Jenkins: Two Puddings, No Theme

Barack Obama was in better form for his second presidential debate with Mitt Romney, but the president's political cynicism remained unchanged in this inconclusive battle of the soundbites.

• By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

Barack Obama, if the truth be known, is a bit of a political cynic.
He didn't mind that his way to the Senate was cleared by divorce-related scandals, flogged by a friendly Chicago media, that drove his two most potent rivals, one Democratic and the other Republican, out of the race.
In his presidential campaign of 2008, amid the bouquets of flowery rhetoric, he offered few crunchy policy commitments and no analysis of the country's challenges that might suggest discomfiting choices. He rejected an individual health-care mandate, saying (cogently) if health insurance were a good buy, nobody would need to be forced to buy it.

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At the presidential debate in Hempstead, N.Y., Oct. 16.

This year, until the first debate, his campaign was based not on his record or on saying what a second term would consist of, but on painting a lurid picture of Mitt Romney. The outcome of the first debate meant this approach no longer was sufficient, so Tuesday night had a bit of suspense: What was the new Obama strategy?


Not that new, it turned out. When a student asked about jobs, the president did his Bain number on Mr. Romney.
When a voter asked about gas prices, Mr. Obama tried to take credit for fracking, without using the word, though somehow we recall his talking about an "energy revolution" in 2008 that had nothing to do with a domestic fossil-fuel boom.
On taxes both candidates hearted the middle class but not the "wealthy." That didn't stop Mr. Obama from rehearsing that all the country's problems are due to Republican favors for the wealthy that Mitt Romney would continue.
It wasn't enlightening, but the president showed the necessary aggressiveness. Mr. Low-T was banished for the night.
His voice was strong. In defending his administration, he took advantage of the fact that things happened across four years in office that sound good to voters. He "ended" the Iraq war. He signed a bill that women in the workplace might like. He even made a bad economy sound like a virtue—because it reduced the flow of illegal job-searchers across the border to the lowest level in decades.
Mr. Obama, as is his custom, delivered commonplaces as if they were revelations: "Our diplomats work all around the world." Who knew? This by way of a stentorian rendition, so far unconfirmed by any reporting, that he instantly knocked heads to hold accountable those responsible for the recent screw-up in Benghazi, Libya.
Mr. Romney conceded: "The president is great as a speaker and a describer of his plans, except that we have a record to look at," and laid out once more the sad history on jobs and deficits.
Mr. Romney broke one bit of new ground, reminding us of things the president promised, including getting a start on entitlement reform, on which the president did nothing.
Through it all, CNN's Candy Crowley was a presence equal to the candidates. It was her show. She let them know it.
Mr. Obama's troubles in the first debate have been attributed to bubble syndrome. The president has forgotten what it's like to be challenged, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that he still hasn't crystallized a case for his re-election.
When a young lady asked about equal pay and women in the workplace, Mr. Obama touched the usual points expected of a Democrat, and then seemed to segue to health care—but it turned out only to talk about contraception policy under ObamaCare.
This is a shame. The town-hall format would have been the perfect venue for an outbreak of non-cynical campaigning by the president. A non-cynical campaign would be a full throated and relentless defense of his biggest achievement, straight into the teeth of public skepticism.
The public is skeptical about ObamaCare. Mr. Obama doesn't help by trying to low-key it. That just reinforces the impression that his reason for seeking office in the first place was to enact policies he wants that the public doesn't.
It reinforces the impression that the Obama agenda is a secret agenda; his campaigns are devised to snow the public into empowering a retinue that has its own ideological goals that it hesitates to advertise openly.
Mr. Romney also missed a chance to crystallize the case for his election. It's not just that Mr. Obama hasn't created enough jobs, so let's try somebody new. The case should be: The country is on a path to extraordinary fiscal disaster, and it will take an extraordinary exercise of political leadership to get to a new path. Mr. Obama has not shown the leadership to fix, or even appreciated the challenge created by, his mounting, unsustainable deficits. The Romney record is of building teams, getting agreement, getting things done.
If you tuned in to see the candidates vigorously repeat their soundbites, it was a draw. If you tuned in to see each candidate make the best case for his election, it was a draw, but in a different way.