Obama and Romney’s campaigns take a nasty personal tone in second debate

Two good men are running for president. Both have a record of clean, honest, moderate positions as public servants, law degrees from Harvard, millions of dollars in the bank, and as far as anyone can tell, exemplary personal lives.

If they weren’t running so close in the polls, they might even like each other.

Instead, in front of tens of millions of American voters Tuesday night, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney put on a remarkable show of detesting one another. In a 90-minute whirlwind of spin and evasion, it seemed that the only thing the two candidates could agree on was that neither particularly enjoyed the company of the other.

What led to such animosity? Is it an automatic and natural outgrowth of competing for the same job?

The candidates themselves hinted at the culprit in their closing remarks.

“In the nature of a campaign, it seems that some campaigns are focused on attacking a person rather than prescribing their own future and the things they’d like to do…. The president’s campaign has tried to characterize me as – as someone who’s very different than who I am,” Romney chastised.

Moments later, Obama offered his own final statement, which began with the complaint that “a lot of this campaign, maybe over the last four years, has been devoted to this notion that I think government creates jobs, that that somehow is the answer. That’s not what I believe.”

The other side is lying about me, each side is saying.

In a 90-minute whirlwind of spin and evasion, it seemed that the only thing the two candidates could agree on was that neither particularly enjoyed the company of the other

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That theme came up during the most tense and agitated parts of the debate, such as when Mitt Romney charged that the Obama administration was mishandling America’s energy resources, contributing to rising costs of fuel. Specifically, he charged, “Oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9%. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands, and in federal waters.”

Obama retorted with what has become an overarching theme of the Democratic campaign nationwide: “Not true, Governor Romney.”

Romney, visibly angered, pressed the issue until he forced the president to pivot and explain why, specifically, he had in fact canceled a large number of permits: Because companies were failing to utilize them.

“How much did you cut them by, then?” Romney asked.

“Governor, we have actually produced more oil…” Obama tried to reply, but got cut off.

“No, no. How much did you cut licenses and permits on federal land and federal waters?”

“Here’s what happened,” Obama began. “You had a whole bunch of oil companies who had leases on public lands that they weren’t using. So what we said was, ‘You can’t just sit on this for 10, 20, 30 years, decide when you want to drill, when you want to produce, when it’s most profitable for you. These are public lands. So if you want to drill on public lands, you use it or you lose it.’”

Whatever voters might have seen in that exchange, it was hard to miss the simple fact that Romney had mischaracterized Obama’s permit cuts, presenting them as an irresponsible surrender to environmental concerns, while Obama had bluntly accused Romney of lying to the nation about the number of drill permits – before then tacitly acknowledging that Romney was telling the truth.

Similar exchanges were had on Tuesday on issues ranging from tax exemptions to Libya.

This election is by no means the first, and surely not the last, to have a fundamentally negative architecture, where each side’s strategy relies more on discrediting the opponent than on praising one’s own merits. After all, each candidate has more to gain from demonizing the other than from respecting him.

For the Obama campaign, the challenge is stark: to defy historical precedent by winning reelection despite 8% unemployment. How do you get reelected in a painful and stubborn economic downturn? Voters are uninterested in the details of banking deregulation under Clinton or deficit spending combined with tax cuts under Bush. After three and a half years, most voters feel – rightly or wrongly scarcely matters in politics – that Obama bears a great deal of the responsibility for the current state of the economy.

When it’s difficult to convince voters you’re a good choice, you have to settle for convincing them you’re the best of bad choices

Obama himself recognized this in a 2009 interview in which he said of America’s economic troubles, “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” (The interview is continuing to enjoy some online publicity, courtesy of the Romney campaign.)

When it’s difficult to convince voters you’re a good choice, you have to settle for convincing them you’re the best of bad choices. The solution, then, is to invest the campaign’s energy and resources not in improving Obama’s favorability ratings, but in painting the Republican challenger as an unacceptable alternative.

Clearly the same dynamic is taking place in the other direction. Incumbents usually have a slight advantage in an election, and unseating them can require an aggressive assault on their credibility among voters.

Tuesday night was judged “one of the most combative presidential debates in recent memory” by Politico.

And it was. But the most brutal battles were not over substance or policy, but over integrity and personality.

Two very worthy, very different candidates are vying to lead the American people through difficult times, and Americans have the right to hear substantive debates between such disparate ideological camps. Instead, much of the messaging coming from media outlets and campaign marketing is often little more than spin, misrepresentation and even outright lying.

The American people deserve better, particularly from those interviewing to be their leaders.