Both Were Presidential And That is Scary

Governor Romney was so ready to agree with President Obama in last night’s debate, someone hearing them both for the first time ever might have thought they were running as a team. No doubt, Mr. Romney was trained by his handlers to feign restraint and thus to act like he was a monument to stability, ready to sit in the Oval Office. On nearly every position of the current administration, Romney reiterated ongoing foreign policy.

This morning’s pundits credit the President with a debate win. I guess it is because his bon mots were thought the epitome of debate performance. They were clever ripostes. ‘…air brushing history,’ ‘all over the place,’ fewer horses and bayonets’ did bring his cheering section a sense of ‘gotcha,’ but this wasn’t an encore of their recent performance to raise money for Catholic charity.

As one who has already voted for President Obama, I guess that I’d agree with the pundits that he ‘won.’ My problem with it all is that I really think that we the people are not winning. You and I are the losers of this Presidential race. Losers because it seems that neither candidate appears aware that we are on the cusp of a new kind of world where speaking softly and carrying a big stick is not going to be nearly so persuasive as is speaking effectively abroad and carrying on model reforms at home.

Yes, Mr. President, we now have ships that carry airplanes and others that actually travel under water but what seems lacking is any agenda that asks us to reach beyond the grasp of the ‘military-industrial complex’ or suggests that we can go deeper than the myth of American exceptionalism.

It was a very sad moment in a Presidential debate when one of the best positions came not from the incumbent I’ve already voted for, but from his less-capable opponent. It was Mr. Romney who put it best: we cannot kill our way out of this mess.