Kicking. Squealing.
Michael Eric Dyson makes the argument that the Daily Caller video of President Obama’s 2007 address at Hampton University rattled the President in his debate last night. David Frum asks the same question and at The Atlantic Garance Franke-Ruta trots out some sociology jargon, reacquainting us with the term ‘stereotype threat’.
This is a just-so explanation. It could be right and it could be wrong, and it sounds good enough to Obama’s base that it doesn’t really matter. But in reality, lacking proof, we have no reason to believe that Obama was put on tilt by that video. The more plausible explanation is that Romney out-debated him. There was such a huge divide between Obama’s passiveness and the stereotype of an “angry black man” that we’d then have to question Obama’s judgment on other policy matters. If Obama is so easily thrown off track by an overhyped video – one that didn’t really offer any new evidence of Obama’s radicalism – that merely fits the criticism of him that he’s weak when it counts. Mitt Romney has been blasted for being Thurston Howell III – by David Brooks and last night by Van Jones – but did he back down from the debilitating stereotype that he was a blood-sucking millionaire that eats babies like a prole eats Funyons? No. He didn’t.
Megan McArdle laid it out:
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, was in excellent form. He is not, I think, a very good candidate, but he is an excellent debater, in the bland American style. His consulting and private equity experience really showed. He had an answer ready for everything Lehrer and Obama threw at him, and his answers were punchy and memorable. He demonstrated mastery of fairly arcane policy details–when the president threw out his evergreen line about killing “corporate welfare” for oil companies making a killing off of high prices, Romney (correctly) retorted that these expensing rules were changed for the major oil companies years ago; they benefit small independent drillers and operators who account for only a small portion of the oil supply. From the look on Obama’s face, it wasn’t clear to me that the president had understood this.
Through the debate you could see Obama trying hard to recall facts and talking points. He was laboring through his responses and arguments. Romney was just firing them out there. He was confident in his responses.
Besides the exchange on oil company tax loopholes, the part of the debate on health care was telling. Obama cited Cleveland Clinic as an example of how hospitals can innovate and save money on the services they provide patients. He said:
Or, alternatively, we can figure out, how do we make the cost of care more effective? And there are ways of doing it.
So at Cleveland Clinic, one of the best health care systems in the world, they actually provide great care cheaper than average. And the reason they do is because they do some smart things. They — they say, if a patient’s coming in, let’s get all the doctors together at once, do one test instead of having the patient run around with 10 tests. Let’s make sure that we’re providing preventive care so we’re catching the onset of something like diabetes. Let’s — let’s pay providers on the basis of performance as opposed to on the basis of how many procedures they’ve — they’ve engaged in.
This seemed like a prepared shout-out to Cleveland Clinic, as if by mentioning that the clinic was innovating to cut costs that this somehow speaks to the government’s role in health care. It was a citation that Obama had probably placed before frothy-mouthed audiences, but Romney was not just a sparring partner. And what he did here was somewhat impressive. He took Obama’s citation of Cleveland Clinic and then threw some more names out there. People prefer more names versus few names. Name dropping – of individuals or businesses – works for a reason. Directly pointing out that government cannot take credit for private business’ innovation was also powerful:
Your example of the Cleveland Clinic is my case in point, along with several others I could describe.
This is the private market. These are small — these are enterprises competing with each other, learning how to do better and better jobs. I used to consult to businesses — excuse me, to hospitals and to health care providers. I was astonished at the creativity and innovation that exists in the American people.
In order to bring the cost of health care down, we don’t need to have a board of 15 people telling us what kinds of treatments we should have. We instead need to put insurance plans, providers, hospitals, doctors on target such that they have an incentive, as you say, performance pay, for doing an excellent job, for keeping costs down, and that’s happening. Innermountain Healthcare does it superbly well, Mayo Clinic is doing it superbly well, Cleveland Clinic, others.
Also, there was the subtle “I know what I’m talking about, and you don’t” bit. To me, that was a gotcha moment because it showed the biggest difference in the candidates’ style of debate. Obama is OK when he can throw out examples uncontested. But Romney had a much stronger command of facts, figures, and examples. He didn’t have to refer to his mental notes to make his arguments. This builds confidence and debilitates the opponent, and this debilitation was much greater than any debilitation Obama might have suffered from a repetition of what conservatives have been saying about him from day 1.
Even though Romney clobbered Obama in the debate, I don’t think in the end it doesn’t matter much. Romney has to appeal to the Obama-phone crowd or he’s sunk, and they’re probably the least likely to watch the debates and take away anything meaningful from them. There’s very little chance his basic message of “we’ll give you the framework and tools to find your own way in life” can compete with “we’ll give you FreeStuff!”, unless he could somehow up the ante from Obama-phone to Romney-plasma TV.
I spoke to my mom today. She’s a big Obama supporter. Basically because of health care. She doesn’t care much about women’s rights or diversity. Her single issue is nationalized health care and she also likes that Democrats are generally more sensitive and easy-going. But I bounced my ideas of how impactful Romney’s trouncing of Obama will be. As commenter PA pointed out in an early thread, this isn’t so much about switching votes from the Obama camp to the Romney camp. This is about taking the steam out of the Obama base. The more effective the opposition, the more steam taken out of those guys.
So there’s that. But also, I think that there is a very important piece of the electorate that will switch up until the moment that they case their vote. Maybe 3% of the electorate goes to the polls and is voting because they feel they have a duty to vote. And they might think they know who they’re voting for, but they’re likely to change. They’re likely to switch to the candidate that makes them feel safer. In lieu of a candidate that expresses strength and safety (McCain was soft as tits…natural tits), they voted for Obama because the hope and change he offered was so intoxicating. But now that this has passed, they will gravitate towards a strong, confident, competent Mitt Romney. They’re playing with the marginal voters. We’re talking a couple of percentage points at the most. Romney has by no means become the front-runner and I still think he’ll lose. But his performance last night did have an impact. It’s just a matter of how large.
In a way, I have to admire how on message the Left always manages to be, even when that message changes 180 degrees in the blink of an eye.
First, the Obama video was nothing, old news, completely irrelevant. Then right after that, it was a big enough thing to rattle the world’s biggest genius? Incredible. And we aren’t supposed to notice the contradiction.
Obama received a good old fashioned whupping and was utterly out of his depth, because he has no depth. He was nervous going in — because inside the narcissist is the dark kernel of self-awareness that his entire career has been an empty sham. As soon as Romney landed the first blow Obama began to crumble.
Obama was able to match up with the doddering old fool McCain last time around, but he has no stomach for a real fight. He’s a little prince, surrounding himself with flattering courtiers that let him win at golf and hoops. The hyper-competent Romney is his worst nightmare, the guy that calls him out on his shallow pretense, the guy that throws his glib bromides right back at him with a barrage of facts, and does it effortlessly.
Obama has avoided intellectual arguments all his life, surrounding himself with like-minded ideologues. He is a terrible debater because he has zero grasp of the other sides point of view. He just a talking parrot, speaking by rote. That worked against McCain; it’s not going to work against Romney.
I expect the next debate will find Obama in hyper-snark mode. Little shits like him think that acting like a little bitch means you win. Obama is finding out what it means to be an adult male. He isn’t one, and he’s hopelessly outmatched.
“I expect the next debate will find Obama in hyper-snark mode. Little shits like him think that acting like a little bitch means you win. Obama is finding out what it means to be an adult male. He isn’t one, and he’s hopelessly outmatched.”
I think this is pretty much correct. Obama will throw a fit on stage and scoff at Romney throwing out figures, then say, “You’re lying.” This is exactly what the Obama base wants to see. I also suspect the moderator will try much harder to frame the debate in Obama’s favor.
I constantly hear the Cleveland Clinic example as if ‘it’s some big innovation in health care. So they pay their doctor’s a salary. Big Deal. What goes unsaid is that third party insurance, and Medicaid/Medicare still pays the Cleveland Clinic the old fashioned way: Fee for service. Sorry but that’s not the way to control health care costs, but it works as a talking point.
This debate is being analyzed all wrong. As whiskey pointed out, single white females are the crucial vote. And SWFs harbor no illusions about the intellectual superiority of the black man. The SWF loves BO because he is a submissive black male to a dominant liberated black female.
And on the other side, we have the closest thing to a genuine “whIte Supremacist” as we may have ever had. Yet, he’s Mormon and liberal and so NOT A “white Supremacist” AT ALL.
So now the radical liberals in the media are painting this debate as the big, bad, lying “white Supremacist” picking on the intellectual inferior black man. This is where SWFs get to come to the rescue.
SWFs aren’t flocking to Romney after last night. They are flocking to Michelle’s aid.