newjerseynewsroom.com

BY MICHAEL HAYNE

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

Last night, America was treated to the first debate of the presidential election, only it looked like President Obama didn’t get the memo/tweet that it was in fact a debate. President Bush may have blithely ignored the Intelligence memo that stated “Bin Laden Determined to Attack,” but President Obama seemed to ignore the memo “Romney Determined to Attack.”

Okay, so maybe the bar was set extremely low for Romney since all he had to do was not make a total ass of himself, which means Obama might have underprepared. Sure, Romney’s overly caffeinated, business meeting, rushed speaking and incessant blinking made it look as though he had one massive magic wedgie in his magic underwear; sure Romney’s obstreperous interruptions and perpetually undermining of the Moderator made him look like a Mormon version of the spoiled,bratty rich girl from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"; and sure Romney maintained that same creepy, unsettling, smarmy smirk throughout the entire debate that makes him look like Eddie Haskel.

But let’s face it: Mitt Romney completely commanded the entire discussion and got every single one of his points across while President Obama just stood there like a diffident professor on his first day teaching Political Science to an obnoxious and overly enthusiastic freshman, allowing Romney to essentially spout anything he wanted without ever really retorting or even questioning the veracity of the great many questionable statements made by Romney.

During the portion on taxes and social security, you could see a visibly frustrated Obama and one that would have loved to have gone all Samuel L. Jackson visa-a-vis "Pulp Fiction" on Romney, but instead we just saw an overly careful and almost “too cool for school” Obama. Now, Obama is famously implacable and completely level-headed during trying circumstances and that’s a quality in which he’s lauded for, but there’s no reason why he couldn’t have put Romney’s full-throated aggression in check by calmly and collectively calling into question some of Romney’s mendacious points. Moreover, on the question of the companies shipping jobs overseas we did not once hear Obama mention Romney’s duration at Bain Capital. And when it came to improving the economy for the middle class and many people struggling, we did not once hear Obama use Romney’s “47 percent” remarks against him.

The remarkable thing about President Obama is he almost always seems to know something that we don’t know, and just when you’re questioning his tactics he does a 360 kickflip right before your eyes. There are two more debates to be had so Obama certainly has plenty of time to do some Monday morning quarterbacking a la Mark Sanchez, but there’s no question that Romney--despite looking and acting like Gordon Geiko on a cocaine binge--got the best of President Obama last night. In short, you can probably expect the polls and the race to tighten up even if the president holds on to his lead in the swing states.

Michael Hayne is a comedian/VO artist/Columnist extraordinaire. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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