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" The thing is, if you&amp;#039;re going to play rope-a-dope, sooner or later, you have to come off the ropes and throw a punch. You bounce off the ropes and land the left and then the right over the top, and then the other guy goes out of the ring in a blanket. Otherwise, it&amp;#039;s just a way to get yourself punched in the stomach a lot. Along about the 48-minute mark of Wednesday night&amp;#039;s debate, it became clear to me that the president simply was not going to do that. And it wasn&amp;#039;t that the president lacked opportunities. However well-prepared he was, and however energized he was, Willard Romney spent a lot of the evening running away from everything he was forced to say and do to win the Republican primaries, running away from the critical elements of his own tax plan, and running towards, of all things, his record as governor of Massachusetts. (A good question to have asked him might have been, &amp;quot;Governor, if you did so much for education and health care and the economy in Massachusetts, how come I&amp;#039;m beating you there by 30 points and your approval rating up there has been in the crapper for six years?&amp;quot;) Romney trafficked in the most obvious of previously debunked lies \u2014 the Afforable Care Act is &amp;quot;a government takeover of health care,&amp;quot; he said, even death panels \u2014 and he fashioned out of himself a new populist image by baldly asserting at one point that he, Willard Romney, who needs a passport to visit most of his money, is going to break up the big banks and stand up for the embattled middle class. This would have been comical if anyone on the stage had cared to point that out. And Romney came out of it largely unmarked. His lying pack of sons must be very proud. (Can I say for the record that I have never seen a political candidate for any office hang his kids out to dry like that? Willard Romney is a very strange man.) The only way that the wonkish, garbled, and distracted performance by the president makes any kind of sense is if the White House has internal polls that indicate that a majority of Americans believe that Willard Romney eats live chickens in praise of Satan. The basic fact of this entire campaign is that Willard Romney is a transcendently ridiculous figure. Some of it is his own doing. Some of it was forced upon him because he sought the nomination of a party that has become demented. Everything else flows from that. And, because of the president&amp;#039;s unaccountable lassitude \u2014 is it possible that the whole angry-black-man kerfuffle ginned up on the right on Monday got into the man&amp;#039;s head a little? \u2014 Willard Romney was able to portray himself as a firm, principled national figure of what passes for the rational center. I didn&amp;#039;t think that was possible.  What happened on Wednesday night \u2014 what the president allowed to happen on Wednesday night \u2014 has changed this entire election.  What you saw, I think, anyway, was the end product of the president&amp;#039;s consuming naivete as regards the American political process, as well as the end product of thirty years of a Democratic Party that has slid so far to the center-right that a Democratic president found himself arguing with a &amp;quot;severely conservative&amp;quot; Republican candidate over the issues of how much the Democratic president had cut out of the budget, how many regulations he&amp;#039;d trimmed, how much more devoted to the middle-class-kick-in-the-balls Simpson-Bowles &amp;quot;plan&amp;quot; he is, and how he would &amp;quot;reform&amp;quot; Social Security and Medicare \u2014 and, frankly, a Democratic president losing some of those arguments to his left. A Democratic president got through an entire debate and didn&amp;#039;t mention unions at all, even though the fact that our teachers are unionized here in Massachusetts is a big part of the reason why Romney got to brag on how good our education system is. Seriously now, how much would you have bet going in that the president would spend as much time as he did on areas in which &amp;quot;Governor Romney and I agree&amp;quot; and not mention the famous 47-percent video at all? Of all of the night&amp;#039;s obvious surreality, that has to take the prize. By the time Willard got to his essential Tentherism \u2014 a severe form of wingnut crackpottery on which, of course, he was not called to account in any substantive way \u2014 I was sure that, somewhere, Al From, that greasy corporatist lackey, was smiling. He&amp;#039;s got the political process of his dreams. Of course, it is also the case that The Great Sellout is already under way, so what the hell does it matter. (Also, too: Are women part of &amp;quot;the economy&amp;quot;? Do they count? Does having reproductive choice impact anyone&amp;#039;s personal economy? Am I an idiot for believing any of this matters?) When the president was on point, he wasn&amp;#039;t sharp. He had a nice moment when they argued about taxes, but, again, he didn&amp;#039;t close. Romney got to bullshit his way to the next topic because the president couldn&amp;#039;t rein him in, and because moderator Jim Lehrer was in a hurry to get back to that hillside on Easter Island. The president seemed incapable of making a full-throated defense of anything, including his own presidency, as though that were somehow beneath the dignity of his office, and somehow contrary to his essential political nature. I&amp;#039;ll tell you what, I wouldn&amp;#039;t vote for Chris Christie against the incumbent for Prince of Hell, but if he wants to take me to the track sometime, I&amp;#039;m there. He called it all over the Sunday shows. Willard Romney, staunch opponent of the big Wall Street banks. Jesus wept, but that&amp;#039;s hilarious. The fact is that the president is a cool and rational man and he is facing someone who is running as a caricature not only of himself, but of the several other selves he&amp;#039;s found it convenient to construct for himself along the way. It is possible that a cool and rational man is incapable of confronting someone this ridiculous on the simple grounds of how ridiculous that someone actually has become. How to do it may not be within the cool and rational man&amp;#039;s comprehension. But what happened on Wednesday night \u2014 and, more to the point, what the president allowed to happen on Wednesday night \u2014 has changed this entire election. It has given the Beltway press the horse race of their dreams, which is going to matter a lot over the next couple of weeks. Moreover, it may have buried progressive government forever by demonstrating how tight the boundaries really are around what is considered acceptable economic solutions to a battered national economy. That will remain the case, clearly, even if this president gets re-elected. If that&amp;#039;s this president&amp;#039;s final legacy, he has only himself to blame. THE MORNING AFTER: How to Recover from a First Presidential Debate &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; TOM JUNOD ON THE DEBATE: Obama, Endurance Artist \u2014 What Comes After the Magic? JOHN WEAVER ON THE DEBATE: A Successful Re-invention of Romney &amp;amp;amp; Obama Alone PLUS: What They Should&amp;#039;ve Talked About at the Debate... and Who Dressed Better &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Follow The Politics Blog on RSS and Twitter &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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