By Selwyn Duke

Hey, just blame it on Bush.

The consensus on the presidential debate
last night is that Barack Obama could resurrect the Choom Gang and star
in a remake of Dazed and Confused. Conservative pundits are all aflutter with praise and liberals are all on Twitter with groans. Andrew Sullivan wrote,
“Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp
statements of passion or argument; he wasn't there.” A very upset
Michael Moore tweeted, “This is what happens when u pick John Kerry as your debate coach.” And million-dollar-donor Bill Maher chimed in,
“Obama made a lot of great points tonight. Unfortunately, most of them
were for Romney.” Well, don’t feel too bad, guys. At least he did
slightly better than when he debated Clint Eastwood.

Chris Matthews, clearly perturbed that he’s lost that tingling feelin’, asked,
“Where was Obama tonight? … What was he doing…?” Chris, he was doing
what he always does: nothing well. It’s just that you’ve finally
noticed.

And now, after the Denver dose of reality, can we finally put to bed
the myth of Obama the intellectually gifted? Yeah, I know, after eight
years of a media narrative about Bush the cranially compromised, it was
easy to say that, hey, now we’re getting the smart guy. As Joe Biden put
it, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is
articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a
storybook, man." Or, at least, that’s the story by the book — of cultural affirmative action (CAA).

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