To sum up my premise in one word.
Arrogance
After a strong start, arrogance will doom the Romney debates.
1st debate:
Romney will come on the attack. He will pop in his memorized zingers and catch a couple of sound bites on the news that gets repeated and repeated. The conservative pundrity will rinse and repeat until the MSM also starts repeating. Obama will let a couple of these go unanswered in favor of bland policy wonk responses. Obama wil hit Romney on a couple of his major faults including the 47%, his lack details, and lack of math. Romney will use a couple of words over and over including "failure", "dependency", and "lie".
It will be close but the "universal punditry" will conclude
"advantage Romney". However there is something more in play....
2nd debate: Obama's answers in the first debate are there to set the table for the 2nd and third debates. Assuming there will be no major faux paus or misspoken policy, Obama can use this debate to focus on disseminating Romney's lack of policy coherence. The debates will be won here.
Romney, bouyed by his performance in the first debate, will be urged to go for the jugular. He will double down on the "failure" talk, and "lie" verbage. Having used his "A" zingers in the first debate, his arrogence will get him to say something that Obama will simply be able to hit out of the park. This will be the home run of the debate.
Winner: Obama
3rd Debate:
The third debate will bog down in policy discussion. Romney wil continue to try zingers and use the same strategy in debates one and two. By now, Obama will have come across as incredibly articulate, knowledgeable, and nuanced. He will look like the reasonable one. By this time, Romney will personify the arrogance of the right wing (tea party et al...). Romney, by contrast will start getting hung up by debate procedures and start challenging the format, and the moderator for asking tough questions. He will look petty, unreasonable, and mean. Obama will highlight the etch-a-scketch and jack in the box analogies on Romney's hundreds of policy flip flops.
Arrogance or Reason.
That will be the central question coming from the debates.
Do we want another cowboy going around invading Middle East countries, or do we want articulate, nuanced, smart foriegn policy? Do we want a leader who represents far fewer than half of the country, or someone who cares about everyone. It will be a clear choice.
Clear winner of all three debates:
Obama.
This was my attempt on debate prediction. Your turn.......