Socio-Political contributor – Ron Belgrave
When two of your most fervent and visible media supporters start lambasting you in public, you know that you need to “fix up” and do something to redeem your image.
Such was the situation for President Barack Obama after the first presidential debate on 3 October where it was unanimously agreed that he had lost that particular debate (at least from an image perspective) and the polls the next day showed Romney’s improved favourability rating.
The President’s performance was judged to be so uncharacteristically poor that even staunch supporters Chris Matthews of MSNBC and Jon Stewart of the Daily Show laid into him angrily and disappointedly.
So with those resounding chastisements in his ear, as well as a mission to save Sesame Street’s “Big Bird”, Barack Obama and his campaign team set about putting a pep in the President’s step. It started the very next day with (a very different) Obama addressing groups of supporters at a rally and saying some of the things he should have said the night before like pointing out that Big Bird’s life was at stake.
It went further, a few days later, with a political advert sarcastically highlighting Romney’s “view” that Big Bird was the key threat to the US economy. The only problem there was that Sesame Street objected to being directly brought into party politics and so the Obama campaign now has to consider dropping the ad.
All this highlights the point that you’ve got to get it right on the night. There’s little value in trying to remedy it afterwards. And, with Romney subsequently closing in on Obama in the polls, so the ball was passed to Obama’s running mate Joe Biden for the vice-presidential debate on 11 October against Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan.
In most US presidential elections, the vice-presidential debate is normally a very secondary affair with most people not paying much attention to it. But, with the figures in the polls getting closer because of that first presidential debate, the VP candidates found themselves more focussed on than usual.
Paul Ryan was very much the underdog – less experienced, lower profile and 27 years younger than Biden – he simply had to draw in order to win. On the other hand Joe Biden, because he was expected to win and expected to make up for his boss’s previous lapse, had an enormous amount of pressure on him – even a draw would look like a loss. Furthermore Biden, with a reputation for “gaffes”, had the additional stress of keeping his verbosity in check whilst not appearing to condescend to his “junior” opponent.
The vice-presidential debate was not dramatic and Ryan held his own (with some post-event polls declaring him the narrow winner) but the broader consensus is probably that Biden, with his greater vitality, energy and counter-points won that debate – particularly with undecided voters (Biden 50 : Ryan 31).
This has resulted in a slight rise for Obama but the figures, moving forward, will still be dependent on the messages and momentum achieved before and during the next main debate.
Barack Obama’s unexpectedly lacklustre performance in the first presidential debate brought to mind the 2004 film “The Manchurian Candidate” – starring Denzel Washington (Frank Sinatra in the 1962 original) – in which a candidate for president has his mind chemically manipulated by a powerful cartel so that he behaves in an uncharacteristic manner.
For the second presidential debate on 16 October hopefully Barack Obama will be back on form and we won’t be subjected to another episode of “The Manchurian President” – otherwise Denzel Washington (who saves the day in the 2004 film) may need to be called back into action, again.
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