HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Barack Obama did well enough in the second debate that he can rest assured about one thing: If he loses his bid for a second term it won’t be because he is bad at debates.
If Mitt Romney wins the presidency, likewise, it won’t be because in the final weeks of the campaign he revealed exciting new dimensions of his personality and record that were somehow obscured during the previous two years.
That choice is now inescapably focused—in a way it was not at the Denver debate and the flood of commentary afterward on Obama’s listless first outing —on fundamental questions.
Is Obama’s record, especially on the economy, defensible? The president defended it as effectively as he is ever going to in the face of some skeptical questions from voters assembled for the debate’s town-hall format. Romney’s hope is that no rhetorical argument from the incumbent is sufficient to mask the weak facts behind it. In a nod to that assumption, Obama showed again Tuesday that he’s far more voluble about Romney’s vulnerabilities than he is making the case for his own record.
Is the Republican nominee an acceptable alternative? If the candidate in Denver seemed to show a whole new side of himself, the one who showed up in Hempstead was entirely familiar to anyone who watched any of the 20 Republican primary debates: crisp, well-prepared, sometimes a little peevish, sometimes a little awkward. It was a stark if redundant reminder: At age 65, Romney is who he is as a politician, and his performances typically fall within a narrow range. Romney advisers feel that their candidate must do no more than clear a basic plausibility standard to exploit Obama’s weaknesses.
Along the way to his party’s nomination, however, Romney embraced a lot of orthodox Republican positions—most notably on immigration and women’s issues—and Obama was relentless in highlighting the most unpopular pieces of Romney’s primary baggage. Both men seemed as if they had been steeped for days on end in their campaign’s opposition research files.
“Clearly his advisers told him, drink your Red Bull, get ready to attack, don’t do what you did last time,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Romney surrogate, said of Obama.
The intense natural competitiveness of both men was on display. Obama was clearly helped by this, snapping-to after a first debate that must have embarrassed him. Romney was probably hurt at least a little by his competitive instincts. He jostled with moderator Candy Crowley to ensure he got the last word on several exchanges, and at several junctures seemed to act as if the evening would be scored like a real debate—with the prize going to whoever recites the most complete set of arguments—rather than as a stage to highlight which person comes off as more credible as a leader and appealing as a person.
Because of this, Obama seemed to come out ahead in the second debate, though not by the emphatic margin that Romney did in the first.
Going forward, this outcome probably helps reset the race and steer the national conversation away from theater criticism and toward more substantive closing arguments. That itself is a considerable relief for Obama, since another weak show would have turned growing unease among Democrats about a tightening race into genuine panic.
After Hofstra, it seems clear the election will not be turn on minutia, such as whether it was cockiness or the thin Rocky Mountain air that made Obama groggy in Denver, or whether Vice President Biden was appealingly forceful or unappealingly annoying with his interruptions of Paul Ryan at the debate in Kentucky.
With both nominees having turned in one strong performance, the temptation is to look to next Monday’s debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., as the tie-breaker. Historically, however, later debates matter less than the early ones. The question is whether the first two debates have altered the basic trajectory of the race.
