Romney has an unfair advantage in these debates—all he has to do is collect the facts and figure out how to twist them in favor of himself.

Obama has to work twice as hard—he has to put away his knowledge and facts, and waste valuable time to gain command of the ‘ideas‘ Romney’s cotton-candy world has so few of, memorize all the lies the Republican’s candidate has been telling for over a year, and then memorize the truths that refute those lies. Then he has to defend himself against this mountain of horse-dung without seeming dismissive. I understand how the President must feel—I’ve never felt anything but ‘dismissive’ towards our little Mittley-Droid—well, I take that back. When I heard about his high school bullying of a gay kid, I felt pure disgust. But then I went right back to ‘dismissive’.

Obama didn’t want to look him in the eye. Damn right—Romney, the ‘Grand Old Idiot’, doesn’t have a case for winning other than his demonstration that he’ll bend in the direction of the strongest wind—without pause or scruple, lying and flip-flopping. And, if he did win, he would continue to lie to us all for the worst potential four years of Republican mismanagement that will have ever been inflicted on the USA (And I say that knowing just how badly we were misled by his predecessor, Bush W). If I had to look that goon in the face while he made stupid jokes about our 20th anniversary, I’d have lost my mind. So I, for one, can attest to Obama having way more self-control than me. How about the rest of you? Could you really stay on that stage for 90 minutes without spitting in Romney’s eye and calling him a big, fat liar?

To pay attention to the words that come out of Romney’s rictus is to give him the same accord as an honest person. It’s like showing respect for that clown in Stephen King’s “It”. It is hideous, its presence may fill us with fear, but we do not ‘respect’ it any more than we respect Cancer. We just wish we were somewhere else.

I would feel much safer if everyone wasn’t so impressed by his ‘energized’ lies and reverses during the first debate. The Republicans, in courting the Fundamentalists and Big Business, have become an ugly bunch of folks. They are expert in lying because they haven’t stopped for twelve years and practice makes perfect, I guess. They have also been unforgivably brick-wall-like in putting all our legislative needs, including budgets, on hold so they can blame the President for this legislative deep-freeze. They want to replace the President and put those disastrous agendas back in place which caused the collapse that Obama has been digging us out from under, these last four years.

What gets me is the incivility. And that is not solely because I could be described as a ‘pansy’ when it comes to civility—it is, rather, for the same reason I favor it so—it is the only sane response in a modern nation’s leader that will win through when facing the savagery still found in much of the world, including quite a few places right here at home. Civility is the responsibility to lead a nation without letting oneself get swept up in childish petulance, passive-aggressive obstructionism, or resentment over personal slights.

Our current President has that civility. He didn’t let it stop him from taking down Osama, or from taking out those pirates off the coast of Somalia, and he didn’t let his civility get swept away by the contrarian nature of the Republican campaign. Obama is strong—as strong as any President—but not in his impulses, only in his dedication.

A man can’t control a nation if he can’t even rule himself—and we see that lack of resolve in the pasted-on grin of the President’s debating opponent. Mitt Romney would do better to return to honesty and plain-speaking (if, indeed, he has ever stopped there) rather than outshout his President in a respectable, public debate.

It burns me up that the GOP is trying to worm their way into power, rather than challenging Obama and the Democrats with forthrightness and sensibility. Even if GOP platforms made sense (and they don’t) I would be loath to support their candidate on the sheer effrontery of their campaign. It isn’t just their showing a disrespect for responsible Government, or a disrespect for our sitting President—it is a disrespect for the intelligence of the citizens they hope to win over.

Lying has worked well for the GOP in the recent past—one can see where they might start to accept it as ‘good tactics’—but the lies are so tired, so roundly disavowed by third parties, so blatant and ludicrous, that we would have to be brain-damaged to offer them any credibility at all. God forbid the GOP ever told the truth—at this point, whatever they said, I would believe ‘the opposite of that’ to be true for years before I could afford to grant them any credence at all.