John Kerry

From memory because I'm lazy today:

On Afghanistan it is not fair to say that Romney has no position - he has all of them.

On Libya, he humourously listed the series of positions Romney had that had him darting from the left to the right and back again.

I do agree that neither Kerry or Obama expected Romney to do as you aptly describe - largely because it should NOT have been successful. Where were the Obama spinners? Why did the media immediately define winning as being aggressive - even if completely dishonest? Romney's REAL flip flopping should be a negative, not a debate strategy.


In addition, I think that what happened was that Obama likely spent less time in preparation than he would have wanted because his job had conflicting demands that were more important. In addition, NONE of the complaints are that he was ill prepared in terms of having clear statements of his accomplishments, his plans, and Romney's stated positions (ie the ones STILL on his website later that night.)

All the criticisms were things like:
- He looked mostly deadly serious and not happy
- He did not seem energized and enthusiastic (amplified because Romney looked like he had several cans of Red Bull)
- He did not as most do pivot on questions to make extraneous attacks on Romney. However, the fact is that he did make several strong attacks on Romney's tax plan - even after Romney said it was not his plan. Here, I think the biggest fault was in the Obama spinners. The fact was exactly the plan on his web site. They and the lazy media are at fault here. How do you have a debate or even a serious discussion with someone who changes at the speed of light. If his plan changed, why was there no statement that it had before the debate and why are there no details on the plan even now. To quote John Lennon "You say you have a real solution, well you know, we all want to see the Plans"



Looking at that list, how could Kerry or anyone else, have changed any of them.

On number 1 and 2, I don't think that Obama could pull off being anything than who he really. Remember when the pundit class roasted Gore and he took all the criticism to heart and tried to make the changes only to be called inauthentic because there were 3 Gore personas in the three debates. Only Obama can fix these - and they need to be fixed in a way that is authentic to who he is. (Also look to the fact that his likability did not change.) Not to mention, Obama may have been more energetic and less somber when he practiced than when he dated. Neither of these can be blamed on the team.

On the third, there is a balance of when this should be done. Every time it is done, it is at the expense of explaining himself - but, he needs to respond to attacks. This was a real dilemma because last time nearly every Romney word was both a lie and an attack.

Kerry himself is very good at making pivots and letting opponents' words repeated back to them by a very good listener damn them. Not to mention, as to never following Romney's bad behavior in talking over everyone, Kerry follows rules too. However, in one of the Jeff Beatty debates, Beatty acted as Romney did - Kerry followed the rules for a few questions and saw the moderator was not calling him out and then Kerry dominated the rest. (not a tough thing to do as he had both more stature and a voice that is very hard to speak over.) Kerry may be able to help him on this - but to assume that the Romney in the second debate will do the same thing is dangerous. He probably will do something else. (Romney did NOT do this in the primary debates, so it is possible that Kerry did not create the bizarre Romney that showed up. )

I think that all anyone other than Obama could do would be to play the role and give him practice and to suggest ways to handle things that didn't work in practice. This would not be just Kerry's role, but the top advisers who were also in the practices.