BY WILLIAM I. GREENER III
The first presidential debate Wednesday, Oct. 3 confounded the narrative of the mainstream media that Mitt Romney was a dead man walking and that President Obama was on his way to a significant victory. It rendered that view obsolete, at best.
Never mind that the most recent surveys already had indicated the race had tightened back to something pretty close to a dead heat. In the world where the media and the liberal chattering class reside, only a nitwit could pretend that Mitt Romney stood a chance to prevail.
What happened on October 3? Mitt Romney outperformed Barack Obama by any definition of the term. On a personal level, Romney was confident, clear, and convincing. Obama? He appeared distracted, irritable, and unhappy to be forced to do something other than talk to his supporters or field questions from a sympathetic and supportive media.
The real problem, and Obama, as well as the mainstream media know, is that President Obama is being required to actually defend his own four years in the White House. At a certain point, what counts is not style but the actual record of performance. How would you like to defend this level of unemployment, massive debt, and a foreign policy that has friends and foes bewildered?
So, what is the response to this situation? All I can say is that if Republicans tried to explain what happened the same way as the liberals are doing, it would be put on Saturday Night Live as a skit.
Long time Washington pundit and author, Bob Woodward, thought he knew the secret behind the curtain. What is it? According to Woodward, it probably has something to do with a distraction in his presidential or personal life. Maybe something is happening abroad that is so top secret, it meant President Obama just could not concentrate on the debate. Maybe something in his family was to blame the insider intimated.
Not to be outdone, the favorite movie maker of the liberal ranks, Michael Moore, blamed John Kerry. Why? Well, clearly John Kerry did not do a good job of pretending to be Mitt Romney in the debate prep for President Obama. Wonder if the Redskins give up 45 points on Sunday, if we can blame that on the quarterback who was imitating the quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons during practice?
And the trophy for incredible explanations has to go to Al Gore. He is pretty sure he knows what happened. Our resident expert in inconvenient truths believes President Obama was put off his game by the high altitude in Denver. He did not arrive in sufficient time to acclimate his body to being a mile high. Given President Obama’s record as a youth when it comes to being high, I would not have thought that to be a problem, but what do I know.
When all else fails, the media turns on itself. Previously, Jim Lehrer was held to be the gold standard for journalists. However, if Mitt Romney did not suffer a crushing defeat, and Barack Obama did not have his candidacy enhanced, the only answer has to be the person doing the moderating allowed Mitt Romney to scam the American public. Jim Lehrer being accused of being inept and/or not an impartial professional? What’s next?
Simply put, according to liberals, there is never any possible chance for a Republican (or any other conservative) to prevail in a fair and honest discussion of what is best for our country. So, any time that actually happens, there has to be a reason, or more accurately, and excuse.
When conservatives imply—with actual data to back up their assertions—that some surveys produce findings predicated on samples that overstate Democrats and understate Republicans, we are accused of “living in an alternative universe.”
You cannot make this stuff up.
If Republicans tried it, we would become the joke of the day. The same should be the case for the Democrats. Fortunately, David Letterman agrees. He found the excuses worth a Top Ten list.