Dubai: “No, Mr President, No. This is not why I woke up at 5am.” This was my first reaction when I saw President Barack Obama trying desperately to ward off the punches pulled by the Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
This was just not Obama. This was not the person who inspired a nation and many around the world when he said “Yes we can”. This was not the orator who said: “We are the change that we seek”. This was not the president who said “I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.” And press on he must, if he has to give his opponent a run for his money.
There were times during the debate when I wished I could just wave out to him and say: “Look up at the audience. Look at your opponent. Don’t make it seem as if you don’t have the facts and that you are fumbling for words.” Or did he just miss his teleprompter?
Romney on the other hand, did everything that he was not expected to do. He was poised, went for the swing when he could and kept harping on about what he accomplished when he was governor of Massachusetts.
It was only a day ago that one of my colleagues in the newsroom said that the race for the White House this time was no race at all. “This is going to be the smoothest ride for an incumbent president,” he had said. But the first debate in Denver proved that this battle will not be won until the last vote is counted.
Both candidates dived deep into discussions on taxes, healthcare and education. They unleashed a flurry of statistics and complex equations for bringing down debt. And references to policy proposals like “Simpson-Bowles” and laws like “Dodd-Frank” were tossed around.
The pundits are out to check the facts. And they say that both sides spun their own stories, not entirely false, but not the complete truth either.
But to the average voter, it was about whether the debaters connected with them. And in this debate, it was Romney who showed that he was interested in the common man. He had the words, he had the figures and he argued well. Obama, on the other hand, looked weary and sometimes ill-prepared.
Obama can take heart from the fact that other incumbents like George W Bush in 2004, his father, George HW Bush, in 1992 and Ronald Reagan in 1984 all had difficult first debates. He has two weeks till the next debate in New York on October 16 to strike back.
