Obama versus Romney, and the winner is - in the Debates

With the first of the Presidential debates scheduled tomorrow between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney scheduled for Wednesday night, and Romney taking a plunge in the polls, the evening should be the highlight for even the most un-political of us.

While the campaign itself has been bitter at times, it’s probably less bitter than the 1801 presidential campaign between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, which proves that vituperative assaults, untruths, and the use of the press are not new to American presidential politics.

Romney, who must be cringing, behind his carefully manicured facade, with the poll numbers showing Obama ahead in the polls surely must be aware that there are not significant increase in numbers – read votes, after watching the debates, but this may not stop him, form trying.

Of course, the most famous exception was here in Chicago, on Sept. 26, 1960, when Vice-President Richard Nixon who entered the debate against the young Senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, he was ahead by 1 percentage point; and after the debate where the cool, calm, collected, junior senator easily swatted him, Nixon trailed by 4 points, and Kennedy then won the popular vote by 0.2 percentage points, and became president.

And, the rest was history.

Certainly, some say, including professional pollsters, that debates are not a game changer, and as George Washington University professor, John Sides, told The Christian Science Monitor:

“Presidential candidates tend to be fairly evenly matched in terms of capability, preparation, and political experience. Over a series of debates, neither is likely to be able to dominate the other so thoroughly that undecided or wavering voters will judge them a superior possible president.”

Yet, 54 percent of people think that Obama will win the debate, rather than Romney, who only gets a 28 in a recent poll by Quinnipiac University.  Another one shows him ahead with women (guess someone did get tired of Ann). And, the by now venerable, CNN, shows Obama 50 percent, and Romney 47.

With independents, Romney takes 47 to 45 and 52 to 42 percent on the budget deficit.

In the not too distant past, the nation told Bush senior,  that “it’s the economy stupid”  and ushering in the Clinton era; and while perhaps Romney’s lead gives his team some relief, the problem is that Obama does lead “on every other issue, among them health care, national security, the economy and handling an international crises.”

One way that the Romney campaign, tries to undermine the president, subtly, is by referring to his foreign last name, even to the point of slowly uttering it slowly, as if to say, “All y’all that dislike this uppity negro, here it is Ohbbbbbaaaaaaaaammmma” thus poking at the soft racial underbelly of the United States.

Certainly, this is not far from the surface as I faced, in the last month, some ugly racism by whites, including a verbal attack by some poor demented woman, who kept screaming at me, “They’re taking over, the blacks are taking over” all the while berating me, because of my support by the president, even to the point of forgetting that I was one of “them.”

And, my tongue-in-cheek statement, that if “we’re taking over, then forget the 40 acres and the mule, I’ll just take a million bucks” seemed to not dampen her ardor, until the authorities were called.

Then there was some sad sack of a fellow who kept insisting, to me, that he could not walk down the street, unmolested, because of the young black teenagers, supposedly stalking  in roving gangs, ready to do bodily harm to him, at a moment’s motive in the LGBT neighborhood of Chicago, called Boystown, because, are you ready? “Obama doesn’t care.”

Finally, there was the young, white, Catholic, Southerner, who upset that Catholic Charities in Illinois was not allowed an exception to case law to forbid legal adoption of children by lesbian and gays, and that we are all now supposed to say, saving it for the last here, folks,  “The Obama Prayer, instead of the Lord’s Prayer.”

So, while the party of “NO”, suffers some sweaty armpit moments, perhaps they should have thought first about ignoring the common good by vetoing every plan that the well-intentioned Obama administration put forth, and offered none of their own, and now have tattered credibility; and  as they prepare to enter the final weeks with still nothing, including Ryan’s fuzzy math, that the man from Chicago with the Harvard degree, the encyclopedic knowledge of Voltaire, and the smarts to best, even the best, might just as well stay home, because to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, we don’t need any more failed policies from the Bush administration, re-heated and re-served to the American public.