President Barack Obama is at a slight disadvantage due to his incumbency when compared to Mitt Romney — while Romney can devote his entire life and all his time to wresting Obama from the Oval Office, the Commander-in-Chief must contend with the whole running the free world thing as well as dodging barbs from the Romney camp.
And now that the respective National Conventions have come to a close, it’s time to focus on debate season, which is like post-season for us political junkies. And as you’re stocking up on microbrews and organic, artisanal popcorn to prepare for the debates that rapidly approach, President Obama has been working on fine-tuning his wordiness in order to best perform in debate format.
During the DNC, Mitt Romney is said to have been holed up at a buddy’s Vermont home to prep for the home-stretch of the election season, while Obama made appearances and campaigned to maintain the DNC bump. But now the president is forced to cram to catch up to his opponent after the convention showing, and aides say he’s working on giving concise answers for the tightly-controlled debate format.
Republican strategist Ron Bonjean says that Romney has another advantage — the seeming dozens of Republican debates that led up to his nomination. The experience gave Mitt an edge in the format, and Bonjean explains :
“Romney is at a considerable advantage going into the debate because of the sheer amount of GOP debates he successfully navigated only months ago … Although Obama is an incredible speaker, he doesn’t often hold news conferences or allow himself to be challenged.”
Dem strategist David Axelrod concedes that President Obama’s got some editing to do before he hits the debate stage — Axelrod says:
“He’s spent a lot of time reading material and most of it is familiarizing himself with what Governor Romney said in this campaign … I mean, he’s pretty conversant with his own record but he wasn’t very conversant with Romney’s … He’s got to speak shorter, that’s all. He just hasn’t had to do that for the last four years so that’s a part of the discipline of preparing for these debates.”
Are you looking forward to the debate season ahead of the election?
