Romney, crushed: The essence of the second presidential debate

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to James Fallows, who knows a thing or two about such things, this is one of the iconic photos from Tuesday's second presidential debate:

The Obama team had clearly thought about one long-term tic in Mitt Romney's debate demeanor: His apparently uncontrollable vulnerability to being flustered if he thinks the "rules" are not being enforced. "I'm speaking... it's my turn." Thus pictures like this, with Romney in a "teacher! teacher!" mode.

It's certainly one of them, capturing part of the essence of the debate. Romney was remarkably rude throughout, objected whenever he didn't get his way, and didn't want anyone telling him what to do.

The thing is, it wasn't so much that Romney thought the rules weren't being enforced, it was that Romney was trampling all over the rules pretty much from the start.

This is what so angered Chris Hayes. Romney's refusal to play by the rules -- interrupting constantly, talking over both President Obama and the moderator, Candy Crowley, not answering the questions, acting the bully and even at times seeming to be trying to put Obama (a black man, lest we forget) in his place ("you'll get your chance," etc., etc.) -- is indicative not just of Romney's self-aggrandizing sense of entitlement but more broadly of how the oligarchy (the word Hayes used) rules America by playing by its own rules.

And this is very much the essence of Mitt Romney. He's a super-rich oligarch, a plutocrat. He doesn't really want to do this whole democracy thing. He just wants everyone to obey him, and to be handed the presidency because he thinks he deserves it, wealth equating to virtue in his plutocratic mind. It's the sense of privilege and entitlement that we've seen over and over again from Romney, and it was on full (and ugly) display Tuesday night.

But of course it wasn't just Romney whining and pouting and bullying. Over the course of the debate he simply unravelled. He lost question after question, and after the Libya debacle in particular, when Obama called what he was saying "offensive" and Crowley called him out on his lie that Obama didn't call the Benghazi attack an act of terror, he was done.

You could see it in his eyes, and it's always in his eyes that you can see what's going on inside. They got more and more glossy, even appearing wet at times, as he knew that the debate was getting away from him, that the president was crushing him. He got more and more desperate, pulling out bullshit lines like "apology tour" to describe the president's approach to foreign policy (note: there was never any such thing, and Obama has never said anything like it), and a photo of Romney with that look in his eyes, like when Crowley exposed him, would be just as "iconic" as the one above, if not more so.

The debate, after all, wasn't just about Romney's rudeness and sense of entitlement, it was about the president turning him into a pile of poo.