Here on vacation I woke up in the middle of the night to watch the second debate. I had not seen either the first one or the VP debate, though I saw and read clips. I thought I would be bored; I wasn’t. I hoped I would be impressed – I was…by Mitt Romney.
Obama is a known quantity, struggling again to run not on his record, but on words again. I don’t believe he should be given that grace again. Romney isn’t asking to be judged by his words, and that is refreshing. He wants us to look at what he has done in his life – built a successful business, raised a successful family, governing successfully for his state.
Obama lied. I listened to his suddenly claiming from the start that Libya was a terrorist attack. He said that the day after the attack, before flying off for his next fundraising trip in Las Vegas, that he had condemned the Libyan Consulate attack as a terrorist action and said the U.S. would hunt down those who had perpetrated the crime. That’s not what he said at the time. In fact, it was many lies and two weeks later, before he admitted it was, without question, not the movie but terrorism.
The fact that Candy Crowley tried to help the president out should, justifiably, be ashamed. If there was a loser in last night’s debate, I think it was the moderator. She had the chance to be fair; she wasn’t. She had the chance to truly shape a debate of the people; she chose questions that were what she wanted and asked her own questions.
The president lied about licensing for federal lands. It’s been proven that Romney was, again, speaking the truth and the president was lying. Why were lies allowed?
I had heard this would be a debate focusing on foreign policy and I was interested to hear what Obama thinks about Iran and Israel. It wasn’t covered and I’m still not sure why. Israel was mentioned only once – by Romney in an accusation that Obama has not been supporting Israel. Obama did not respond, did not say anything about Israel. Iran, a major threat to my country, was not mentioned at all.
Again and again, I listened to the questions and I watched Obama. The simple fact is that after being absent at the first debate, as most people felt he was, there was no question that he would do better – and he did. But I don’t think it was enough.
The simple truth is that few are likely to change their vote based on this debate – but hopefully, people will take the time to swim through the lies. Again and again, I turned to my husband and said – well, that’s nice, if only that was the question.
Again and again, the questions came back to what seems to be the most important issue for America – the economy. I heard plans from Romney; I heard words from Obama. When he did speak of plans, I kept wondering why he did not implement those in his first four years. He accused the Republicans of blocking his plans – he is always quick to blame others for his failures. But for the first two years, he had the full support of a Democratically-controlled Senate and House for the first two years he was in office. The Republicans couldn’t have blocked him from doing anything…no?
I found the president to be filled with words…words aimed at creating a picture that he has failed to create in four years. Why should he be given another four? Worse, why would we want to put in a lame duck president at this critical time, who won’t be able to run for another four years and therefore will do whatever he wants.
In short, putting Obama in the White House is just not an option…at least for me, and hopefully not for the majority of Americans.
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