The post-debate discussion is crediting Mitt Romney with a major win based on the latest reboot of the candidate. The face that Romney attached specifically for this event certainly mouthed a lot of the right things, never mind Romney's actual positions and the true impact of his policies.
The President clearly missed numerous opportunities to correct Romney's lies, distortions, and policy positions that are a matter of record. Worse, it appears that the Obama campaign is letting Romney get away with an inadvertent slip that revealed the Romney that we know exists away from the public eye.
The incident that I'm referring to came pasted to Romney's Big Bird broadside, but seems to be generating much less comment. I am referring to the moment when Romney looked Jim Lehrer in the eyes, smiled at him, and promised to threaten his employment.
I'm sorry, Jim. I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS.
In that character-illuminating instant, Romney was unable to overcome his vulture-capital instinct to see the person in front of him as anything more than an unsupportable cost of doing business.
Adding later, "I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you too." actually worsens his obvious lack of empathy and the coldblooded cruelty of his intentions.
Yes, Big Bird, is popular, and deserves the press he's getting. But I'm talking about Romney essentially giving an actual person advance notice that he would blithely cut the man's source of employment.
How much lack of feeling and inability to connect as a human being does it take so smile directly at a man and tell him that you'll gladly hurt his future? Why can he not understand that real people ar harmed by decisions made at the top? Why does he take so much enjoyment in firing people, as he says he does?
I wish that the president had taken advantage of the moment to ask these questions. They can still be asked, they must still be asked--by the President and his campaign--before Romney and his running mate get the chance to act on the rest of Romney's promise in his comment:
I'm going to stop other things.
Not yet, you won't.