Barack, Get Up and Walk (in the Direction of Ohio)

So resounding was his fall that many thought they had lost him forever. But it seems Barack Obama has risen again. And indeed he appeared — on Tuesday night, during the second presidential debate — so sure-footed as to cause many observers to believe that even his previous, ruinous tumble was in reality nothing but an ingenious act (see, for example, Andrea Aparo’s post). Or, if you prefer, the latest version of an old battle tactic — play dead in order to catch your opponent off guard — very wittily adapted to the circumstances by the incumbent president’s campaign advisers.

If this were really the case — that is to say, if the catastrophe of the opening debate were really planned out by “team Obama” — it would be much more logical to explain it, I think, not as a Machiavellian episode of electoral strategy, but as an example of sexual psychopathy, similar to those who need to suffocate themselves to the brink of death by asphyxiation in order to reach orgasm. No, I think Obama’s fall in the first debate was absolutely real and unforeseen, “spontaneous” and disastrous, to the point where, even today, after the “victorious” second debate, the wounds (not altogether healed) are still visible.

At the first debate — which took place in Denver, among the mountains of Colorado — Barack had arrived with the proverbial “wind at his back.” The challenge of Romney, who has always been marked by the structural weakness of the “lesser evil,” not only had not taken off, but seemed on the point of collapsing underneath the weight of his own inconsistency and a series of missteps. Infotrade, the institute which follows the race of the two candidates as if it were the stock exchange, was suggesting buying Obama shares without hesitation and selling Romneys before their value dropped below zero. The distance between the two contenders was within what the pollsters call the “margin of error” (that is, within limits that do not permit the forecasting of a sure winner), but Obama was advancing relentlessly on a national level, especially — and even more importantly — in all those “undecided” states (Ohio, above all) in which, by virtue of an archaic voting system, the decisive battle of the electoral constituency will be decided on November 6.

In Denver, Barack Obama was armed with the proverbial coup de grace. But that coup — here the lovers of metaphor are divided — either shot him in the foot or failed to go off at all. Against a considerably bubbly Mitt Romney, who was rather unashamedly intent on selling a “moderate” version of himself, the exhibition of the outgoing president (and it seemed that way more than ever) was so sluggish and listless that even serious political scientists ended up hypothesizing physical reasons (was it the altitude?) or psychological (had he decided, for some reason, not to be re-elected?). “Obama asked me for money for his campaign,”* Bill Maher, grand master of political satire, bitterly commented after the debate. “It looked like he took my million and spent it all on weed.”

Personally, I believe Obama’s fall was the result of a combination of different factors: overconfidence, the desire to appear “presidential” before a rival forced to attack and, paradoxically, an excess of personal intelligence in opposition to the more immediate demands of political propaganda. Although he is an orator capable of memorable and emotional speeches, Obama has never, in fact, been a “debate animal.” Too intellectual, too inclined to see the complexities of problems, too “academic” and distant, too reluctant to concede to the urgent necessity of “sound bites,” the blows for effect (lies, most of the time, or half-truths) which are the salt of every electoral confrontation.

If the causes of the whole fiasco were uncertain and questionable, the effects were very obvious (and invariably confirmed by the post-debate polls). Obama started to drop and Romney — transformed from insipid challenger to grand slam winner of the first televised confrontation — started to climb. Tuesday night, the president probably managed to stop the hemorrhage. He played along, if you like, with the intrinsic stupidity of politics and with the rules of the electoral game. He rediscovered the value of “sound bites,” he won, picked himself up and began to walk again.

In the direction of victory? This remains to be seen (in similar circumstances, no president has ever been re-elected). Certainly he has begun to walk in the direction of Ohio, the state where a very restricted number of undecided voters have in their hands the key to the electoral constituency, which — everyone is convinced — will decide whose turn it is to govern America and the world for the next four years. “In my next life,” wrote Gail Collins recently in the New York Times, “I want to be an undecided voter in Ohio.” Hard to disagree.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.