So now the Obama campaign has Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s number on his debating style. And Obama senior adviser Robert Gibbs now insists Obama will be prepared for that at the next debate Tuesday night.
But doesn’t this mean that the Romney campaign has the Obama campaign’s number about them having their number — and will adjust Romney’s approach accordingly.
And doesn’t this then mean that the Obama campaign if they truly live up to the advance hype about being a first class political team have the Romney camp’s number about how they have the Obama camp’s number about the Obama camp having the Romney camp’s number?
I’m actually not too sure of the third one but it sounds like Obama is at least ready to debate Romney in the second debate the way he should have debated him in the first debate.
But won’t Romney be ready to do a totally new second debate? Will Obama be prepared to wage the first debate and maybe not be ready for a Romney switch in the second debate? Will Romney switch from being more moderate (as he was in the first debate) to being more severely conservative (as he was during the primaries)? Will Obama be ready for it? And which one will try a variation of Ronald Reagan’s “there you go again” (maybe the debate moderator to both of them)?
You sort it out and here is the latest:
Senior Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs promised Sunday that he would be more aggressive in his second debate with Republican nominee Mitt Romney this week.
Obama and Romney are set to square off in their second of three debates Tuesday at Hofrstra University in New York. Obama was widely viewed as the loser of their first debate Oct. 3 in Denver, but Gibbs said the president will be stronger in the rematch with the former Massachusetts governor.
“I think the president will make sure people understand the choice, and certainly if Mitt Romney puts up his hands and says ‘I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut plan. I don’t want to cut taxes on the very wealthy,’ absolutely I think the president will walk through for voters in that room that are going to be undecided exactly what the Romney campaign wants to do and why it’s bad for this country,” Gibbs said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Gibbs called Romney’s performance in the first debate “magical and theatrical,” though he also admitted Obama was “disappointed’ in his showing.
“Well, look, I think Mitt Romney’s performance was, indeed, magical and theatrical,” Gibbs said. “Magical and theatrical largely because for 90 minutes he walked away from a campaign he had been running for more than six years previous to that.”
Has Obama studied Vice President Joe Biden’s debate with GOP Veep candidate Paul Ryan?
If Obama starts saying “My friend” and calls Romney’s assertions a bunch of “malarky,” you know he has. If he drinks several bottles of water, he was studying Ryan.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.