach. Romney may suffer the fate Nixon suffered: His words may have more substance, but the words will matter less than the image.

Finally, there is one debate Romney may not have considered but should have. In 1988, an intellectual former Massachusetts governor by the name of Michael Dukakis was asked whether he would want the death penalty for someone who had hypothetically raped and murdered Dukakis' wife, Kitty.

Dukakis, a Democrat who opposed the death penalty, said he would not. It was a coherent and correct answer to an unfair question, but it may have convinced voters that Dukakis was a man whose mind was a stranger to his heart. A better response would have been for Dukakis to tell his questioner, CNN's Bernard Shaw, that of course he would want the death penalty in that situation, which is why a civilized legal system should not allow capital punishment, which is more about vengeance than justice.

Vice President George H.W. Bush, the pseudo-incumbent with a long resume, who favored the death penalty, went on to defeat Dukakis that year.

The Obama campaign has labored for months to define Romney as a self-interested plutocrat, unaware of, or unconcerned by, the conditions in which ordinary Americans live. The antidote for that is for Romney himself to tell Americans how his policies would make their lives better than Obama's have; to explain that his wealth gives him the freedom to run for office and give to charity in order to enrich the lives of others; and to admit that he just cannot get enthused by junk-food slogans such as "hope" and "change" and "forward." That makes him a boring guy, for which he can apologize, but he can and should ask voters to consider whether it also makes him the guy they want to put in charge.

Romney is asking a lot if he expects voters to derive all this from his performance in three televised debates, in lieu of weeks on the campaign trail. History suggests that the strategy might work, but the odds are that it won't.

Source:

1) BBC, "Remembering the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 (audio)"

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