Is it style or substance that wins a presidential debate?

Apparently President Obama did not take into account what professional athletes do: the need to arrive in the mile-high city a day or so early before a match in order to be in top form.  Mitt Romney did arrive early and spewed out his memorized PowerPoint presentation perfectly (without the screen), full of so many detailed claims misrepresenting his previous positions that the two-minute response format left little room for a coherent response.

Many felt his aggressive style was impressive, even presidential.  I found it obnoxious.  Robert Shrum thinks Romney won the debate on the strength of his "performance art" although he catalogs a number of ways in which Obama won on substance.

I do agree with Schrum, however, that it would have been nice if the President could have been sharper in making some of his points, although I'm not sure if short quips come natural to him.  For example...

The Republicans ask whether Americans want another four years like the last years. Obama could have asked: Do you want another eight years like the Bush-Cheney years—because Governor Romney has the same policies and the same advisers? 

                                   --  Romney Won the Debate but it Was No Game Changer

Will we forget why we need freedom of the press?

Few of us believe in concepts as basic as civic obligation and voter participation anymore. The rituals and responsibilities of living in a republic bore us. Although we're awash in more information technology than citizens of any democracy in history, we choose to conduct our political lives as willing inmates of an idiocracy.

--TonyNorman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (5/4/12)

Is democracy a process of domination or cooperation?

“You can't get cooperation to serve the national interest when one side of the divide sees no distinction between the national interest and its own partisan triumph.” 

                –Paul Krugman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (5/5/2012)

Reward me because I’m successful!

"’I'm not ashamed to say I was successful,’ Mr. Romney says. No one is asking him to be ashamed of his success. What he should be ashamed of is his complacency. It seems absurd to say so, but maybe it will take losing the presidency to teach him a little humility. If he wins, he'll be really insufferable.”

                     --Michael Kinsley, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (April 21, 2012)

We love a vigilante until we meet one

“When we celebrate the vigilante on our screens, we tell ourselves it's because of our healthy mistrust of corrupt structures, or because we're genuinely vulnerable -- not because of our more shameful tendency to stereotype others based on fear or hatred.

“….It's easy to understand the enduring appeal of the vigilante archetype, whose hard-charging moral certainty jibes perfectly with this country's sense of exceptionalism, not to mention the narrative constraints of a 90-minute action movie. It's far more difficult to reconcile complicated reality with the simplistic, comforting fictions we crave.”

                  -- Ann Hornaday, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (April 15, 2012)

Americans must face reality!

"Like most people pretty much everywhere and pretty much always, Americans want government services but don't want to pay for them. Unlike most governments in the world these days, however, ours gives the people what they want." -- Paul Solman

People not guns kill people?

“Please spare me the ‘It's not guns that kill people; it's people who kill people’ argument, too. The implication is that someone with a knife or baseball bat can kill just as easily as someone with a firearm. To see how silly that argument is, imagine a person with a knife chasing a bunch of college students around a cafeteria trying to kill them.” – Dan Simpson in It's time to end the gun nuttery, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, April 18, 2012