| by B. Raman
( October 4, 2012, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) I
watched with fascination the first Presidential debate between President Barack
Obama and Mr.Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, at Denver on
the morning of October 4,2012.
2.At the very beginning, my kudos to the
American TV professionals from different channels who worked together as a team
to organise a debate of very high quality.
3.We too have world class TV professionals such
as Madhu Trehan, Barkha Dutt, Prannoy Roy and Karan Thapar. Individually, they
might have been able to organise a very good debate, but I am not sure of their
ability to work as a team despite their belonging to different channels and
project a debate in which the focus and attention remain on the debaters and
their ability to debate issues of public and national interest. The egos of our
TV professionals might come in the way of the kind of team work that we saw in
Denver today.
4. In the discussions among the panellists
before the debate started, the focus was not on the past, but on the future.
What the panellists were trying to foresee was what kind of a promised land
each candidate would offer to the voters. Jim Lehrer, the moderator, kept the
focus of the debate on the future and gently nudged Mr.Romney to talk of what
he would do and not what he did as the Governor.
5.One was amazed by the kind of homework the
candidates had done before the debate with the help of their aides and the kind
of insight and comprehension they displayed throughout the debate.
6.A debate of this nature will be very difficult
to organise in India. Firstly, a Presidential form of Government as in the US
lends itself better to such debates than a parliamentary style of Government
with a multiplicity of parties. Secondly, we have very few political leaders
with the kind of knowledge, insights, comprehension and debating skills that
both Mr.Obama and Mr.Romney exhibited throughout the debate. Our TV debates are
largely cock-fights and slanging matches with the anchors and moderators unable
to impart gravitas and intellectual depth to the discussions.
7. I watched the post-debate discussions in the
CNN, the BBC and other Western TV channels. The overall impression among
independent panellists not belonging to either of the two political parties was
that it was Romney’s night. He was more self-confident, less testy and more
engaging than Mr.Obama. Mr.Romney’s body language and facial expressions were
more Presidential than Mr.Obama’s. As one panellist remarked, Mr.Obama was
rusty. His classy style and debating skills of 2008 were missing.
8. One panellist remarked that Mr.Obama was
condescending in the beginning, but as he realised that Mr.Romney he was facing
today was different, he became defensive.
9.Mr.Obama had to be defensive because today’s
debate was on the state of the economy which has not been doing well. The next
debate is going to be on foreign policy in which Mr.Romney is likely to be
aggressive focussing on the murder of the US Ambassador to Libya and three
other Americans at Benghazi in Libya on September 11 by a group of terrorists
suspected to be from Al Qaeda and the messy situation in Syria and Egypt.
10. Mr.Romney came to today’s debate with the
image of a potential loser in the elections. He managed to have this perception
of himself changed and left the debate with the image of a candidate who might repeat the challenges of
Ronald Reagan to Mr.Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Mr.Bill Clinton to Mr.George Bush
Sr in 1992.
11. Mr.Romney is very much in the fight and cannot
be prematurely written off. Mr.Romney we saw today is not a bungler and sure
loser.
(The
writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of
India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,
Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail:
seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter @SORBONNE75)
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