Mitt Romney's Cokeface, and Other Interesting Moments From Last Night's Boring Ass Debate

Last night, President Obama and Mitt Romney faced off in Denver, in what will likely go down in history as some of the most boring 90 minutes in the history of American television. It was scoreless high school soccer game boring. It was oil change repair shop vintage issue of Reader’s Digest with country sensation Brad Paisley on the cover boring. But there were, actually, some interesting moments. Let’s slog through them.

10. Were both candidates on drugs, or what?

Mitt Romney brought his best manic cokeface to the debate, and Barack Obama acted sort of how I act after I’ve taken an over-the-counter sleeping pill, forgotten about it, and then suddenly become distracted by something on the internet for like an hour and then tried to call my brother to talk about it (“So… it’s like… weird and stuff. What’s going on with you? How is Minnesota town? I mean Minneapolis? Sorry, I just got distracted. What was I saying?”). Romney came out pugnacious, aggressive, bully-ish, and bloodshot. Obama just lolled around up there like he couldn’t wait to get offstage.

Because of Mitt’s aggression and Obama’s apparent exhaustion, most pundits are saying that the night went to Romney. But Romney would have literally had to go onstage and punch a kitten in order for him to lose last night; “losing” the debate would have meant continuing his campaign’s disastrous trajectory. Besides, Obama is ahead in every swing state. It would have been reckless for him to come out swinging and look like a jerk. If his goal was to make it through the debate without anything catastrophic happening, he succeeded. Which brings me to my next listicle point:

9. Chris Matthews freaks the fuck out.

Liberals were not happy with the fact that Obama didn’t open the debate by saying “47%. Car elevator. Legitimate rape. Corporations are people. Where are your tax returns? War on women.” (drops mic, walks offstage) and no one was more upset than Chris Matthews, the DNC’s shouting id. WATCH MORE CABLE NEWS, MISTER PRESIDENT.

Seriously, though, Rachel Maddow would have done a much better job in that debate.

8. Tonight, the role of Mitt Romney will be played by some guy who would never have won the GOP primary.

Who the fuck was this guy? After a year and a half of campaigning on promises that if elected, he’ll govern like Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan’s Mormon lovechild, when he took the stage last night, he spent 90 minutes pretending to be the guy who ran for Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994, or for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He denied that his tax plan says what it says and paid lip service to teachers while his plan would likely cut tens of thousands of teaching jobs.

7. Poor Jim Lehrer.

Jim Lehrer, or, as I like to call him, “Fake TV Grandpa #2,” came out of semi-retirement to moderate this debate. And by “moderate this debate,” I mean get shouted at and steamrolled by Mitt Romney. Obama got a few mod punches in, too; his best moment during the debate came when he told Lehrer that he still had 5 seconds to talk because Lehrer interrupted him.

6. Talking point orgy.

Like every performance of choreographed political theater, while both candidates dropped a lot of numbers, they weren’t really talking specifics. Lots of sentences like this one from Romney: “I’ll restore the vitality that gets America working again.”

Reflect on that for a moment. Is that a motto for a vibrating Japanese face sponge? What does that even mean? What vitality? Working how? Restoring back to what? How does someone respond to that? “Restore? The only restorations you’ll do on America’s vitality is the kind that old lady did when she ruined that Jesus fresco in Spain.”