Hilarious: Obama's Friends Explain Why He Lost The Debate
(Hint: It Might Involve Him Being Too Smart, Too Kind, Too High-Minded, and Too Cool)

Mockery on Twitter, compiled by Twitchy.

Here's the original article.

Here are the Top Ten reasons Obama lost the debate, per Obama's friends, as sympathetically reported by The New Yorker:

1. He's Just Too Interested In Finding Common Ground and Rising Above Petty Disputes To Lower Himself To Being An Effective Debater.

He did not go out of his way to defeat someone in argument; instead he tried, always with a certain decorous courtesy, to try to persuade, to reframe his interlocutor’s view, to signal his understanding while disagreeing. Obama became president of the law review—the first African-American to do so—but he won as a voice of conciliation. He avoided the Ames Moot Court Competition, where near contemporaries like Cass Sunstein, Deval Patrick, and Kathleen Sullivan made their names.

When Obama avoids competition, it's always because he could win -- if he wanted to. But he's too good for that.

It's never because he's just not good at it.

2. Obama's Empathetic Nature and Fellow-Feeling For All Humanity Restrains Him From Humiliating a Lesser Life-Form, Such As Mitt Romney.

In class, if he thought that a fellow student had said something foolish, he showed no forensic bloodlust.

...

Laurence H. Tribe, a leading constitutional-law scholar and Obama’s mentor at Harvard, told me after Wednesday night’s debate with Mitt Romney, “Although I would have been happier with a more aggressive debate performance by the President, I’ve had to remind myself that Barack Obama’s instincts and talents have never included going for an opponent’s jugular. That’s just not who he is or ever has been.”

Apparently, Obama -- The Greatest Orator Since Cicero -- can persuade the world of anything. So long as no one gets to rebut him or offer an alternative argument.

3. Obama Was "Too Professorial" To Explain Complex Thoughts To A Lay Audience.

That's strange -- I thought a professor's entire job consisted of explaining complex thoughts to a group of people who do not yet understand them (typically called "students").

But Obama is "too professorial" to do the fundamental job of a professor.

“I’m a professor and he was a professor: What’s the problem?!” [a professor-friend] said. “I usually don’t treat being professorial as a problem. It’s usually great in my book, but he played in that particular comfort zone of his and it was a mismatch for the occasion.

While Obama was "too professorial" to give a lecture explaining his worldview, the non-professor Mitt Romney managed to do so.

I guess that shows how dumb and uneducated Mitt Romney is.

4. Obama Cares Too Much About "Substance" To Debate It.

This is advanced by the same guy -- see, Romney was about "performance" whereas Obama was about "substance." Now, that might be surprising, given that Romney had a much larger knowledge base and explained it effectively to a lay audience, but Obama apparently has "substance" beyond things like policy, statistics, and overall philosophy, which he couldn't express, for one reason or another.

“The reason I hate campaigns,” Edley continued, “is that being right on the substance isn’t good enough. That’s why I’m an academic. Of course, Obama knows that, but it’s also a question of what he cares about. I admire him for caring more about the substance than the tactics even if it makes me grimace when I watch him."

Romney's "tactics" included doing a lot of homework and mastering the field of the job to which he aspired. Apparently that's dirty pool.

5. Obama's "Too Authentic" To Do His Homework For A Debate. I guess homework would be "cheating" (per that last one).

So he came to you in his authentic form -- completely unprepared. And that's good, for some reason.

"Look, we all do things in the short term that are not consistent with a long-term goal, whether it’s failing to save for retirement or watching TV instead of doing your homework. It’s called being human rather than being the ideal client of your handlers. It makes it harder to achieve his goal, which is to get reëlected. But if you wanted authenticity you got it [on Wednesday] night. "

I cannot believe this. Yes, the More Authentic Me would rather watch TV than do homework to achieve a goal.

That's why I'm a failure.

In this guy's telling, however, I'm just a President In Waiting.

6. Obama's Too "Cerebral" To "Engage the Issues" in Debate.

"We know that Obama skews cerebral and that he has never liked debates as a way to engage issues. He has said that many times.”

He prefers "engaging the issues" by giving one sided speeches written for him by other people, filled with political catchphrases and empty rhetoric.

See, he's so "cerebral" he doesn't like debate as a vehicle for "engaging the issues," preferring deep thoughts like "We are the change we've been waiting for."

He's too smart to master the arguments and counter-arguments, you see.

Along the same lines--

7. Obama Is "Too Contemplative" To Debate, Which Might Make Him Too Cool For School.

We're getting into some Repeatsies here, but as the left is really pushing down on the "Obama's too intelligent to be successful" idea, I'll break it down into all of its component parts.

“His personality has always been kind of contemplative. In that kind of format, when you are contemplative, it makes you seem not as quick on the draw.”

Apparently slow wits are the mark of highest intelligence and learning. I did not know that.

This seems to result in him just being too cool for his own good, which dumb people might mistake for being "cold."

"I thought the President was a little laid back. Romney was really aggressive, even overly aggressive and got away with some stuff. The President stuck to the issues and took great pains to explain his positions and sometimes that can come off, in that setting, as a little cold."

8. Obama Finds Debates "Absurd" and Beneath His Dignity And So Must Strain to Simply Keep His Wits About Him.

I find this one pretty alarming. But for some, this counts an excuse -- some sort of emotional hair-trigger and sense of superiority that combine to turn him into a ticking time bomb of anger.

he would often find the debates frustrating, even absurd. “Obama always tried to keep his cool,” Burns said. “I sensed that last night. He was trying to keep his cool.”

9. Obama is Too High-Minded To Handle Romney's Lies.

Now we just get into the liberal article of faith, which is that Romney must have cheated in some way-- there is no other way the God-King could lose -- so he must have channeled Satan and become Prince of Lies.

But Obama, for whatever reason, couldn't manage to point out these lies.

“The President has always been someone who takes the truth seriously and has a great faith in the American people and their ability to handle big ideas,” Burns said. “He doesn’t patronize them. He uses the campaign as an educative process. He wants to win but also wants to be clear about his ideas…. He took complex ideas like Medicare and the debt and tried to explain it to people so they can understand them while at the same time not being patronizing. And he is doing this with an opponent who is completely dissembling on every issue! There is a certain brazenness about Romney. It’s like [Stephen] Colbert talking about ‘truthiness.’ Romney stood there, with his hair and his jaw and his terrific angles—and he lied! About taxes, about Medicare. Obama pushed back on the five-trillion-dollar tax cut or the way Romney’s version of Medicare would destroy Medicare as we know it. And Romney just tilted his head and said, Oh, no, it won’t. At some point, you have to believe that the facts speak for themselves.”

Usually "the facts" require a human being to speak for them. They do not "speak for themselves."

Has it occurred to any of these people that Obama's ads -- which speak in a one-sided manner, without any chance of rebutting -- are the things which might be lies? And the reason that Obama couldn't rebut "Romney's lies" is that Romney wasn't lying -- Obama's campaign is in fact lying?

All of Obama's Greatest Hits -- including his frantic attempts to rehabilitate himself on the campaign trail -- come when there is no one around to challenge him.

If Obama's claims cannot withstand challenge, what do we make of them?

Oh, right: That Romney's claims must be false. The ones that don't whither under scrutiny.

Which leads, ultimately, to the heart of the matter:

10. Obama Is At His Best When He Is Entirely Unchallenged And Simply Making Unrebutted Assertions To An Adoring Crowd.

Well, I don't think anyone could argue with this one.

Reverend Love grew close to Obama when Obama was a community organizer. He could tell that Obama was never particularly comfortable in the debate format. “He’s better out there by himself[.]"

Yup. So long as no one asks any questions about it, the Naked Emperor's wardrobe is just fine.

posted by Ace at 12:13 PM

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