Reporting last week about preparations for tonight’s first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney (focusing on domestic issues), The New York Times revealed:
Mr. Romney’s team has concluded that debates are about creating moments and has equipped him with a series of zingers that he has memorized and has been practicing on aides since August.
This news has been subject to some ridicule, and so I don’t know if Romney will actually deploy any of his prepackaged zingers. But I think much of the fun in watching the debate will be trying to identify them if he does.
The debate starts at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. You can watch live on C-Span.
Comments during and after the proceedings are welcome. Meanwhile here are some great moments in hype:
Update: A few observations on last night’s debate:
–Romney came across as more energetic, focused and sound-bite ready. He obviously put a lot more time and effort into preparation, and it showed. Obama tended to wonkish meandering, although most of the points he made were valid. He was overly defensive and failed to attack Romney at some of his weakest points– “47 percent,” “Let Detroit go bankrupt,” Bain Capital, etc. I don’t know how many undecided voters Romney won over, but he probably energized a campaign that had become rather demoralized.
–Despite his impressive performance, Romney still won’t provide details of how his “revenue-neutral” tax cuts will be paid for, or how he would repeal Obamacare while maintaining its most popular provisions. That creates an opening for the Obama campaign in the coming days. Obama’s strongest moment in the debate came when he said:
[A]t some point, I think the American people have to ask themselves, is the reason that Governor Romney is keeping all these plans to replace secret because they’re too good? Is — is it because that somehow middle-class families are going to benefit too much from them? No, the — the reason is because when we reform Wall Street, when we tackle the problem of pre-existing conditions, then, you know, these are tough problems, and we’ve got to make choices. And the choices we’ve made have been ones that ultimately are benefiting middle-class families all across the country.
One example of Romney’s potential problem: while he pledged to require health insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions (as Obamacare does), one of his top aides said after the debate that such a requirement was up to the individual states.
Details, details…
–The worst performance of the night by far was that of the debate moderator Jim Lehrer. Awful questions, awful control of the proceedings. Truly awful.
–There are two more Obama-Romney debates to come.