Politics as entertainment
By 
This Andrew Sullivan post takes the view that the first debate has come close to handing the election to Romney. That claim — based largely as far as I can tell on the results of one three-day post-debate tracking poll — seems like a huge exaggeration, but it does highlight the essential absurdity of the whole “debate” rigamarole.
Obama has been president for four years. Mitt Romney is understood even by most of his supporters to be a political opportunist of the first order, who will use an occasion like one of these deeply phony infotainment pseudo-events to say whatever he needs to say to maximize his chances of getting elected.
That anyone — even what are described delicately as “low-information voters” — would base any part of their vote on a candidate’s performance (le mot juste) in one of these things is a sobering thought.
Time for another drink!