In first debate woes, Obama's not alone
After a widely criticized performance in this week's debate, President Obama proved he's not immune to the pitfalls of the modern presidential campaign cycle. But the president can take solace in a look back at history: He's hardly the first sitting president to flub the first debate of a general election campaign - and he wouldn't be the first to win the election despite it, either.
According to Alan Schroeder, a professor at Northeastern University and the author of "Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV," the president joins a long line of incumbent presidents -- including Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and both Bushes -- who essentially bombed their first time back in the ring.
"More often than not, the first debates have been very difficult for incumbent presidents," he said. "They're out of practice, which is a big part of it, they don't have as much time to devote to debate preparation as people whose full-time job is running for office."
Not to mention the fact that most sitting presidents aren't used to being directly challenged even in the privacy of the West Wing - much less in front of 50+ million viewers on live national television.
"There's kind of an attitude adjustment," Schroeder said. "Presumably the debate was a wake-up call for Obama. I remember back in 2000, Al Gore had a really bad first debate, and when the 'Saturday Night Live' parody came out, his advisers forced him to watch it. I'm wondering whether the Obama people might not have a similar thought after this weekend."
Terry Holt, a Republican strategist who worked on George W. Bush's 2004 presidential campaign, recalled the aftermath of the Republican incumbent's weak showing in the first debate of the general election - though he brushed off the notion that Mr. Obama's situation is comparable.
"After three or four days of ruminating about how they did, the president hunkered down," Holt said. "President Bush recognized that the debates were important moments and that he couldn't rely on his record and his leadership - that he had to rise to this occasion and be sharp and focused and determined. So he looked at his own debate performance and said, 'I've got to do better.' But it took us awhile to get to that point."
Mr. Obama, a famously intense competitor, is already signaling a possible shift in attitude. While he was panned in the debate for being passive and uninspired, on the campaign trail Thursday he went after Romney aggressively, mocking his one-liners and ribbing his "spirited" performance in Denver.
"The real Mitt Romney has been running around the country all year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy," the president quipped to supporters. "The fellow onstage last night said he didn't know anything about that."
According to Democratic political consultant Chris Lehane, an alumnus of the Clinton administration, from here on out the president needs to keep up the aggressive attitude - even if he appears to be in the lead.
"He clearly didn't have the gloves on," Lehane said of Mr. Obama's performance. "It was amazing to watch all of these opportunities where he could have really counterpunched -- like Muhammad Ali. His resounding punch could have really nailed and flattened Romney any number of times."
The strategy, he says, violated the core of the race's "gravitational pull."
"When you play preventive defense it only prevents you from winning," said Lehane. "There's a natural, almost gravitational pull in this race that inherently favors the Republicans, being the party out of power, because of the economy. Whenever the president lifts his foot off the gas even for a moment, it allows some of that natural gravity to swing into action."
The president, he says, needs not only to wage an aggressive campaign in "key firewall states" like Ohio and Nevada, but also to stay on message - in advertisements, on the campaign trail, and in public debates.
"You have to be the aggressor," he said.
Dan Schnur, who advised Reagan in his 1984 re-election bid - including Reagan's own first debate debacle, which Schroeder referred to as "probably the worst night of his life as a public performer" - pointed out that the president has a couple obvious incentives to turn his game around.
"It's not like you need much additional motivation beyond being leader of the free world," Schnur said. "But pride can certainly be a great motivator, too."
Still, Hank Scheinkopf, a Democratic strategist who worked on President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign, argues that the president has his work set out for him in rewriting the narrative during the next debate, which is about foreign policy.
"If he were able to change the narrative [in the next debate], he'd have to be more aggressive, and he'd have to cite failures by Romney. The problem is that Romney doesn't have any failures in foreign policy," he said. Instead, he argues, Mr. Obama has got to spend the next five weeks "taking the jobs argument away from Romney."
"If this becomes about, 'Romney's not so bad, and he really won't cost us jobs,' then Obama has nothing to talk about," he said. "What happened last night is that people who didn't like Mitt Romney found that they could like him, and that in fact he had something important to say. The president's got to go back to the heartlands and prove that he's got more important things to say - and prove it as quickly as possible."
Even if the Obama campaign is able to slow Romney's momentum, it doesn't change the fact that Romney forced an important shift in conversation this week.
"Every challenger needs a moment," said Holt. "They need a pivot point, to go from just 'the challenger with the issues' to the credible alternative. And I think Romney demonstrated last night that he's a credible alternative."
"Romney and Obama now go into the next debate on even footing," he added. "Once you open the door to your opponent, the door is open."
