Debate Prep

Tons of ultimately meaningless crud has been said and written about tonight's presidential debate.  Stats and quotes from past debates (tell us nothing.  We're in Twitterverse now.  It's all up for grabs.)  Lots of unsolicited advice about what each candidate must do/should do (the most clueless of which seems to be coming from Romney's advisers, but then they're auditioning for their next job.)

A new NBC poll shows again how damaging the 47% remarks are to Romney, and everything is now being measured against them--his proposals, his taxes, his every word.  But that poll also shows that less than half of registered voters claim that the debates will have much to do with how they vote.

There are three aspects to the debates: the facts and policies the candidates talk about, the moments that get seized upon and go viral, and the overall impression that potential voters come away with.  Only the last factor really matters, and they are dependent at least a bit more on the first than the second (although seasoned pols agree that general demeanor as conveyed by the cameras counts a lot.)  Like Romney's 47% riff, a memorable moment usually feeds and supports an existing narrative or sums up a performance, though in rare cases it's a surprise, one way or another.

But there I go, adding to the noise.  Romney is going to have trouble getting away with his fact-challenged statements--he's got two people on stage that aren't going to let too many of them go by.  And he does have a problem with facts, not only his blatant lies, but his grasp of them.

Take for example his statement on the temporary ban on deporting children of illegal immigrants that President Obama ordered.  His clumsy attempt to say, well, okay, me too, got it basically wrong. Lawrence Downes in the NY Times: "To the things we already knew or suspected about Mitt Romney and his views on immigration – that he is a hard-liner prone to pandering, a bearer of platitudes, seemingly allergic to clarity or specifics – we now must add a disturbing new possibility: that he has no idea what he is talking about."   Romney talked about visas, when visas aren't involved.  At all.

Romney will have to defend numbers which don't add up, especially on his tax cuts.  He will have to defend the GOP death to Medicare and Medicaid budget, as well as his own announced health care plan which--a study revealed Tuesday--increases the number of uninsured Americans to 72 million, which is millions more than now.  Jonathan Chiat says it succinctly, and you can bet President Obama will: "The largest and clearest point of distinction in the presidential race is universal access to health insurance. If President Obama wins reelection, his law to provide access to the uninsured will go forward. If Mitt Romney is elected, it will be gutted, and Medicaid — the bare-bones coverage plan for the most desperately poor and sick — will face enormous additional cuts."

But all that is about mere reality.  Bring on the atmospherics!  Because without them, Romney is doomed.  Said best (as usual) by Andy Borowitz:

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—With the first Presidential debate just two days away, G.O.P. nominee Mitt Romney has been working intensively on two skills that have eluded him throughout the campaign: talking and thinking.