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"    John Weaver is a leading Republican strategist, having worked on a number of presidential campaigns and successful senate and gubernatorial efforts. He served as John McCain&amp;#039;s chief strategist for almost eleven years, and in this cycle worked for Jon Huntsman. You can follow him here on The Politics Blog in conversation pretty much every day, and on Twitter at @JWGOP. In the meantime, let&amp;#039;s pick up on the first debate.... \u2014M.W. MARK WARREN: Can you review last night? It was consequential, as you said it would be. And while Obama didn&amp;#039;t fall and hit his head, he did look as if he&amp;#039;d had a bad oyster the whole night. What&amp;#039;s it all mean? JOHN WEAVER: Mark, what was it you called the president the other day? A novelist? Yes, that&amp;#039;s it. Have you ever seen a more practiced politician, much less the incumbent commander-in-chief, so alone on a stage as last night? He was disconnected from the debate: from the audience, from the &amp;quot;moderator,&amp;quot; from this new opponent (more on that later), and worse, from the viewing audience. I wrote here that for Romney to win, Obama&amp;#039;s handlers would have to shout &amp;quot;no mas, no mas.&amp;quot; Well, Obama all but did that with his lack of energy, passion, and unwillingness to engage Governor Romney. Time&amp;#039;s Joe Klein called it &amp;quot;unilateral disarmament.&amp;quot; Joe is too kind. Perhaps he was shocked at Governor Romney&amp;#039;s successful re-invention. There have been several versions of Romney in the last three decades, with the least appealing the man who secured the nomination. The man who ran to the right of Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich didn&amp;#039;t show up last night. Nor did the small-company-harvesting, bottom-line, bloodless Wall Street financier. Instead, America watched a somewhat wonky but aggressive technocrat launch into a faux defense of Medicare, praise Romneycare while debunking Obamacare (same plan), and call for cutting taxes, increasing military spending and balancing the budget by eliminating PBS.  And nary an effective peep from the president about the now-famous 47 percent, the hypocrisy regarding Medicare, the hubris regarding health care, and the mad-hatter math regarding the budget deficit. Romney ran right over poor the decent Jim Lehrer, making hopefully his last appearance as a moderator in a presidential debate, but also over the president. Romney was poised, confident, and didn&amp;#039;t let up until the bell rang ending the last round. It was a rout. This morning the president and his campaign are calling out Romney on the points I raised above. Unfortunately, the time to do so was in the ring. Romney&amp;#039;s debate victory certainly changed attitudes about his campaign. Dismal September is forgotten, now that the chattering-class birds have flown to the other high wire. But did it alter the narrative of the campaign? I have my doubts, but we won&amp;#039;t know for certain till next week&amp;#039;s round of polling. The return of the more moderate Mitt may have been too late. But what Romney&amp;#039;s win certainly means is this campaign will now be nastier, tougher than it should have been, had Obama showed up to the debate. The super-PACs and GOP committees will stick with Romney for the duration, instead of cutting and running and focusing on the House and certain Senate seats. Chicago will run a campaign by Chicago rules. And for the voters, October will be a dismal month. Incumbent presidents don&amp;#039;t fare well in the first debates, for whatever reason (Bill Clinton was the exception, but that was against Bob Dole). We remember Carter, Reagan, and Bush 43 stumbling in their first re-election debates. In fact, George W. Bush&amp;#039;s first debate against John Kerry was equaling head-scratching.  The biggest problem for the president was that his debate performance was a 90-minute microcosm of his presidency: alone, aloof, detached. He&amp;#039;s still on a trajectory to win, despite the debate, despite the economy. But the novelist just had his manuscript ripped out of his hands and thrown in to the wind. How&amp;#039;s he going to respond? MORE ON THE DEBATE: Charles P. Pierce on How Obama Lost and How He Can Recover, Reagan-Style Follow The Politics Blog on RSS and Twitter &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a16113/john-weaver-romney-debate-13369798/>