Presidential debate review: Obama v. Romney at Denver

Thursday morning (Australian Eastern Standard Time), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) went mano a mano in the first of three presidential debates, held at the University of Denver’s Magness Arena. My thoughts:

1) Obama sometimes stumbled with his words and looked ordinary, but he did much better in split-screen mode than Romney. When Romney is speaking, Obama looks down respectfully, whereas when Obama speaks, Romney gives him a slightly contemptuous look. But I agree with most commentators, who say that Romney was the winner on the basis that he exceeded expectations.

2) The gender gap was very noticeable on CNN’s ‘worm’ graphic; I don’t think I saw Romney leading among women or Obama leading among men for the entire (one-and-a-half-hour) debate. This fits into the whole ‘Republican War on Women’ narrative that the Democrats have been using this year.

3) What a pair of un-ideological technocrats the candidates are! ‘An independent study says my economic policies will reduce the budget deficit’. ‘I’ve got another independent study that says your independent study is wrong’. Whatever happened to this ideological rancour that the Very Serious People say is paralysing Washington?

4) The debate won’t be any sort of ‘game changer’ that wins the election for one of the candidates – it probably won’t shift the polls more than one percentage point either way. Romney’s slipperiness regarding which tax loopholes he plans to abolish to help balance the budget, however, is something which could spiral out of control for him. Without providing something resembling a detailed answer, the Obama campaign could keep hitting him and make him look evasive.