…Because you don’t need to. The story isn’t in the substance, it’s in the takeaway. How people react is a lot more critical than what was said. Which blows, absolutely, but welcome to the postmodern campaign. If facts don’t matter, why waste your time?
From the sound of it, Obama came out in a prevent defense which does exactly what a prevent does. In this case, it let Romney keep throwing underneath for one quick completion after another. Factually challenged and at odds with two years of stated positions? Who cares? It looked good, and a political press dying for a horserace will gladly float that the GOP team has stopped the bleeding and is hard on the comeback trail.
Much depends on the follow-up and whether Romney’s base is willing to overlook his flexibility. But given that they care far more about landing blows against Obama than any actual policy position, I have to think the only way that Romney doesn’t close the gap here is if somebody comes back with some serious in-depth and aggressive fact-checking.
Oh, and like Josh Marshall says: if you’re complaining about the moderator, you’re losing. I seriously doubt that “he was mean to Jim Lehrer” is going to shift things. On the bright side, we’ll probably have a sudden return to belief in polling by the weekend.