To say Mitt Romney debated an empty podium (or was it an empty chair behind an empty podium?) would hardly suffice to describe Romney’s performance. For the final 40-50 minutes I heard on the radio, I felt that Romney did at worst a decent job of pointing out some key differences between himself and the President.

The reaction to the debate certainly seemed to generally agree with my thoughts, although the reasons why have been fairly interesting. The minute I logged onto Twitter, I was barraged with a stream of positive reactions to Romney’s performance and announcements of even Obama-friendly pundits calling the debate an Obama loss.

Then came the Big Bird tweets. Apparently just because Romney thinks PBS can survive on its own, it means he is (once again) a terrible, terrible person? I grew up watching Big Bird and company myself, but Sesame Street has become a bit of a self-sustaining industry, so maybe Romney has the right idea.

The reactions actually responding to the performances of the candidates by themselves were a bit more focused, and yet sometimes almost as bizarre as the reaction to “firing Big Bird.”

Take an article published October 5th at The New Yorker’s website. According to “old friends” of President Obama, he was “never known as a particularly good debater” and, according to Obama mentor Laurence H. Tribe, “Obama’s instincts and talents have never included going for an opponent’s jugular. That’s just not who he is or ever has been.”

I suppose this would be a reasonable explanation, except that it left Obama wide open for Romney to go for his jugular: Job creation.

Regardless of the claimed 5 million private sector jobs created under Obama, the unemployment rate is still at least as high as it was when he took office. Let’s not forget that the number of workers not participating in the labor force has also gone up—a 4.58 percent increase since October 2010 compared to a 0.88 percent growth of the active labor force according to a recent Senate Budget Committee report.

Of course, Obama’s best attempt to give the appearance that he was fully engaged was probably his repeated claims that Romney’s tax plan includes a $5 trillion tax cut mainly focused on the wealthy and big corporations. You know, the usual suspects.

The problem is Obama attempted to say this tax cut, whatever its actual size, would add an equally sized deficit to the national budget. Never mind the fact that Romney said he would also reduce or remove certain yet to be specified tax credits. That wouldn’t be conservative of Romney, right?

That’s not my main point, but the takeaway here is that Romney explained specifics of his planned approaches to solving America’s problems. Meanwhile, Obama attempted to implicitly remind everyone why “Hope and Change” was such an awesome campaign slogan with references to the Clinton presidency and promises of fully implementing his new favorite policy “Obamacare.” I can only imagine why Romney won.

Greg Sainer is a senior communication studies major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].