Immediately after watching the second Obama – Romney debate, I, along with the majority of the viewers and commentators, concluded that Obama won. But as I collected my thoughts and wrote my initial response, I found that I had actually written a piece that was less about why Obama won, more about why Romney lost. I knew I had to write a follow up.

In the meanwhile, Roy Ben-Shai sent in a very different interpretation, which I thought was important to share. He thought that as the President won the battle of the moment, Barack Obama, the principled political leader who can make a difference, lost. While Romney didn’t win, the empty game of “politics as usual” did. I am not sure that I agree with his judgment, but I do see his point.

The quality of Obama’s rhetoric and argument is one of the four main reasons why I think that Obama has the potential to be a transformational president, which I analyzed fully in Reinventing Political Culture. Obama has actually battled against sound bite and cable news culture, and prevailed. But not last Thursday: Ben-Shai is right. Obama beat Romney not by playing the game of a strikingly different political leader, capable of making serious arguments in eloquent ways, establishing the fact that there is an alternative to the politics of slogans and empty rhetoric, but by beating Romney at his own game, dominating the stage, provoking with quick clipped attacks and defenses. The idealist in me is disappointed, but I must admit only a little.

Tough practical political struggle is necessary and not so evil. Democratic political persuasion can’t replicate the argument in a seminar room or a scientific journal. The rule of the people is not the rule of the professoriate and advanced graduate students, and it’s a good thing, keeping in mind the extreme foolishness of distinguished intellectuals cut off from the daily concerns of most people. Popular common sense helps avoid intellectual betrayals, untied to everyday concerns. The challenge is to somehow be tough in the day-to-day political struggle, including the world of televised debates, responding to immediate concerns, and still contribute to serious public deliberation about fundamental principles. I believe this happened in both debates, with Romney winning the first popularity contest and Obama the second, and in my judgment, Obama actually winning the implicit serious debate that is embedded within the political spectacle.

In both debates, two starkly different visions of America and two strikingly different programs for America were presented. In both debates, Romney was fundamentally dishonest, proposing a five-point program that has no substance, promising a great deal that is quite contradictory and unworkable: cutting taxes, increasing defense spending, balancing the budget, through closing unspecified loopholes and reducing deductions of the rich, and growing the economy (purportedly by cutting taxes on the job creators, i.e. the rich). It just doesn’t add up and makes little sense as a way to actually addressing the economic challenges. And as we will hear tonight, I suspect, he also promises to make America great again by “never apologizing,” demonizing China and pretending that the problems associated with the world historic civilizational transformation occurring in the Muslim and Arab worlds are all the fault of Barack Obama.

I should add, as I declare Obama wins the serious debate, I am also aware that Romney is now mounting a serious challenge. I am not as sure as I have been about my prognostications.

The commentators agree that Romney, despite the contradictions and thinness of his program, has the momentum, and the President has to tell people how the next four years are going to be different. I was struck by an exchange on The Chris Mathews Show on Sunday morning. The panel, Andrea Mitchel, Chris Mathews, Michael Duffy, Jonathan Martin and Kathleen Parker, a moderate to liberal bunch, agreed that there is a problem. Obama has to make a case for four more years. They wondered together “why has he not laid out what he is going to do?” They viewed it as “the central mystery of the last part of this campaign”: why hasn’t he laid out what he is going to do? Is entitlement reform? Is it military reform? Is it tax reform? Is it all three?” Or is it more industrial policy, auto industry? Why wait until after he is elected? Martin told the cynical purported truth: it wouldn’t be popular: cutting a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, including cutting entitlements. The auto industry bailout is popular in some key states, but not in the rest of the country. They also agreed closure on Libya is pressing. This is the mindset of the mainstream pundits. It is also the campaign line of the Romney campaign: Obama has run out of steam.

Yet, I don’t understand this slogan and this analysis. Obama promises to stay true to his principles and implement them, moving “FORWARD” (his campaign slogan). A budget deal that includes tax increases and spending cuts. This makes sense and is popular, and it is projected to reduce the deficit by 3.8 trillion dollars in a decade. He will also work to sustain a robust recovery, by investing in infrastructure and pushing education reforms. From elementary schools to universities to green industry, he sees an active role of government as a key to economic recovery. In this regard, he will work to consolidate the advances of his first term, by implementing health care reform and regulations of the financial abuses that caused the financial crisis, i.e. the Affordable Health Care for America Act and Dodd-Frank. Obama is steady. He will follow through. And of all of Obama’s announced plans comprehensive immigration reform is a new initiative that is likely to be implemented. His victory would be thanks to the Latino vote and my guess is that enough Republicans will take notice to support significant reform.

While it is quite unclear who Romney is, whether he will be the servant of the Tea Party or the Massachusetts moderate, and how his proposals add up, Obama promises a steadfast political persona, a centrist moving the center to the left, a second term that enacts this position. This choice was apparent in the two debates. If the choice is clarified, Obama wins. More tomorrow, after tonight’s debate.

As a strong supporter of Barack Obama, I found the debate last night painful. Romney performed well. Obama didn’t.

I take solace in a dial group session by a respected  Geoff Garin, which found that sixty percent of the study group of undecided voters and weakly committed Democrats viewed Obama favorably for his performance, and that eighty percent of this crucial group after the debate saw the President as more likable and down to earth. And on key issues, Obama decisively prevailed on improving the economy and on Medicare, though the group did marginally shift to Romney on taxes. A small study suggested that a key target audience of the debate didn’t go along with the talking heads.

I also am somewhat relieved by Nate Silver, the statistics guru now publishing at The New York Times, who first made his name in sports, then in politics. He judged, using a football analogy, that Romney in his strong debate scored a field goal not a touchdown or the two touchdowns that Silver earlier declared Romney would have to score to win in November. He gained only a slight advantage.

Yet, as I watched the debate and then listened and read a great deal of commentary, not sleeping through most of the night, I worried that an Obama defeat seemed again to be a possibility, if not a probability. Just about all the commentators and instant polls judged that Romney won the debate, though the meaning of the victory was contested: from nothing has changed, to a reset, to the beginning of the end for Obama.

I want to believe, as also has been discussed, that the debate presents an opportunity for Obama (with the support of his powerful campaign staff), known for his impeccable timing and strategic prowess, to counterpunch in ads and speeches and in the coming debates. I certainly would like to believe that Barack Obama, as Muhammad Ali would put it, was playing “rope – a – dope,” and still “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.”

But beyond the winning and losing, and the sports analogies, I think that the debate itself was a success and a failure to the degree to which it actually provided an opportunity for the public to consider the pressing issues of the day and the alternative approaches Romney and Obama are proposing.

They mostly debated the question of the role of government in supporting economic growth and the creation of jobs, along with taxes and Medicare and Obamacare, but they didn’t debate many other key domestic issues: race, immigration, abortion, the courts, LGBT rights, the power of corporations and as I suspected yesterday, the profound problem of poverty in the United States, in a society that has been defined by not only freedom but also equality, as Tocqueville explored, but has become ever more and profoundly in-egalitarian. The moderator, Jim Lehrer, ignored all this and more. This is deeply troubling.

Nonetheless, the competing political philosophies of the two candidates and the two parties were in clear view, as a solid piece in this morning’s New York Times reports. In this regard, despite Romney’s much better performance, I am not sure that he was convincing. Indeed, the study of independents’ response suggests that he may not have been.

Romney and Obama both underscored last night, as they have been highlighting throughout the campaign, that this election posed a clear choice. Yet, note that Romney tried to fudge this when it came to his hyper–individualist, pro-corporate approach on Obamacare and Medicare, on tax justice and the means of promoting job growth, and on regulations. The fudging was a key to the success of his performance, but I am not at all sure that it was convincing.

While he made it clear that he opposed Obamacare for pragmatic and principled reasons, he pretended that he supported all that is good with Obamacare, without explaining how this would be possible. He promised he would lower tax rates, avoid any tax increases and cut deficits (also increase the military budget as Obama highlighted) simultaneously by closing unspecified loopholes and limiting unnamed tax deductions of the rich, but not the middle class. This fantasy which defies both common sense and expert opinion, he claimed, will unlock the power of the market and the job creators (aka the rich) to do their work to produce jobs (not just to enrich themselves). And most remarkably, he suggested that he would control the abuses of Wall Street, without supporting the major legislation that moves to do this, Dodd-Frank. Eliminating unnecessary, job destroying regulations is central to his economic plan, but last night he amazingly presented himself as a rational regulator. And he would do all this and be bi-partisan too.

Although he was slick in his presentation, I doubt that this was convincing to a public that has grown to be skeptical about his constancy and uncertain about who Romney really is, what he believes and what he will do. For Republican moderates, such as David Brooks and Mike Murphy, a former Republican campaign operative, , the polished technocrat on the stage last night was the real Romney. They were ecstatic on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS (support of which Romney promised to cut out, despite his professed love for Big Bird). Yet, given the performances Romney has been giving for the last two years, Romney, the severe conservative, I am not at all sure that the public will understand. No wonder un-decideds and weakly committed Democrats were apparently not as convinced as the initial commentaries were. And the instant polls were about who won, not who was convinced. A real argument did happen, but the judgment of the public is very much still out.

Maybe the night didn’t go as badly as I had first thought.