I suspect Obama lost the first debate because he’s bone idle

Doesn’t he want another four years in office? Has he been too worn down by the cares of his office to spend time preparing for the occasion? Is his record simply too abysmal to defend? Is he ill?

I suspect the real reason for Obama's dreadful performance last night – and it was unbelievably dreadful – is that he was just too damned lazy to prepare properly, and came a hideous cropper as a consequence. He looked like nothing so much as a schoolkid or a junior employee tasked with preparing a presentation, but who’s been allowed to get away with so much crap in the past that he’s been goofing off, confident he can wing it: you could almost see an “Uh oh – I’m screwed” thought bubble form above his head and the energy drain from his body as he realised just how seriously under-prepared he was.

You could almost hear the post-cock-up interview with his boss – “Barry, you know I’ve always had your best interests at heart – but I have to ask myself if your future really lies with this company, or whether you wouldn’t really be much happier somewhere less… taxing?”

Obama’s laziness has been a regular topic amongst the US right-wing commentariat since he took office. Back in 2009, Ed Lasky wrote this in American Thinker:

Does it seem he just doesn't like to do hard work?... Are all these habits just manifestations of a horrible ethic when it comes to work? A friend of mine once criticized Barack Obama for not having an honest bone in his body. I responded that may be true -- but he sure does have plenty of lazy ones.

On 22nd August, Charles Gasparino had this to say in the New York Post:

The president should have his hands full. Yet even before his reelection campaign kicked into high gear, there was mounting evidence that Obama may love to give speeches, think deep thoughts and hammer his opponents, but he hates the nitty-gritty of governing… In fact, based on much of the evidence over the past three-plus years, it’s hard to think of another recent president who cares less about the actual job of running the country.

Just a couple of weeks ago Mark Steyn had this to say about Obama’s lascklustre formal response to the death of an American ambassador:

The president is too lazy and cocksure to have learned any prepared remarks or mastered the appropriate tone, notwithstanding that a government that spends more money than any government in the history of the planet has ever spent can surely provide him with both a speechwriting team and a quiet corner on his private wide-bodied jet to consider what might be fitting for the occasion. So instead he sloughs off the words, bloodless and unfelt: “And obviously our hearts are broken . . . ” Yeah, it’s totally obvious.

(You can read the whole piece here.)

If the sheer awfulness of Obama’s performance was down to a lack of preparation, that’s not necessarily good news for Romney. Unless Barry’s fantastically stupid, or four years of hiding in the Washington political bubble being fawned over by an adoring media (who have collectively disgraced the profession of journalism, much as the British media did  during Tony Blair's first term in office) have left him utterly divorced from reality, one has to assume that he’ll be doing nothing from now on apart from preparing for the next debate.

Let’s hope he decides that that sounds like too much effort and that he instead decides to do what he's always done - play golf, hang out with his showbiz buds, and make autocue speeches to his adoring fan-base. In which case, the rest of the American people could start preparing for their very own Ceaucescu moment.

Even if Obama manages to pull himself together in time, we in Britain will have had the pleasure of watching the likes of Mark Mardell and Matt "Arbeit Macht" Frei trying to explain how an intellectually-challenged, gaffe-prone religious maniac of a no-hoper like Romney managed to kick the crap out of the coolest and most intelligent cat of his age - His Holiness the Prez.

Here’s what a panel of undecided voters thought about the contest:



For all our sakes, let’s hope they’re typical!