For the first time in his life

Paul Rahe:

What happened last night was predictable. Mitt Romney was well prepared and, without being uncivil, he went on the attack...[h]e laid out broad themes, and it was easy to foresee what he would say. It was easy because Barack Obama is a sitting duck. His is a failed Presidency -- and everyone who has been paying attention who is not blinded by partisan passion knows it.

Obama inherited a recession and, without bothering to disguise what he was up to, dedicated himself to exploiting it for the purpose of jamming through a radical program, dear to his party, that never had public support. About the recession, he did nothing, assuming that the economy would bounce back quickly, as it usually does, and that he would get the credit for the recovery. In fact, everything that he did do when he and his party were fully in control -- the looting bill thinly disguised as a stimulus bill, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank -- retarded the recovery.

I was surprised at those who were surprised that a top student from Harvard Law and Harvard B school would be prepared with a solid case against BO.  Rahe outlines what happened:

 If Barack Obama seemed halting, uncomfortable, exhausted, and depressed last night, it was because he was saddled with defending the indefensible. What could he say?...

For the first time in his life, Barack Obama was cornered. For the first time in his life, he was to be held accountable for his achievements. He was the ultimate affirmative action baby, and he had always been given a free pass. He had always run -- for chairman of the Harvard Law Review, for the Illinois state senate, for the United States Senate, and for the Presidency -- on promise. Now he was an executive running for re-election, and he was going to be held responsible for what he had done and for what he had failed to do. And, to make matters worse, he had been deprived of his security blanket. He did not have a teleprompter to fall back on.

I wrote back in June that Obama would not fare well when he was finally confronted with his record.  He didn't.  I hope Rahe's crystal ball is working:

 I have long thought that there would be a landslide in November, and I have not been shy in advertising my expectations. I first became aware that a realignment was possible in the late winter and early Spring of 2009 when the Tea Party emerged. I became more confident that we were witnessing a seismic shift in American politics in August 2009 when older Americans appeared at town meetings to shout down Congressmen and Senators who supported Obamacare. At that time, I predicted that the Democratic Party would be decisively defeated in the November 2010 midterm elections. The only question left thereafter was whether Barack Obama would pull a Bill Clinton and negotiate a bipartisan debt-reduction deal with the Republicans in 2011. When he balked at the prospect, I figured that, if the Republicans found a candidate eager to win and willing to run as a principled admirer of the American constitution and of the free market, the President would lose and lose big.