This blog comes a few hours after the first Presidential Debate, so what follows is my immediate reaction, which I wanted to get down right away. Forgive me for any grammatical or spelling errors, I am going straight to press after this blog is finished and there is no time for 3rd round proof reads.

If there were any question that Obama is a Christian, it should be fully confirmed tonight in the president’s willingness to turn the other cheek, time and time again, to slaps of distortion, outright lies, and outright promises of miracles if only we would trust Mitt Romney. Here’s the catch though, American Christians may be many things, but when it comes to politics, one thing they are not is willing to turn the other cheek, when slapped, undeservedly. Mr. Obama and his team seemed through some convoluted strategy to miss this basic point, and it showed in the debate tonight. What’s frustrating is that he and his team were willing to cast stones and level accusations about Mr. Romney’s business practices of the past in the form of television ads, but President Obama seemed determined instead to hang on the cross and accept Mr. Romney’s stabs of lies and distortion, without a full throttle rebuttal. This could cost him the election if he is not careful.

The Obama campaign made great strides in labeling Mr. Romney for the corporate raiding, crook that he was at Bain Capital, in the early months of the campaign. This was a strategy that republicans used well when George W. Bush ran against Kerry, which was to attempt to define the challenger to the nation before the challenger had the opportunity to define himself. This strategy relies upon the incumbent president to have a positive approval rating, or close to it, to persuade voters to trust the devil they know as compared to the one they don’t. The Obama camp took this republican strategy, a winning one, in the beginning, and then the most beautiful thing happened, what should have been and Ace in the hole, what should have been Mitt Romney’s fatal mistake, a game changer, happened. A video of him was released, of months earlier, at a fund raiser for his campaign, as deriding 47 percent of America as government dependent, and thinking that they are ‘entitled’ (he used this word in an exasperated manner) to healthcare, to food, to housing, to everything.  How dare people in the wealthiest country in the world.

The Obama campaign put this in their tv ads. Polls were on Obama’s side. Why did they think it was ok not mention this in the first debate ?

With President Obama not mentioning this at all in the debate, it has the appearance that he is is comfortable letting his surrogates trash his opponent, but that he either doesn’t have the guts to stand by them, or that he allows his surrogates and campaign to spread distortions, as Mitt Romney did and still does. Either way, at this point in the game, it is a losing strategy.  He loses credibility if it doesn’t doesn’t follow up on his campaign’s attacks in the debate, face to face with the man who wants his job and face to face with the liar and denier he has much more forcefully labeled in speeches and ads recently.

The ‘attack’ ads that the Obama campaign have released are relevant, accurate and convincing.

Here are, off the top of my head and I am sure there are many more of these fresh  off the top of the heads’ and tongues  of many newspaper and tv pundits I am sure,  some things that should have been said, or incorporated into President Obama’ theme, etc that should be no brainers:

With regards to the final question of the role of government, this should have been a home run for Obama, it was an under-handed, easy soft ball pitch straight across the plate. He should have said something like

“Mr. Romney has made his opinion of government’s role clear. He also made it clear his opinion of people who benefit from things like medicare  social security, medicaid, veteran’s benefits, the poor, all children enrolled in public education, as well as the the firemen and policemen of the communities,and the people who build the roads, the infrastructure, the power grid.  He calls this 47 percent, consisting of our aunts, uncles, grandmother and fathers, ‘dependent’ and as people who view themselves as victims.  With all due respect, he is either ignorant and out of touch, or just plain and simply only cares for him and his small circle of friends and billionaire donors – as he said in his owns words on the tape.  I represent all people.”

“Mr. Romney keeps referring to these mysterious or ‘to be worked out with congress’ details on what deductions he would use to simplify and make the tax code fair for everybody.  Well Mr. Romney, you are as vague on these details about your tax plan for the future as you are for your own tax records the past ten years; you only show us what looks good.   Are you talking about mortgage relief and college tuition deductions that impact the middle class the hardest, and which all independent analysis say is impossible not to include in the loopholes  you speak of,  to meet your rosy assumptions of loophole closing , or are you talking about the tax havens, loopholes, accounting tricks, foreign bank accounts, or other tools that the top one percent     including you presumably, utilize ?”

“You called your running mate’s budget plan, ‘marvelous.’  Your words, and his plan, one of the few detailed plans we can attach to you, imposes draconian cuts on the middle class and on down, and it seeks to dismantle medicare and social security by starving them of revenue. The recent panel of top bishops in the Catholic Church, recently wrote in a letter to Paul Ryan that they considered the federal budget a moral document, and siting his budget, and he a Catholic as well, as failing their criteria, and placing an undo portion of sacrifice in our country on those that were the most vulnerable, the ones who Jesus said, “blessed are the poor.”  In Mr. Romney’s world, it’s a sin being poor, and the middle class is a tough place to aspire to and a tough place to live in.”

“You would repeal Obama care the first day ?  What part offends you the most ? Of course, you keep changing your answer as the race goes along- from abolishing all if it, as you said in the (insert tv clip I’ve seen), or what you are saying now, which you have a well documented history of changing your past answers to whatever is the immediate answer of what you think your immediate audience wants to hear.  It was adopted from ‘Romney Care’, which wasn’t about states setting their own rules, but about government coming up with a common sense problem.  Now, to satisfy the far right in your party, you have denounced common sense, even it it was partly your idea to begin with.  Will the real Mitt Romney please stand up ?

“Why do you keep emphasizing that people currently on medicare needn’t fear of your plan because their benefits from medicare won’t change, only for their sons and daughters  that are also voting. Is it because you don’t won’t them to realize that your are not strengthening medicare, but actually replacing it with Voucher Care?  I’ll stick with Obama Care, which strengthens medicare, not replaces it with a voucher system that will always leave seniors with a voucher that will be worth less than the cost of private insurance ”

“Why do you keep outright lying that I somehow stole 716 billion from medicare?  You, every fact checker, every serious republican columnist  knows that this is not true.  Yes, you do sir, this is a deliberate distortion on your part, and your own running mate proposed similar savings to medicare, without strengthening it, and with the intention of turning it  into Voucher Care.”

“I am proposing giving tax incentives to companies that don’t out-source, which you know as former CEO at Bain Capital  are currently highly profitable, with tax codes and hidden off-shore accounts that you may or may not have taken advantages of not just because of the slave labor conditions that your former company has been revealed  recently to have taunted in the past,  as an incentive to American investors,.  But how can we know ?  You talk of the nobility of capitalism and free enterprise but the truth is you want as little of your personal finances made known as possible, hence your continued refusal to disclose them – despite everyone else having done so,  because you are a champion of out-sourcing and corporate wealth, not economic patriotism, which what I am proposing.”

I could go on, and I am sure liberal pundits, columnists, and conservative spin doctors  alike will do, on what you should have said.

So I will close with some principles for the next debate, as I am sure the Obama team are more than familiar with all the quotes or near quotes I have promoted above but still offer as an example.

You must go on the attack.  The attacks in your tv ads are correct, effective, and should be used going ‘forward’ as they have been up until this point.  I heard David Plouffe, White House Senior Adviser tonight, saying something to the effects that Mitt Romney’s 47 percent video was well known, and that they were promoting what they were at their convention .  News flash to the Obama campaign which should have already known:  this is a fight for the power and future of the United States of America, and you just lost the first round.  You thought it was a continuation of your pre-fight hype.  It wasn’t.  Come out swinging, the truth is on your side, but the undecided electorate will not know that, especially if you keep letting a man stand beside you, challenging your managing position of this country, bullshit and bullshit without you calling him out on it, vocally, confidently, authoritatively.