Game, Set, Obama-He used Romney against Romney
Game, Set, Obama
Robert Kuttner
October 17, 2012
The president did exactly what he needed to in tonight's debate: He used Romney against Romney.
President Barack Obama laughs as he talks with audience members after the second presidential debate at Hofstra University.
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Obama needed to remind voters that Romney is a very rich man out of touch with regular people, and he did that well. He got in Romney’s face and he got under his skin, but stopped just short of being overly aggressive.
You could tell right from the beginning that this was a very different Obama. When Romney touted his five-point plan to fix the economy, Obama responded scornfully, “Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan, he has a one-point plan” and that plan is more tax breaks for the very rich who are allowed to play by different rules.
Obama was particularly effective at using Romney against Romney. He demolished the former Massachusetts governor's bogus arithmetic on the tax cuts, as Obama failed to do in the first debate and even a more aggressive Joe Biden did not quite do. And he used Romney’s support for more tax cuts for the very rich to remind the audience that with $20 million dollars of annual income, Romney pays a lower rate of taxes than they do.
Obama also got the tone just right—something midway between bemusement and indignation. There was not a shred of the less-attractive disdain and detachment that marked his first debate.
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But Obama had few other missed opportunities, and he was at his best when ad-libbing. Another entirely unexpected question from the audience was directed at Romney, demanding what the differences were between him and former president George W. Bush. Romney did a halfway decent job at improvising answers. But then Obama deliciously pointed out that even George W. Bush did not try to turn Medicare into a voucher program, or to deal with immigrants by making their lives so miserable that they would "self-deport," or to defund Planned Parenthood.
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http://prospect.org/article/game-set-obama
