Well, this didn't take long. We knew within minutes after the debate that, although Romney "won," Obama's empathy numbers went up -- significantly -- and that David Gergen pointed out that Romney lied on CNN. It's a loss for the President, but hardly a glancing blow.
So I expected some disappointment from the press, but most of it was well within bounds. Charles Pierce saw the debate as evidence of how far to the tight the Democratic Party has moved, while Peter Baker at the New York Times saw the debate as a direct articulation of the profound differences between the domestic policies of the two campaigns (and we all saw that nuance doesn't play as well as direct assertions, no matter whether the direct assertion is true or not).
But then there were the context-free reports on the debate, which didn't take any of the background into account and showed how much the Beltway press has invested in the horse race approach to a presidential campaign. I give you the Media Whore of this debate - Joe Klein, at Time's Swampland blog.
Not that there isn't a lot to agree with in Klein's report, especially about the things Obama could have said but didn't (I was wondering why Obama didn't mention Paul Ryan too). But there were (and remember how much Klein disliked Bill Clinton) a couple of smoking-gun comments, like this:
It was, in fact, one of the most inept performances I’ve ever seen by a sitting President. Romney–credit where it’s due–was calm, clear, convincing (even when he was totally full of it) and nearly human. The real mystery was Obama. Where on earth was he?
and this
So we now have a race. I don’t know whether this moves the polls very much–it may well–but it certainly boosts Romney’s confidence and has to give the President some doubts, despite his vaunted self-confidence.
But that's not what puts this into the Media Whore category. For that, you need to reveal your heart is really in the Romney camp. I think this suffices:
if that was the actual Barack Obama out there, I’m not sure he can communicate well enough to be an effective President in a time of trouble, to say nothing of winning a second term.
He's also credulous enough to believe some of the things Romney said during the debate, like the idea he'd regulate Wall Street and get rid of the idea that there are banks that are too big to fail. If you believe Romney meant that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
I mean, even Mark Halperin, the poster boy for Media Whoredom, gave Obama a B- for the debate, not the F Klein gave him.