Dear President Obama,
I guess you’ve noticed, as I and some of my colleagues here on Daily Kos and elsewhere in the liberal punditocracy face the final weeks of the 2012 presidential race, that many supporters who were celebrating your lead in the polls merely eight days ago now are acting all jittery and agitated after you and Mitt Romney faced off last week for the debate in Denver. With all due respect, Mr. President, please allow me to explain our concern.
Mitt Romney clearly hosed you. Romney’s romp seems, overnight, to have moved the meter back toward the 48 Red-48 Blue division in America. That is a political precondition Mr. Romney and his minions wanted and needed again this election year, because it threatens to put the race for the White House, as in 2000, back into the Supreme Court, where Republicans know you will lose, 5 to 4. Even more incredulous for those of us who are counting on you, a 48-48 split in any swing state could put your fate into the hands of the many Republican voter-registration apparatchiks who are greasing the wheels of their political lives on the false accusations of voter fraud.
Mr. President, already, the resulting post-debate blowback provides a fairly obvious shift in the Right’s narrative. Your debate performance is fueling public vindication for the far-right-wing’s reality shape shifters, who are spending billions to restore the Reagan-Bush-Bush II reign of the 1%, by the 1% and for the 1%.
Your ardent supporters are mad because that unexpected debate debacle, Mr. Obama, was a stomach-wrenching turn in our political fortunes, not only yours. It was our worst nightmares realized. I can understand how this happened. You, Mr. President -- unlike the $220-Million-Dollar-Man and congenital liar that Mr. Romney surely is -- prior to the debate hadn’t arrived at the point of Electoral College Map desperation as the Romney-Ryan ticket had, and your campaign pushed you into following a run-out-the-clock game plan on debate night. Sorry to say, it was a disastrous decision.
Your supporters also are feeling knots in their stomachs today, knowing that something went terribly wrong on that stage one week ago, but not understanding exactly what was happening. The political uncertainty clouding your campaign, which has not been tamped down despite your new verbal thrusts on the campaign stump this week, may prove to be a new and corrosive element in the weeks ahead. Far from having “a bad night” as you admitted this week, the debate was an utter disaster. As Mr. Romney, Mr. Ryan and their surrogates themselves might gleely point out in the coming weeks, you built that.
Mr. President, we are angry that you apparently were prepared to debate an admitted “severe conservative,” and you appeared shell-shocked by the Moderate Mitt who showed up loaded for bear and cleaned your clock in almost every debate segment, His false attacks and reality-busting distractions (I’m talking Big Bird here) were designed to blur and lure -- blur the serious cuts to non-defense spending certain to come under a Romney-Ryan administration and lure your campaign’s brain trust into producing a “Romney Blames Big Bird” online video. We cringed today seeing that your campaign took the bait. Pathetic.
The Romney campaign took ownership of that stage appearance merely by being allowed to stand next to a great American president, before a TV audience of more than 60 million viewers. You perfunctory performance let them turn what should have been a stout defense of your policies of economic fairness into a classically misleading Republican political pitch full of false equivalency and prevarication. We feel sickened because the Republicans were, once again, proven to be the media savants who effortlessly spin fantasy and myth into focus-grouped middle-of-the-road pablum worthy of both George Orwell and Ayn Rand novels.
While you looked down, looked away, and looked disengaged, Mitt Romney attacked your policies, your promises, and your personality with almost no rebuttals. You know, rebuttals... arguments in response to debate attacks? This isn’t a “salesmanship” demonstration, as you tried to spin it yesterday. This was a heavyweight boxing match in which you, Mr. President, appeared unable to recover your footing for the entire night once Mr. Romney knocked you senseless before the first round was over.
This first debate was more than a “bad night” for the majority of Americans who are counting on you, in your second term, to keep this country of ours heading in a reasonable, forward-looking, pragmatic middle-class-jobs-building direction. We are sick to death seeing Romney’s snarky scion’s entitled smirk carry over into his numerous appearance in Ohio this week. Mr. President, we retch seeing actual voter sentiment for your campaign slipping away simply due to Mr. Romney’s demonstration of superior debating prowess.
Fact-checkers to the rescue? Hardly. Mr. Romney’s Etch-a-Sketch reversals, despite their factually specious nature, eviscerated your aimless talking points and other assorted ramblings. Like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, to name two prominent examples, Mr. Romney pretended to be the more reasonable man in the room. And while we know better, Romney’s dominance allowed uncommitted voters to take an imaginative leap to envision the upside of a Romney-Ryan administration projecting this brand of feigned forceful, confident bravado around the world.
So now we must acknowledge: Savvy political tactics, not policy wonkiness, wins the day. Fixing the strategy for your next debate starts with understanding what went wrong. I will begin the conversation here, and I invite my friends who care about your re-election to add their suggestions to this diary. Here’s some of what I think needs to be addressed:
• What to avoid: Too polite. Too cerebral. Too cool. Too disconnected. Too arrogant. Too above-the-fray.
• What one tactic to definitely nail: Going for the jugular.
• For everyone in the top tier of your campaign team, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and jettison this administration’s tendency to worship at the alter of cautious consensus. Say exactly what you feel. With passion. Sell yourself. Identify the majority voters’ attitudes where your policies coincide with public opinion.
• Don’t be shy or hang back because of any misplaced tendency to avoid confrontation. Your political strategists (should) know full well that any post-debate questions should be treated as incidental flare-ups easily mopped up in the weeks ahead, as Romney spokespeople and their paid shills at Fox demonstrate daily.
• Do your own 180-degree pivot on any and all political talking points in order to sound like the more reasonable man running for the presidency.
• Press issues and economic results during your first term that resonate with businesses, banks, and investment professionals. Don’t let Republicans define you as anti-business.
• Attend to your advantages as president. I expect Mr. Romney to keep bullying and disparaging you. Return the favor by touting your impressive results and comparing them to his spurious contributions as an entitled corporate raider and ineffectual and often absent Massachusetts governor.
• Attend to stage optics. Look directly into the camera, not at the moderator, and lean into the podium like you want to break out like a caged animal on attack.
• As I last wrote recently, I’d like to see you, Mr. President, turn in more scenes like the ones Jimmy Stewart had in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Passionate. Directly attacking the discredited myths baked into the many years of Republican mendacity. Physically, act confident, even a bit dismissive toward Mr. Romney. Tell him to wipe that disgusting smirk off his face, to his face. Don’t call him “governor.”
• Keep this one thought in mind: that this time around, truth and good intentions must win out over lies and evil.
A week after the first 2012 Presidential Debate, one truth is clear: Being assertive and aggressive isn’t being unpresidential. For someone as resilient as you, President Obama, this should be a chance you appear hungry for. As you prepare for the rest of your campaign, look in the mirror every so often and admire the man who has courageously taken on al Qaida, taken out Osama and throttled the greedy excesses of the 1%. You have given this country a health-care plan that shows, for the first time in a generation, that government truly can do the right thing for all of us. Even the glib President Bill Clinton can't crow about that.
Sure, you’ll never be able to win the support of the Right-wing nut jobs who have taken over the Republican Party. In the coming debates, let the G.O.P. extremists seethe with hatred as you force them to confront each one of your past successes and your positive plans for future progress. Remind our citizens of the values you champion, such as compassion, justice, equal opportunity, and cautious, responsible vigilance.
One more thing. As long as I have your attention, Mr. President, I would like to thank you for all you’ve done and all you will accomplish in the coming years as president of all Americans.
Sincerely yours,
Fred Abel, blogger
P.S. My campaign contribution is on its way.
cc: Vice President Joe Biden, Michelle Obama, Jim Messina, David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, Robert Gibbs, Dan Pfeiffer
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