Second 2012 Presidential Debate Impressions

On October 16, the second Presidential Debate would pit President Obama and former Governor Romney in a rematch. This time, the format was a town hall meeting with all issues open to discussion. I sat down with a larger crowd to watch the debate projected onto a large screen. I also had my laptop on hand, so I was posting to Twitter and an IRC room about the debates. It was the most fun I had since the debates started, probably because Barack Obama was not allowing Romney to attack without a fight.

The questions from undecided voters put the debate to a bunch of issues, and there were some strange tangents. For example, the first question was about a college student trying to find work. Somehow this translated into creating more manufacturing jobs. Later the president suggested that the student might want a job in the energy policy field. Romney answered a question about gender-based pay discrimination by talking about the binders of women he found to hire qualified candidates to positions in his state while he was governor.

More importantly, though, President Obama, like Biden the week before, did not let Romney talk all he wanted about what the government was doing wrong. Obama forced Romney to let him explain why the government was not issuing more permits for energy exploration (because existing leases were not being utilized). At multiple points Obama accused his opponent of misrepresenting the issues for the purpose of talking points. The audience got a laugh when the moderator stepped in to correct Romney. Romney accused Obama of not calling the Libya attack terrorism, but apparently Obama referred to an act of terror when he spoke shortly after we found out about the tragedy. Even when Romney was trying to correct the record about his investments in Chinese companies, Romney didn’t gain traction. The audience laughed when Obama pointed out that his pension is probably much smaller than Romney’s. The best part was when Obama listed a few reasons why the last Republican president had more moderate positions than what Romney is advocating now.

The town hall style debate showed that President Obama could be a dynamic and charismatic speaker when dueling with his political opponent. While the issues discussed were somewhat predictable, the reactions of the candidates surprised me and made me laugh at some absurdities of American politics. One debate remained, and I was sure that Obama would repeat his strong performance in arguing for another term. I guess Romney was pretty strong too, but it would be pretty hard to make Obama look bad on foreign policy when the United States government is moving its foreign policy in the direction its people seem to want.