Round 1: Romney vs Obama

Last night Obama and Romney faced each other in Denver, Colorado in the first of three presidential debates. The debate was supposed to take 90 minutes, it was split into six segments, three concentrated on the economy and one on each of the topics; healthcare, role of government and governing. Romney knew he needed to out-perform Obama to keep his campaign alive, in recent weeks Obama’s lead has been widening both nationally and in the swing states, especially in Ohio and Wisconsin. Pundits from across the political spectrum were predicting if Obama were to win or simply “tie” with Romney, then the Republicans would certainly lose the White House. Going into the debates polls showed, 2:1, that Obama would perform better. They were wrong. I was wrong. Although I do not believe that Romney completely trashed the president, he definitely performed better. Obama was on the defence the whole night, with few exceptions, he rarely made any attacks on Romney and paused a lot more in speaking.  As the debate only took place last night the polls have yet to come in with the new results, but needless to say that things will be looking up for the Romney campaign. This is the first piece of good news they’ve had since Obama said “you didn’t build that”.

Yet all is not lost for Obama, throughout the debate Romney left himself open to many attacks. Especially on the issue of healthcare, within seconds of vilifying Obamacare, he was praising his work on healthcare reform in Massachusetts as governor, bearing in mind that Obamacare is a less extreme version of Romneycare, it is shocking Obama didn’t go on the offense. Romney was creating quite a buzz on Twitter when fact checkers consistently struck down many of Romney’s key points and backed Obama. Here’s a selection of Romney’s lies from last night.

1.       I will not cut education

2.       I will not raise taxes on the middle class

3.       Obama will raise taxes on the middle class

4.       I will not add to the deficit (if he genuinely believes this he needs to re-take some Maths exams)

5.       I will not cut taxes for the rich

6.       Obama has raised taxes on the middle class during his time in office

7.       Obamacare will increase the cost of premiums

8.       Obama will destroy medicare

9.       Obama’s medicare cuts directly affect seniors.

I’ve saved the most audacious for last.

10.    Obama has doubled the deficit.

This last point is simply shocking. There are two types of government deficit, a budget deficit is the gap between revenue and spending each year, and the overall deficit, which is how much the government owes in total. Let me break this down into on very simple table.

	What Obama inherited	What he increased it by	What it currently is
Budget deficit	$1.2 trillion	X 1.167	$1.4 trillion
Overall deficit	$12 trillion	X 1.167	$14 trillion

  

The fact is that overall debt is increasing at its slowest rate since before Ronald Reagan became president in 1980. And let’s not forget that Bush actually inherited a budget surplus of $230 billion, is it really time to trust a Republican on the economy again? Especially when that Republican is pursuing the same policies as the old one!

The fact of the matter is that if Obama had been on his toes and been more aggressive, he would have easily won the debate. I feel bad as Obama is usually a very good public speaker, he just seemed to stumble on the worst of all possible nights.  He must learn from this debate, or he could actually lose the White House in November.