Karen Tumulty, Thursday, October 4, 12:56 AM, Washington Post
After many months of awkward moments and shifting campaign messages, Mitt Romney forcefully and confidently stood alongside President Obama and offered an alternative economic vision to what he called Obama’s “trickle-down government approach.”
The two contenders seemed to swap roles Wednesday. Obama was the one who struggled for his footing, scowling on the split screens of millions of television viewers across the nation and often looking like a man who wished he were elsewhere.
Romney came to the debate at the University of Denver with a heavy set of goals, chief of which was to regain ground on the economy. That issue is uppermost among voter concerns and the one that Romney believes provides his greatest advantage.
Romney pressed his case against Obama’s stewardship of a disappointingly weak recovery. He sought to sharpen his own proposals and to soften the perception among voters that he favors the interests of the wealthy over those who are struggling.
“The people who are having the hard time right now are middle-income Americans. Under the president’s policies, middle-income Americans have been buried,” Romney said, echoing a damaging phrase that Vice President Biden used the day before to describe the status of average Americans over the past four years.
Obama, meanwhile, did not make many of the arguments that he and his campaign have used most effectively against Romney. He did not recount the former governor’s career in private equity, during which Romney laid off workers, or the secretly taped video in which the Republican nominee told wealthy donors that the 47 percent of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes are dependent on government and see themselves as victims.
The president also left many of Romney’s claims unchallenged. Romney asserted eight times that Obama plans to cut $716 billion from Medicare without noting that the Republican vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), shepherded a budget through the House that would do the same thing.
The central premise of the Republican nominee’s campaign has been that voters, disillusioned with Obama’s performance in reviving economic growth, would turn to Romney, who promotes the expertise and experience he gained in the corporate world.
But with less than five weeks to go before Election Day, Romney has been struggling to make a convincing case for himself on that score — and is running about even with Obama on who would better handle the economy.
Where Romney held a seven-point edge over the president on that question among registered voters in an August Washington Post-ABC News poll, the latest survey shows them tied, with 47 percent saying Romney would do a better job and the same proportion opting for Obama.
Meanwhile, the president continues to hold a double-digit advantage when voters are asked which of the two candidates better understands the economic problems people in this country are having. In the most recent poll, 52 percent said it was Obama, while only 39 percent named Romney.
The first debate, which history suggests will draw the biggest audience, amounted to Romney’s best opportunity to change a political dynamic that has been moving against him.
In this deeply polarized country, the number of people who are truly wavering in their choice is relatively small. And those who are probably were not among the tens of millions who tuned into the debate, said AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer.
By and large, “they are undecided because those people are not checked into the election,” Podhorzer said. “They’re paying attention to the coverage of the debate and they’re paying attention to what their friends are saying.”
And in an era when so much of the national dialogue takes place on social media, “inevitably some moments will live on in YouTube,” he added.