(NEW YORK) MintPress – President Obama may have been widely panned, even ridiculed, by pundits for his performance in Wednesday’s televised debate against challenger Mitt Romney, but he is not the first incumbent to flounder at this stage of the campaign, and he would not be the first to go on to win the election in spite of it.
According to Alan Schroeder, a professor at Northeastern University and the author of, “Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV,” Obama joins a long line of presidents, including Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, who struggled in the opening debate.
“More often than not, the first debates have been very difficult for incumbent presidents,” he said. “They’re out of practice, which is a big part of it, and they don’t have as much time to devote to debate preparation as people whose full-time job is running for office.”
Obama may also find solace not only in history, but also in the facts — on Thursday, his Gallup approval rating hit 54 percent, jumping to its highest level since November 2009 — and lack thereof, according to many who later deciphered the debate, in his opponent’s statements.
Indeed, Obama did not appear to suffer any long-term damage. The 54-percent mark puts Obama well above the “safe” 50-percent threshold for an incumbent’s re-election.
And although Gov. Romney appeared to steal the show, many critics say he did so by bending the truth, making exaggerated or simply false claims on a variety of issues.
Rhetoric vs. reality
For one, the budget deficit. “The president said he’d cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it,” declared Romney.
In fact, as the Huffington Post reports, when Obama took office in 2009, the deficit was projected to be $1.2 trillion during that year, and it ultimately turned out to be $1.4 trillion, according to Congressional Budget Office data cited by the New York Times. The deficit is expected to be $1.1 trillion for fiscal year 2012.
As for his own proposals, Romney said, “My plan is not to put into place any tax cut that will add to the deficit.” Romney’s tax plan, though, would cost the country $4.8 trillion over the next 10 years, according to Tax Policy Center data cited by NBC News.
As for the idea of so-called “trickle-down government,” Romney said, “The president has a view very similar to the one he had when he ran four years ago, that a bigger government, spending more, taxing more, regulating more … would work.”
Yet President Obama’s proposed budget is estimated to cut about $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years and, so far, Obama has signed $2 trillion worth of spending cuts into law, according to Democratic Party Pollster Bernard Whitman.
Romney also alleged that the president’s health care reform plan, the Affordable Care Act, kills jobs. Yet the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare will reduce the health care industry’s workforce by only about 0.5 percent, largely because workers will decide to retire early or work fewer hours.
“And if Romney’s Massachusetts health care reform law is any indication,” says the Huffington Post, “job loss won’t be a big problem; employment trends in the state have mirrored national trends since Romneycare took effect.”
Also on health care, Romney charged that “up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as Obamacare goes into effect.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office, though, some workers may switch from their employer-provided health plans, but that number is more likely to be closer to between 3 million and 5 million per year between 2019 and 2022.
And Romney, in a major talking point, said, “On Medicare for current retirees, (Obama’s) cutting $716 billion from the program.”
PolitiFact says this claim is half true. The $716 refers to how much Obamacare would take away from Medicare spending, mostly to hospitals and insurers, over 10 years. Obama’s plan does not take $716 billion away from current Medicare recipients.
Granted, Obama also made some claims that are not entirely correct. “Governor Romney’s central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts, so that is another trillion dollars,” he said. “And $2 trillion in additional military spending that the military hasn’t asked for. That is $8 trillion.”
ABC News’ Amy Bingham and Jon Karl point to Romney’s own campaign website to counter the president’s argument, calling it “mostly fiction.” Despite Romney’s repeated insistence that his tax plan would be “revenue-neutral,” the only real reason Obama’s suggestion that his opponent would add $5 trillion to the debt isn’t exactly true is because Romney has never specified how his tax plan would be paid for.
As Bingham explains, “Romney’s tax plan could add $5 trillion to the deficit. But that is an estimate on an incomplete tax plan … The issue is that no one knows what those provisions are just yet.”
Jobs boost
The White House welcomed more news on Friday: The unemployment rate fell from 8.1 to 7.8 percent in September, according to the Department of Labor, the first time is has slipped below 8 percent in about four years.
The number of unemployed Americans fell to 12.1 million, the fewest since January 2009, when Obama took office. And the economy created 114,000 jobs in September, said the department, which also revised upward the number of jobs added in July and August by 86,000.
“While there is more work that remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression,” said the chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, in a White House blog post.
“It is critical that we continue the policies that are building an economy that works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007,” he wrote.
Romney, not surprisingly, interpreted the numbers differently in his own summation of the data. In a statement following its release, he never mentions the 7.8 percent, focusing instead on a “real unemployment” calculation of 11 percent, and he closes by pushing his own economic plan.
“This is not what a real recovery looks like,” he said. “We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July, and we’ve lost over 600,000 manufacturing jobs since President Obama took office. If not for all the people who have simply dropped out of the labor force, the real unemployment rate would be closer to 11 percent.
“The results of President Obama’s failed policies are staggering. Twenty-three million Americans struggling for work, nearly 1 in 6 living in poverty and 47 million people dependent on food stamps to feed themselves and their families,” Romney continued.
“The choice in this election is clear. Under President Obama, we’ll get another four years like the last four years. If I’m elected, we will have a real recovery with pro-growth policies that will create 12 million new jobs and rising incomes for everyone.”
Undoubtedly, yet more fodder for debate the next time the candidates face each other.
Let the games continue
In the meantime, Obama is using his campaign visits to shake off criticisms from his first encounter with Romney — in a 22-minute speech in Wisconsin on Thursday, he hit on his familiar themes of tax fairness, paying for education and creating jobs.
He also slammed his opponent for wanting to cut government subsidies for public TV, saying he was “finally getting tough on Big Bird,” the Sesame Street icon to which Romney referred during the debate.
“Presumably the debate was a wake-up call for Obama,” said “Presidential Debates” author Schroeder.
“He may win the Oscar for his performance,” quipped Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod about Romney, “but he’s not going to win the presidency for his performance.”
Stay tuned.