Too Small A Win For Obama !

The second presidential debate, held at my old alma mater, Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York saw a much more aggressive Barack Obama in this brawl of a debate..... un-presidentially so. At times he seemed even to unsettle Romney with it. This will cheer his side, but I doubt it will much impress anyone else. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, once again seemed likable, capable and purposeful. This will confirm the impression he gave in the first debate, where to many voters he would have introduced himself for the first time. This second encounter will cement that good presidential image he naturally has.

In pure debating technique, Obama probably won. But the overall impression will not help him, because Romney was strong in pointing out the President's real weakness - a lack of performance over the past four years. Romney was very strong in his central pitch - ''we don't have to live like this.'' But if Obama won, it was because Romney failed to seize his big chance on the Benghazi scandal. First, he didn't point out Obama's failure to answer a blunt question from the audience; who in the Administration turned down the request from the State officials in Libya for more security before the September 11 attack and why? Even worse, Romney did not pick up on an Obama fudge - a fudge outrageously endorsed by the CNN hostess with a hooker's name; Candy.

When Romney pointed out that it took a least 10 days before for Obama to even call the events in Benghazi an act of terror, Obama responded that he did call it an act of terror in the Rose Garden on 9/12. Candy Crowley jumped in, interrupting Romney to support Obama's statement with, ''Yes, he did.''  Actually he sort-of did, but it was used as a generic ''act of terror'' term at the end of his remarks in which he repeatedly referred to the attack being a response to the Mohammed YouTube video. Specifically, Obama said, ''No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.''

Crowley's intervention to support Obama, in my opinion, was inappropriate, unfair, and lop-sided. She acted like a cheerleader, true to her ass-kissing media company (CNN) and as a result of her unprofessional conduct, she provoked pro-Obama zombies in the audience to clap. But Romney has only himself to blame for not knowing exactly what Obama had said that morning after the Benghazi attack and not for asking Obama: ''well, if you really did say it the morning after the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens that it was an act of terror, why this?'':

          But four days later, Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., went on five networks' Sunday shows and cast the attack as hardly a coordinated strike by terrorists. Saying that the best information the government had was the fact that it was not a preplanned, premeditated attack but a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video.

Why did you later say this, Mr President?:

          Obama taped an interview on ABC's ''The View'' on September 24th, nearly two weeks after the attack, in which he declined to label the attack terrorism when asked. Instead, he would only go as far as to say the attack ''wasn't just a mob action.''  That said, this will keep the debate going and hurt the president.

The Way I See It....I suspect in the end, voters will focus more on the economy, their bills, their jobs and the crumbling of so many of Obama's promises four years ago. And they will vote for hope - which this time isn't Obama. Not the Obama they saw today. To decide who won the debate, it should be critically scored based on which candidate did a better job of actually answering the questions.

To quote an American friend, James R. Tyrer, who agreed with the above comment, saying, ''my first impression is that it was not Obama, since at times he seemed like he had been stuffed with too many of the Democrats National Convention sophistic talking points and so just started spewing them out. Once, I think that early in the debate he strung 3 or 4 of them together with no relevance to the question asked of him.   So, scoring this as a REAL DEBATE, I would say Romney won, but not by a large margin.''   I agree with James and that is why I titled this posting Too Small A Win For Obama.