Debate #3, 'gangnam style'

OK not really.  There is actually a lot of HIGHpocrisy to be found in Monday night's final debate, starting with the most basic: it was supposed to be about foreign policy.  Romney/Ryan = 0 experience, so of course the R had to keep talking about the economy.  Maybe that might have been OK, too, except that Romney said many of the exact same things he had already said in the prior two debates, literally, and verbatim.  I know how to create jobs, I know how to get the economy going, I know how to lead, blah, blah, blah.  Except, you never say "how" you're going to do any of those things (worse, how you even know you can).  And no one asks him how, either.  More on the failed media narrative in our subsequent entry.

So, the debate should not have been.  On substance, that was not a debate: no Russia (thankfully, no "Russia from my house"); some China; lots of Middle East; too much Israel.  No climate change, no drug war, no Africa as developing continent. No real debate on drones.  No Euro crisis.  In a sane world, in a normal plane of existence, when the President would bring up the 2 wars that the last R started, without paying for them, the other guy would reply with an actual answer.  That would be quite democratic, but we're a laughing stock on public discourse.  How do we know that?  Because there's a ticket with 0 foreign policy experience being taken seriously. 

And yet, almost as many people supposedly watched #3 as #2s and 1 (about 60 million people, about 1/5th of the country's population, almost all of whom had already made up their minds).  So, debates matter, right?  Well, before the 3rd one, Rollah read a brief post on another site (!), that Romney was tied on the topic of FP via some random poll.  That had to be a joke.  Nothing has happened, Romney has said nothing, done nothing, that would trigger a rise in his FP standing.  He's still at 0.  Not Ground Zero, just 0, 00, and lots more 00000000s.  OK, then, so maybe debates don't matter, even if they should?  A la Bill Murray in Meatballs, "all the really good-looking girls are still gonna go out with the guys from Mohawk, because they got all the money."

We also think The Rude Pundit was on the mark, when he wrote yesterday,

"4. On substance, then, it was a fairly useless debate, as have all the debates. On style, though?If Obama had been as clueless, pandering, and flop-sweaty as Romney, pundits around the country would have said that they're getting ready to cover a Mitt administration. However, since it was the Democrat who won, most will say that Romney didn't do too badly. That's bullshit. Romney lost big time. It was embarrassing at times how little a major party candidate seemed to know or care about the rest of the world. Romney acted like Sarah Palin, a talking point machine who couldn't string together a proposition or thought. He looked like Nixon on meth, sputtering, useless, and, goddamn, so sweaty. He tried to shift to moderate mode again, but this time Obama was ready and he repeatedly called Romney out on it, at times eviscerating Romney. He tried to shift to domestic policy, and Obama went right along with him, kicking his ass every step of the way.
And when Romney wasn't trying to say that Obama was wrong, he was positively feckless. He either agreed completely with Obama or he threw out a word or two that made it sound like he had just looked up, say, Mali on his smart phone. As for any alternative to anything Obama was doing, Romney's sole plan seems to be that he'll be there and not Obama, and somehow, through Mormon magic involving the castrated balls of the eunuchs in the Tabernacle Choir, no doubt, America will seem stronger with a man named Willard in charge.

Based solely on our high standards for HIGHpocrisy, the end result of the debates was this: when Romney lied in #1, but Obama didn't push back, Romney was presidential and therefore the winner. When Romney lied in 2 and 3, but Obama called him out, Obama wasn't Presidential. Got that? [We want to keep believing that the media will wake up in time, not to ask any real or tough questions, they won’t, but just to look around and say, OK, we’ve let this go on long enough, it's time to stop messing with people’s lives.] Maybe the best outcome we can hope for would be for the wingnut base to feel as demoralized as Dems did after #1.  If they don't turn out, Obama wins. Then debates matter.