US Blogwatch: Professor Obama seemed rusty in jostling environment

Mitt Romney went into the presidential debate in Denver desperate for a win to turn around his faltering campaign. He got it: the clear consensus among US commentators is that he was the victor of the 90-minute duel.

An instant poll by CNN gave Romney a big margin of victory; one by cbsnews.com among uncommitted voters favoured the Republican by two to one. “It’s clear that the President got spanked tonight,” concedes Markos Moulitsas on the liberal dailykos.com site.

Romney came up with no real “zingers” but maintained control. Fred Barnes blogs in the conservative weeklystandard.com that he gave a performance “I suspect even some of his advisers didn’t know he was capable of … This was a different Romney.” Conservative commentator @jimantle of dailycaller.com tweets: “That looked a lot like the Romney I remember from the [Massachusetts] governor’s debates 10 years ago.”

He tried hard to be personable — one of his weaknesses so far. “Romney presented himself as a reasonable man — neither an extremist nor an ideologue,” notes the Brookings Institution’s William Galston on huffingtonpost.com. But Romney was more bullish than that: in a blog for thedailybeast.com, Andrew Sullivan said: “This was Romney the salesman. And my gut tells me he sold a few voters on a change tonight.”

Obama, by contrast, made no gaffes but looked hesitant at times, even passive. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews described his performance as “like, ‘I’ll wait an hour and a half, I think I can get through this thing. I don’t even look at this guy’.”

The President too often returned to the wordy style that seems to be his default. Politico.com’s Roger Simon comments that “for much of the debate, it appeared as if Obama, the former professor, and not Obama, the presidential candidate, was on stage”, judging his performance “mediocre”.

Andrew Sullivan was less generous: “His effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look.”

Why did Obama disappoint? Despite the President’s apparent advantage as a rhetorician, he’s out of practice at this.

Politico.com’s Glen Thrush noted that “Obama, who has spent most of the past four years speaking to hand-picked interviewers or lecturing audiences required to remain mostly mute while he spoke, struggled to shake off the rust in a jostling debate environment.”

Michelle Goldberg on thedailybeast.com laments Obama’s unwillingness to challenge a series of untruths from Romney, notably on tax.