Romney Schools Obama on How the Economy Works

We reached some definitive answers about President Obama during Wednesday night’s debate, the kind of answers we should have obtained when he was running the first time.

First, Obama doesn’t understand how the economy works at all. It took a Mitt Romney to school Obama about basic things like how “investing” in losing enterprises, like green energy company Solyndra, took funds away from other more worthwhile endeavors, or how the private sector can lower costs better than government through competition, or how seniors will suffer as ObamaCare cuts payments to Medicare providers, resulting in less doctors who will treat them. While Obama stumbled and stammered his way through each segment of the debate, Romney appeared as almost a fatherly figure, schooling his “crazy kid” on the facts of life.

Second, Obama was totally uncomfortable in the debate forum. As Tom Stemberg, Co-founder and former CEO of Staples said to Neil Cavuto, following the debate, “President Obama is terrific on his feet when no one is challenging him to the facts.”

We have seen Obama’s irritability when challenged in other situations before, but it was emphatically confirmed, in his entire demeanor, for a full 90 minutes during the debate. His failure to initiate eye contact with Romney, his looking to Jim Lehrer, the moderator, to change the subject, and his adolescent smirking, as if he were being chastised by a parental figure, all contributed to the impression that Obama was “turned off” and, perhaps, feeling inadequate.

Barack Obama does not know how to effectively handle a challenge because he has not had to learn how to do it in the past. This factor is as much his problem as it is the fault of the traditional media that allowed him to sail into the presidency without being properly vetted. In letting Obama slide, the former mainstream media sealed its prized candidate’s fate.

Mitt Romney proved that he is up to the challenge of being President of the United States. Primarily, he demonstrated a command of the substance of the problems facing the nation, an ability to stand up to inaccuracies about his policies–a must for handling the media–and, perhaps most importantly, a vision for how to change the course of the nation based on the vision put forth by the founders in the Constitution.