Feet of Hollow Clay

I don't agree with everything in this piece at Ace of Spades HQ. (It is too kind to Obama for one thing.) Nevertheless, I think its basic point holds for some leftists, and explains their post-debate hysteria.

That's the problem.

Not Obama. I repeat: This is who Obama is. He has never been this brilliant intellect and keen policy analyst liberals have, in their BubbleWorld, dreamed him as.

For most leftists, however, I think whatever electoral panic has ensued is more related to the fact that they know that Obama's now-exposed deficiencies might affect how anyone who is in any way on the fence or persuadable will vote.

More relevant to the eventual outcome will be, not whether or how the magical thinkers of the left are brought down to earth, but how normal voters might react. Economist Richard Salsman offers a far better analysis on that count, that of his wife:

My wife isn't unaware of the substantive differences between these candidates, but she's astute also about some of the other key aspects of presidential debating - and I think she has a unique take on what went down between Romney and Obama last week - one that escaped me. In effect, she said this: Mr. Obama has emotional, left-leaning convictions, and for most of his upbringing he was steeped in leftism, but mostly he's hollow at his core; he relies on others to craft his speeches and remarks, which he can deliver only by teleprompter. In public he tends to address only adoring, supportive crowds (or reporters), and then counts on whipping them up with populist, rich-bashing rhetoric and hate speech; whenever his more incendiary and offensive material surfaces before a broader audience, he is bailed out, papered over, or excused by media sympathizers. The key to his debate loss, she concluded, is that he suddenly had none of the things which he had come to rely on so heavily - no remarks written out for him by others in advance, no teleprompter, no boisterous and adoring crowd, no biased moderator or media contingent on stage, willing and able to bail him out or prop him up. Had he deployed his usual repertoire of race-baiting, envy, class warfare, or rich-bashing he would have looked simply crazy. He had to stand there fully exposed and completely himself - a cypher, facing a superior man and candidate.

If this analysis is right, Obama will badly lose all three debates unless the media find a way to save him from himself.

-- CAV