Romney Wins First Round

President Obama let Mitt Romney run away with the trophy in the first debate tonight. The challenger was fluent and forceful. He looked directly at the president as he made his points. He came across as the one who cared more about America. For most of the debate, Obama looked down as the split screen showed Romney in a posture that suggested he was talking down to a timid student. At one point when Obama was speaking, Romney interrupted and amazingly, Obama conceded the floor to him. Instead of looking at Romney, Obama (when he looked up at all) seemed to plead with moderator Jim Lehrer to bring the debate to an end. Romney, in contrast, controlled Lehrer, directing the flow of questions.

Forget the facts. Fact checkers will tell you that Romney was wrong on this and that, as was the President. In these debates, style trumps substance. When Obama was running for president four years ago, he electrified the electorate with his newness, his near-mythical striving for the highest position in the land. That he was running against a party led by the reviled George Bush no doubt helped his candidacy.

But as incumbent, the magic seems to have left Obama. He was hesitant  and tentative with Romney. He seemed ill at ease. There was hardly any passion behind his words. He combined his sentences with a drawn out “a..and” that became a distracting mannerism as the debate progressed. His rebuttals (again, we are not talking facts here but style) were weaker compared to Romney’s. In summing up the debate with his perspective on leadership, Romney said, “America is hurting today!” and then said that he would set America right. A visitor from Mars would have believed Romney. Obama, in contrast, asked us to simply believe that what he did in the last four years should convince us to vote for him. Unconvincing, to say the least.

Only toward the end did the President briefly come alive when he said that part of being a leader was to have a plan and that a leader had to sometimes say “no” to the extreme fringes of his party. He exposed Romney’s shortcomings in two sentences but that was about it. Obama’s relief was almost palpable when the debate finally ended.

As an Obama supporter, I am hoping that we have seen the best of Romney and the worst of Obama tonight. Certainly with his performance, Romney has repaired the damage of his “47%” remark. He has accomplished his mission for now and put the President on the defensive. Obama needs to practice an hour everyday looking directly at someone while locking horns with him on contentious issues. (Joe Biden, perhaps?) It’s okay to be polite, laid back and cool in private but in a debate that can change voter perceptions instantly, passion and conviction have to radiate from the candiate's whole being.

The verdict: Obama did not hurt himself but Romney elevated himself and was the clear winner. Please, Mr. President, shed your complacency, if that's what it is. Replace ice with fire. In the next two debates, don’t let the Governor take charge. You must. Four years ago, an "outsider" seized the momentum in his debates with a Republican challenger. We want that candidate back.

Iconoclast Gore Vidal (1925-2012)

Gore Vidal was incapable of writing a dull sentence, hence his preeminence as an essayist. Whether or not you agreed with his views, and they were often radical, no one equaled him when it came to puncturing the pomposities of leaders, celebrities and mediocrities. He was a self-taught polymath who used his devastating wit to provoke, entertain and educate. In his books and essays, Vidal took on his country – the United States of America – with unrelenting attacks on its leaders for undermining the constitution and waging wars around the world. “I am so alarmed by what is happening with our global empire, and our wars against the rest of the world,” he said in an interview during George Bush’s regime, “it is to time to take political action.”

Although Vidal failed in his attempts at public offices in the two times that he ran - first in 1960, when he was the Democratic Congressional candidate for the 29th District in upstate New York, and again in 1982, when he campaigned in California for a seat in the Senate - his powerful pen skewered the shakers and makers of American foreign policy for decades. With his passing, Henry Kissinger is undoubtedly feeling relieved.

But Vidal did not spare the mainstream literary heavyweights either. He was the quintessential intellectual gadfly. Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, Truman Capote, William F. Buckley, to name only a few, felt the sharp sting of his criticism. He considered their work pretentious and sophomoric. His fiery rejection of what he considered trite and transient was something he shared with Vladimir Nabokov.

Vidal was too negative and extreme for most peoples’ taste. Comedian Bob Hope used to make fun of his cotrariness in his skits. But Vidal’s pungent wit and biting one-liners made him a sought-after guest on TV and campuses around the country. No shades of gray for him; he knew exactly what he thought and felt and expressed himself memorably and forthrightly. “Style is knowing who you are,” he explained, “what you want to say, and not giving a damn.” He had a matching ego to go with his talent. “There is not one human problem that could not be solved,” he once said, “if people would simply do as I advise.”

When asked during an interview where the young Vidals, the young Mailers, the young Millers were in contemporary America, Vidal alluded to Eisenhower. “Eisenhower, in a rather great speech when he left office – he warned against the military-industrial complex which he said was taking over too much of this nation’s money and life. A part of it is that is never quoted – he said, in effect, that the universities and learning will be hurt the most because when place of learning and knowledge are dependent upon government bounty and subsidies for their very lives … we have a whole generation of teachers and they are not very good teachers. Some of them are very talented writers, but they’re quiet. They don’t want to rock the boat. They want to keep their jobs … They saw what happened if you got associated with radical movements … Now, they’re quiet as could be.”

Vidal was being unfair to many talented writers and teachers who took on (and continue to take on) the establishment (the late David Foster Wallace, to name only one) without fear but his larger point that we have become a politically partisan nation, indifferent to the essence of our constitution, is on the mark.

I did not read Vidal’s novels – somehow, I could not find them compelling reads - but his essays were something else. “Brilliant” is too small a word to describe them. Incisive, witty, universal, fresh, all delivered with incomparable verve, imagination and style. Just two of the thousands of quotable snippets that I recall off the top of my head now are “drones in their unchanging hives” and “presidents and paint manufacturers.”

Gore Vidal is gone but surely his essays will live on.