It's just the Playoffs....

For nerds, politics is a sport.  In the world of political punditry, there are few events that are more anticipated than the first Presidential debate. Most of us waited with proverbial bated breath counting down the seconds to the first game of the “Intellectual Playoffs” and like football on any given day anything can happen.
I have long held the gripe, and legitimately so, with the Right and their unparalleled propensity toward self promoting spin. Forget the etch-a-sketch, when listening to the average Fox Commentator it’s like a being on the Gravitron (that spinning carnival ride that glued you to the walls and made you want to vomit).  I try to not to be guilty of things that I have an issue with in others.  Therefore, I cannot offer and will not offer any spin regarding my disappointment with last night’s theatrics.
I was starkly confounded by how our President handled the first debate performance. So much so that my natural conspiracy theory self went into over drive, connecting his bar lowering “I’m not a good debater” and the dismal showing of veracity of purpose and mission on stage last night. I want to believe that it was a strategy. Somewhere in his brilliant mind he was setting us all up. Holding us at bey for an October surprise that ignites the spark needed to carry him through the finish come November.  I wanted to believe that instead of duck, dodge and counter, his version of take the hit was the President being a stand up guy. Leaving you confident that if you were in a bar room brawl, win or lose, you weren't going to end up fighting the bouncers by yourself.
I want to believe that he reminded us all that the winners of debates aren’t necessarily the winners of elections. After all Mitt has been campaigning for the last 20 years. Between the never-ending stump speech and years at the helm of companies where presentations win contracts, I expected him to do well.  Mitt is blindly pursuing the dreams of his father. His over commitment to the audition has made his willingness to do and say anything to win moved the bar in gross favor of dishonesty. He has his own “The Mendacity of Mitt” column on the Maddow blog, and a running ticker on MSNBC and CNN. There’s no coming back from when Fox calls you out on your vagueness and inaccuracy.  What he said was not just inaccurate. It was wantonly false, blatantly dishonest, and had no regard for the truth. All of it done in the best screen test Mitt Romney has ever given. If this were Hollywood, he would deserve the part.
We find ourselves in the midst of a climate shift where no one trusts the fact-checkers. Say PolitiFact as the source and people will laugh at you. Truth seems to only travel as far as the direction in which you lean. Believing the lies, it seems, is determined only by how far you already lean that way. We walked into this debate season having questions and having remarkably few answers. Last night did little to change that. I listened and rewound and listened again as Romney laid out his 5 points and couldn’t get them to add up. I got irritated by the President repeating the same answers. Even though I know they were the right answers. Ones solidly based in facts and math. Not program cuts of PBS or Pell grants that do little to increase the deficit and would do harm exponentially greater than their cost. I wanted him to go on the offensive, quit the zone defense and drive it straight down the field. I found myself annoyed as I followed along on twitter. The Conservatives lit up my feed with barb after bard. I wanted to strike back, I wanted to argue. What I couldn’t do was pretend that as far as style goes, last night’s debate took a traveling salesman and made him look like a credible candidate.
It is mind boggling. The entire country wants microwave results when the issues we’re facing simmered for the last 35 years. Fewer Americans who survived the depression influence policy, the people who understand that progress takes process left the building and left the rest of us with the quick fixes, clever slogans and snake oil.
With all that said, I have greater resolve to support this President and this administration. Because once the ether wears off and, the high ends, we will all realize that the facts still matter. Style is aesthetic. Solutions aren’t short term enterprises and, there is no script for real leadership. Being regarded as a number 1 draft pick doesn’t mean you’ll perform on game day. Ryan Leaf vs Peyton Manning '98 anyone? College ball isn’t the pros… What we face requires sustainability, something that Romney’s plans, even as he describes them, cannot achieve.
I appreciate the ability to criticize my team. Progress requires it.  It remains to be seen whether President Obama was victim to the arrogance of incumbency or, is a strategic genius on levels none of us has ever witnessed before. Either way there is tomorrow and fortunately for us all, our votes decide the fate of the free world. The only day that counts is November 6^th. It’s just game 1 folks. There are still 4 weeks to the Super Bowl.