After the Debate, Business as Usual

On October 18 the two presidential candidates, in accordance with tradition, attended a black tie charity dinner organized by the Archdiocese of New York. That evening, displaying his typically American habit of self-deprecation, Barack Obama acknowledged with a deadpan laugh: “I had a lot more energy in our second debate. I felt a lot more rested after the nice, long nap I had in our first debate.” The president must have had a good night’s sleep before his final debate with his Republican opponent. On Monday evening, in Boca Raton, he wasn’t at all asleep. He even came off as pugnacious for critiquing, point by point, the positions Romney has taken on the major foreign policy topics of the moment: terrorism, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and the Arab Spring. “Every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong,” he mocked. This not only constantly forced his opponent to remain on the defensive but, more surprisingly, forced him to deny certain attitudes he had taken toward the war that he had expressed in the recent past: on maintaining troops in Iraq, the 2014 date for leaving Afghanistan, the priority given to negotiations and sanctions for dissuading Iran from building nuclear weapons. There was a little agreement on solidarity with Israel: When Romney chided the president for not having found the means in four years to travel to Jerusalem, Obama was forced to reaffirm that the United States would consider an attack against the Jewish State as an aggression against the United States itself.

Europe Is Absent from American Concerns

Romney wanted to show that an America with Obama is seen as weak. He did not succeed there. Obama wanted to prove that his opponent didn’t know the issues and wasn’t strong enough to lead the greatest power in the world. He only half succeeded in this when he invoked laughter by reproaching Romney for being stuck in the times of cavalry and bayonets. But he couldn’t stop his Republican challenger from passing what American commentators call the “Commander-in-Chief test.” Mitt Romney, even when discussing the weakness of the American army, was never ridiculous. And Obama, a little too sure of himself and of the topic, came perilously close to arrogance on several occasions.

At the end of the day, as expected, this debate did not change the course of the elections, which remain extremely close. Obama’s party’s strategy consists more than ever in depicting his opponent as a man incapable of assuming the highest office. In doing so, Obama takes the risk that, thanks to the debates, voters will no longer accept the caricature of Romney that he has sought to impose. On the other hand, he can’t be sure that the Republican will be able to convince Americans that he could do better than his opponent to improve their daily lives and preserve their security.