By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Understanding why Mitt Romney so decisively won the first
presidential debate is as important as the fact that he did. Why? Because once
we know the reasons, almost everything about President Barack Obama and this
election becomes clear.
First, Obama lost because he, like virtually the entire
left, lives in a left-wing bubble.
Left-wing academics live in this bubble. There is no
greater uniformity of thought than at our universities; their much-ballyhooed
commitment to diversity is about race and ethnicity, not about ideas.
So, too, the great majority of news media people live in
the same bubble, the left-wing herd that covers national and international
news. Reading The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times or
Le Monde or listening to the BBC is essentially reading or listening to the
same selection and presentation of the news.
One reason leftists talk to, read and listen to only
fellow leftists is that they are certain that there is no other way to think
rationally, compassionately or morally. Therefore, there is no reason to debate
conservatives, let alone expose oneself to their ideas.
Obama is a man of the left. Leftism is his
Weltanschauung, his value system, his way of understanding the world. Every one
of the president's mentors whom we know about was a leftist, usually a radical
leftist. The church he was married in and the pastor he adored were leftist.
His work -- "community organizer" -- was left-wing work.
When you live in a bubble -- be it religious or political
-- you cannot successfully debate opposing views. You're not even familiar with
what those opposing views are. This debate was the first time in Obama's
presidency -- if not his life -- that he had to defend the policies he believes
in against an articulate conservative.
He couldn't.
The second reason for his defeat was that Obama lacked
two things that have been essential to his popularity for the past four years.
One was a teleprompter. Most people would sound
articulate if they could rely on teleprompters to speak words they and/or
others wrote. But there were no teleprompters last Wednesday night.
Were a Republican president as dependent on a
teleprompter as this president has been, the media constantly would report --
and mock -- the fact.
Which brings us to the news media's protection, the other
thing the president was deprived of at the debate.
In the increasingly inglorious history of the mainstream
(i.e., liberal) media, nothing has matched their four-year protection of this
president. To cite but one of countless examples, when President George W. Bush
signed the Patriot Act and incarcerated terror suspects at Guantanamo, the
press was relentless in its attacks on him for allegedly undermining civil
liberties. When Obama extended the Patriot Act and kept terror suspects in
Guantanamo, the press was virtually silent.
A third reason for the Romney victory was the debate
format. Moderator Jim Lehrer and new guidelines allowed the debaters to
actually debate. The reason the liberal media have been so contemptuous of
Lehrer is that, perhaps for the first time in the history of modern American
presidential debates, the moderator did not attempt to dominate the
proceedings. And what the left cannot control it fears.
According to Reuters, Obama spoke a full four minutes
more than Romney did. But because Lehrer allowed Romney to actually respond to
Obama, Romney didn't need any more time than he took.
Obama also lost because he is not intellectually deep. He
is extremely bright. But he is not intellectually deep. If you read, rather
than only listen to, any of his speeches -- from Berlin and Cairo until today
-- you will discover how essentially empty they are. But because he never is
challenged and because he delivers his largely nice-sounding vapidities so
smoothly and authoritatively, many Americans are fooled.
He could not get away with this in the first debate. And
though Obama surely will be much feistier and more aggressive in his second
debate, if Romney is allowed to respond and challenge as he was in the first
debate -- very possibly a big if -- there is no reason to believe that he will
get away with his platitudes then, either.
Finally, Romney won because he understands how the
economy works much better than Obama does -- and because he understands what
America stands for much better than the president does.
The great unknown is whether enough Americans will come
to realize all this by Election Day.
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