Presidential Debates Vocabulary

But there may have been no single better opportunity for Obama than on the question of preëxisting conditions and health-care reform.

(CROSSTALK)

LEHRER: Just -- let's just stay on taxes for (inaudible).

Scoring a television debate performance is like scoring figure skating: if nobody falls down, and if neither one finds a way to trip the other, then you are looking for energy, commitment in the turns, and a sense of verve.

But there may have been no single better opportunity for Obama than on the question of preëxisting conditions and health-care reform.

There's no question in my mind that if the president were to be reelected you'll continue to see a middle-class squeeze with incomes going down and prices going up.

To reduce federal debt, Obama said last night that his starting position was to seek one dollar in new tax revenue (by raising tax rates on families earning more than $250,000 per year to the rates that prevailed during the Clinton Administration) for every two and a half dollars in spending cuts.

There is the dialect of preconceived zingers.

I’ve been reminded of Richard Nixon’s five-o’-clock shadow in 1960; the George H. W. Bush “check my watch” moment, in 1992; and Michael Dukakis’s excruciating 1988 answer to Bernie Shaw’s hypothetical question about whether he’d favor the death penalty for somebody who raped and murdered his wife.

The problem is that he's been asked over 100 times how you would close those deductions and loopholes, and he hasn't been able to identify them.

There are miniaturized thematic speeches, also rehearsed.

It's just -- it's -- we've got -- when the president took office, 32 million people on food stamps; 47 million on food stamps today; economic growth this year slower than last year, and last year slower than the year before.

We have overrated and fetishized a certain version of civility that is, in truth, not at all civic.

But that is the same theory of deficit reduction that has been discredited by the dismal fiscal record that followed George W. Bush’s tax cuts.

Clearly, Obama’s campaign made a deliberate, front-running, and perhaps complacent choice not to provoke Romney by rerunning his “forty-seven per cent” remark, reminding voters of the low tax rates Romney has paid on his large income, or criticizing his time at Bain Capital.

And the answer is neither the president nor I are proposing any changes for any current retirees or near retirees, either to Social Security or Medicare.

That much is inarguable.

One is to simply leave a whole bunch of people uninsured and let them fend for themselves, to let businesses figure out how long they can continue to pay premiums until finally they just give up, and their workers are no longer getting insured, and that's been the trend line.

I want to provide tax breaks for companies that are investing here in the United States.

Similarly, the insurance companies are gambling each time they take on a new customer.

$716 billion we were able to save from the Medicare program by no longer overpaying insurance companies by making sure that we weren't overpaying providers.

He acknowledged proudly that he would pull the plug on “Sesame Street”’s Big Bird; surely there is a less emotionally fraught, child-unfriendly example buried in the federal government’s long list of budget line items that he would cut.

I used to consult to businesses -- excuse me, to hospitals and to health care providers.

As a businessperson, I had to have -- I need to know the regulations.

It's energy and trade, the right kind of training programs, balancing our budget and helping small business.

Obama’s most effective moment, on this critical substantive difference, came when he reminded the audience of an answer Romney gave during a Republican primary debate, when he was asked the sort of pointed question that was absent last night:

When Governor Romney stood on a stage with other Republican candidates for the nomination, and he was asked, would you take ten dollars of spending cuts for just one dollar of revenue, and he said “No.” Now, if you take such an unbalanced approa...

So now I want to hire another 100,000 new math and science teachers, and create 2 million more slots in our community colleges so that people can get trained for the jobs that are out there right now.

In the past couple of days, in my role as D.P. (designated prognosticator), I’ve read the dispatches about both candidates decamping to the West for a couple of days of intensive prep.

Instead, he again and again asked President Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney simply to clarify their differences—a civic-minded sort of request, but about as far from Ted Koppel’s biting inquiry in the heyday of “Nightline” as it was possible for a moderator to move in such an important forum.

“Jim—I—you may want to move on to another topic,” Obama declared after twenty-one consecutive minutes of dense, mostly opaque exchanges about tax policy at the start of the debate.

And as commander-in-chief, that is something that I've worked on and thought about every single day that I've been in the Oval Office.

Reagan’s “there you go again” came in the course of a fairly intense exchange, by both candidates, about Medicare and the arguments for national health care and catastrophic insurance, one is which Carter was making a fair amount of sense, just a bit too tepidly.

Reagan’s “there you go again” came in the course of a fairly intense exchange, by both candidates, about Medicare and the arguments for national health care and catastrophic insurance, one is which Carter was making a fair amount of sense, just a bit too tepidly.

The sum total of his proposal on that score, as presented on his Web site, is this: “Prevent discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage.”

But when it comes to health insurance, especially in this country, nothing is that simple.

That is, I want to bring down rates.

Think of insurance as one big series of bets and hedges, both by the insurers and by the people being covered.

And -- and that kind of top -- top-down economics, where folks at the top are doing well, so the average person making $3 million is getting a $250,000 tax break, while middle-class families are burdened further, that's not what I believe is a recipe for economic growth.

Romney acknowledged, if obliquely, that his position is that he will seek a balanced budget by raising zero new taxes while taking an axe to federal spending across the board—except defense.

As a temporary measure, that can be a decent deal, but COBRA is typically quite expensive: in addition to the premium you paid when you were still at that old job, you’re also responsible for your former employer’s share of the costs, and you no longer get the tax benefits that come with an employer-provided plan.

How we pay for that, reduce the deficit, and make the investments that we need to make, without dumping those costs onto middle-class Americans, I think is one of the central questions of this campaign.

There wasn’t much unrehearsed speech during last night’s debate at the University of Denver.

So now I want to hire another 100,000 new math and science teachers, and create 2 million more slots in our community colleges so that people can get trained for the jobs that are out there right now.

LEHRER: We'll follow up on this.

I know that you and your running mate keep saying that and I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's just not the case.

“With respect to preëxisting conditions, what Governor Romney has said is for those with continuous coverage, he would continue to make sure that they receive their coverage.”

If they need to visit a doctor for something relatively cheap, like a checkup, they can pay out of pocket; if they suddenly run into an expensive health issue, then they can just buy insurance on the spot, and get the care they already know they’ll need at a significant discount.

If Romney does well on Wednesday and then holds his own in Hempstead, the “comeback kid” narrative could well gain ground.

But you also had banks making money hand over fist, churning out products that the bankers themselves didn't even understand, in order to make big profits, but knowing that it made the entire system vulnerable.

As to where money to fund deficit reduction, Medicare, and Social Security would come from, without any new taxes, Romney said, “The revenue I get is by more people working, getting higher pay, paying more taxes.”

He acknowledged proudly that he would pull the plug on “Sesame Street”’s Big Bird; surely there is a less emotionally fraught, child-unfriendly example buried in the federal government’s long list of budget line items that he would cut.

Reagan’s debate triumphs are remembered as being about defusing, rather than engaging challenges (“I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”);

This is, theoretically now, a second segment still on the economy, and specifically on what to do about the federal deficit, the federal debt.

And what Reagan was denying was that he would ever consider cutting Medicare (something he did within a few months of taking office).

And I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life”—confirmed the general impression that he was a soulless technocrat, and his own staff’s suspicion that he wasn’t up to the task of getting voters to warm to him.

Conservatives will point out that the Affordable Care Act is not the be-all, end-all of health-care reform, and they’re right.

It means that—Governor Romney talked about Medicaid and how we could send it back to the states, but effectively this means a thirty per cent cut in the primary program we help for seniors who are in nursing homes, for kids who are with disabilities.

Romney acknowledged, if obliquely, that his position is that he will seek a balanced budget by raising zero new taxes while taking an axe to federal spending across the board—except defense.

He acknowledged proudly that he would pull the plug on “Sesame Street”’s Big Bird; surely there is a less emotionally fraught, child-unfriendly example buried in the federal government’s long list of budget line items that he would cut.

What is striking, when one looks at lists of top moments in Presidential debates, is how little they seem to have to do with substance, and how much with style, or politesse, or what, taken together, might be called civility.

So, in the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said, let's help to finance the Transcontinental Railroad, let's start the National Academy of Sciences, let's start land grant colleges, because we want to give these gateways of opportunity for all Americans, because if all Americans are getting opportunity, we're all going to be better off.

For one thing, there’s the “continuous coverage” issue: if you’re fired or laid off or just plain quit, and then you go without insurance for a while before you find a new job, you’ll go into that new job unprotected for any health problems that you already have.

He said he and his son calculated how much they pay in taxes, federal income tax, federal payroll tax, state income tax, state sales tax, state property tax, gasoline tax.

It means that—Governor Romney talked about Medicaid and how we could send it back to the states, but effectively this means a thirty per cent cut in the primary program we help for seniors who are in nursing homes, for kids who are with disabilities.

The approach that Governor Romney's talking about is the same sales pitch that was made in 2001 and 2003, and we ended up with the slowest job growth in 50 years, we ended up moving from surplus to deficits, and it all culminated in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

It means that—Governor Romney talked about Medicaid and how we could send it back to the states, but effectively this means a thirty per cent cut in the primary program we help for seniors who are in nursing homes, for kids who are with disabilities.

There is the dialect of argumentative policy talking points.

But I wouldn't designate five banks as too big to fail and give them a blank check.

Part of Romney’s plan is based on existing federal law—specifically, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)—that already makes insurers provide coverage to certain people with preëxisting conditions, but to varying degrees and only under specific circumstances.

This is a -- this is a tax in and of itself.

But you also had banks making money hand over fist, churning out products that the bankers themselves didn't even understand, in order to make big profits, but knowing that it made the entire system vulnerable.

If you believe that we can cut taxes by $5 trillion and add $2 trillion in additional spending that the military is not asking for, $7 trillion -- just to give you a sense, over 10 years, that's more than our entire defense budget -- and you think that by closing loopholes and deductions for the well-to-do, somehow you will not end up picking up the tab, then Governor Romney's plan may work for you.

That's number one.

Clearly, Obama’s campaign made a deliberate, front-running, and perhaps complacent choice not to provoke Romney by rerunning his “forty-seven per cent” remark, reminding voters of the low tax rates Romney has paid on his large income, or criticizing his time at Bain Capital.

And so I just want to wish, Sweetie, you happy anniversary and let you know that a year from now we will not be celebrating it in front of 40 million people.

There are miniaturized thematic speeches, also rehearsed.

To reduce federal debt, Obama said last night that his starting position was to seek one dollar in new tax revenue (by raising tax rates on families earning more than $250,000 per year to the rates that prevailed during the Clinton Administration) for every two and a half dollars in spending cuts.

When it comes to making college affordable, whether it's two-year or four-year, one of the things that I did as president was we were sending $60 billion to banks and lenders as middlemen for the student loan program, even though the loans were guaranteed.

(LAUGHTER)

You know, four years ago we went through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

It is easy enough to understand why insta-pundits and insta-polls rated the event that way.

And when it comes to education what I've said is we've got to reform schools that are not working.

We've got 23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work in this country.

There wasn’t much unrehearsed speech during last night’s debate at the University of Denver.

We've going to make sure that you've got to have a living will so -- so we can know how you're going to wind things down if you make a bad bet so we don't have other taxpayer bailouts.

First, we've got to improve our education system and we've made enormous progress drawing on ideas both from Democrats and Republicans that are already starting to show gains in some of the toughest to deal with schools.

Clearly, Obama’s campaign made a deliberate, front-running, and perhaps complacent choice not to provoke Romney by rerunning his “forty-seven per cent” remark, reminding voters of the low tax rates Romney has paid on his large income, or criticizing his time at Bain Capital.

Romney needs to seize the moment; Obama needs to avoid screwing up; Lehrer, the veteran PBS anchor, needs to find some way to try to break through all the pre-prepared pabulum and attack lines that the candidates have been rehearsing.

Every school district, every state should make that decision on their own.

But Team Romney will willingly take that trade-off.

People in the coal industry feel like it's getting crushed by your policies.

What you did instead was to push through a plan without a single Republican vote.

Two national surveys—one from ABC News/Washington Post and the other from CNN/ORC International—have found the race so close that it’s within the margin of error.

Bill Clinton does—first by quickly establishing empathy, but then by arguing that empathy isn’t enough, running through a series of statistics, and saying that the woman’s friends are hurting “because we are in the grip of a failed economic theory.”

And we know where it came from: two wars that were paid for on a credit card; two tax cuts that were not paid for; and a whole bunch of programs that were not paid for; and then a massive economic crisis.

(It’s particularly ironic, by the way, that we’d have to wait until after Romney was elected President to know all the specifics of his proposals, considering how hard Republicans went after Nancy Pelosi for saying, of the A.C.A.,

One is to simply leave a whole bunch of people uninsured and let them fend for themselves, to let businesses figure out how long they can continue to pay premiums until finally they just give up, and their workers are no longer getting insured, and that's been the trend line.

(By the way, under HIPAA, you can be uninsured for a period of up to sixty-three days and still be considered continuously covered.

Romney needs to seize the moment; Obama needs to avoid screwing up; Lehrer, the veteran PBS anchor, needs to find some way to try to break through all the pre-prepared pabulum and attack lines that the candidates have been rehearsing.

Clearly, Obama’s campaign made a deliberate, front-running, and perhaps complacent choice not to provoke Romney by rerunning his “forty-seven per cent” remark, reminding voters of the low tax rates Romney has paid on his large income, or criticizing his time at Bain Capital.

Romney had more of that, and for once, he managed not to seem goofy or out of touch.

And using that money, we were actually able to lower prescription drug costs for seniors by an average of $600, and we were also able to make a -- make a significant dent in providing them the kind of preventive care that will ultimately save money through the -- throughout the system.

Joe Lieberman was awfully civil to Dick Cheney; as a result, audiences learned less about who Dick Cheney was than about how very pleased Lieberman was with the idea of his own niceness.

(LAUGHTER)

You know, four years ago we went through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

For all the reasons I’ve been banging on about ad nauseam in recent weeks, he’s still a long shot (a very long shot), but here are six reasons why his campaign will be going into Denver with their hopes up:

1.

OBAMA: But the fact of the matter is that some of the prescriptions that he's offered, like letting you buy insurance across state lines, there's no indication that that somehow is going to help somebody who's got a pre-existing condition be able to finally buy insurance.

The problem with raising taxes is that it slows down the rate of growth.

The president has a view very similar to the view he had when he ran four years, that a bigger government, spending more, taxing more, regulating more -- if you will, trickle-down government -- would work.

Social Security is structurally sound.

Now, you know, that may not seem like a big deal when it just is, you know, numbers on a sheet of paper, but if we're talking about a family who's got an autistic kid and is depending on that Medicaid, that's a big problem.

Simply buying insurance is, in a way, a gamble: any given year, you might not have any health-care costs at all, in which case insurance would be an unnecessary, and costly, expense—or you might have to undergo a series of very expensive procedures that would, if you weren’t properly insured, end with you going bankrupt.

Most members of the punditocracy, this one included, have largely written Romney off as a gaffe-plagued loser, and the public has got the message.

The polls may move against Obama some over the next week or two, but the polls also show an enormous gap in voters’ attitudes toward the candidates on basic questions about the social contract, such as who will better protect Medicare, who will manage tax policy more fairly, and who will look out for the middle class.