The Presidential Debate: Myth versus Myth

I wrote this after the debate:

The myth of democracy did put in a brief appearance tonight. Each candidate gave us a whole series of little logical arguments, compressed into soundbites. But the part of the myth that requires thoughtful debate, with every point subjected to sustained, careful logical exploration, was predictably missing in action.

What we got instead, again predictably, was a fine display of the “theater state” in action. The familiar ritual did come off “without a hitch” -- so much so that many observers found it a rather dull affair.

So who “won”?  

Full disclosure: I am an occasional local volunteer for the Obama campaign, so my personal preference is obvious. But I agree with many of the pundits that Romney came off better than expected. He certainly showed more energy than the president, and he got the benefit of appearing to stand up to the “leader of the free world” as an equal.

Of course no one doubts that the president can show as much energy as Romney, and probably more, if and when he wants to. But tonight he never went on the attack. Nor did he play defense. In almost every case, when his opponent hurled potentially damaging charges at him, he simply ignored them.

Perhaps Obama was just “off his game.” But his campaign organization is a pretty shrewd calculating machine that so far has shown impressive results. So it’s worth considering the possibility that his performance was a deliberate choice.

After describing Obama’s demeanor as “grim/uninterested,” Washington Post political analyst Chris Cilizza concluded: “My guess is that Obama and his team made the calculated decision not to hit Romney” because “a) it wouldn’t look presidential” and b) the Democrats’ relentless attacks on Romney have “already penetrated deep into the political consciousness of the electorate.”

Looking presidential means always remaining centered, never losing your balance, remaining at all times the regal actor-in-chief of the “theater state” whose equipoise does not merely symbolize but actually creates the equinamity and balance of the societal structure. Let others do the attacking and defending, raising tensions and stirring destabilizing conflict. The president must remain implacable, unmoved.

 The challenger is obliged to do a certain amount of attacking and stirring conflict. Romney appears personally prone to be full of stresses that he is constantly trying to repress; when he defends against others he often appears to be fending off his own inner tension, too. At least that’s the way it looked to me, tonight as always.

So perhaps Obama intentionally chose his placid demeanor to bring out the contrast between his own imperturbable official status and the excited agitation of the challenger. Perhaps it was a calculated strategy to give the impression that dethroning him would mean overturning the order of the “theater state” and ushering in a new era of frightening chaos.

If most viewers get that impression, it would add one more negative mark to the long string of negatives with which the Obama campaign has tarred Mitt Romney. To achieve that goal, though, the president had to refrain from reminding viewers of all those other negatives. He and his strategists had to count on those others to be in the air, working the way television always works: subliminally.

This may be a charitable interpretation. But this was only act one. There are many scripts that can be played out effectively by the actor-in-chief of the “theater state.” In the next two debates we may well see a rather different Barack Obama, which would tend to bear out the view that tonight’s performance was indeed a deliberate choice.