Rumi Nations

Hopefully President Obama will have managed to silence the commentators with his spirited performance during the second debate. Maureen Dowd won't be pointing to Barack Obama's biographies in next column pointing out how the President is averse to confrontation and how that's at the core of who he is. I thought the over-reaction to the 1st debate had been unjustified -> I knew Mr. Obama will be in a feisty-er mood this time around since that's what the constituency demanded. Mr. Obama stood up to the pretentious and oh-so-fake Romney without appearing to be jarring or a bully -> both qualities that are the trademark of Mr. Romney. The candidates got to almost a dozen questions with a tough-to-rollover Candy Crowley as the moderator. On Libya, Romney was particularly egregious as a foreign policy novice. On financial matters and tax issues, Romney sought to show that he had a plan -> the only problem was that this was a plan that is entirely distinct from t...

The historical record which clearly shows that presidents don't get re-elected when the unemployment rate is high doesn't much reflect the demographic reality of today. There are not that many white, young, unemployed people who buy into Romney's vision of the free-market creating umpteen millionaires and hence removing poverty and making Social Security, Medicare and other safety nets unnecessary. May be Obama will win because of these factors even if he comes across as wonky or lackluster or not-aggressive-enough in the debates as the media and all the pundits have been harping on. It's tough to believe that Americans can be so forgetful about recent economic history when W. came into office with a surplus and there was debate between Gore and W about what to do with that surplus. Bush explicitly cut taxes for the rich as he had promised to do (at a cost of a trillion dollars) and ran up a trillion dollar bill for an unnecessary war in Mesopotamia. The TARP des...

This is the early take from the media pundits on this debate. The verdict being that Obama lost the 1st debate. I think that's a bit over-the-top because: Remember Obama's "long-game"? This is the 1st one. Two more to go. Are voters going to vote based on Romney's enthusiastic lying or Obama's soberly pointing out the fact that Romney doesn't really have an alternative, that Romney talks about repealing Obamacare without saying much about how. Here are the takes from a few pundits. Well, I’m with all the other talking heads: Mitt Romney won this debate. Barack Obama lost it. I mean, he got his butt kicked. It was, in fact, one of the most inept performances I’ve ever seen by a sitting President. Romney–credit where it’s due–was calm, clear, convincing (even when he was totally full of it) and nearly human. The real mystery was Obama. Where on earth was he? Why was his debate strategy unilateral disarmament? W...