Nobody wins a debate, but education loses this one

ROMNESIA-- The unique ability to ignore what was said yesterday in order to say what is expedient today.  -- Believed to have first been used by President Obama during a speech Oct. 19, 2012, in Virginia.

Why is it that all the news coverage following a presidential debate involves who won and who lost?  The substance of what's said during the debates is lost among the next-day polls  and the constant blustering about winners and losers and gothcha moments the pundits think is important enough to fill the 24-hour news cycle.

What did they count in the first debate, 38 lies, misrepresentations and position reversals by Mitt Romney, but by every measure the news people tell us he won the debate and because of this received a bump in the omniscient polls.   And the reason he supposedly won was because President Obama took a reserved, more presidential demeanor, rather than get down in the muddy ditch with Romney.

Case in point: One statement Romney made in the first debate has yet to show up in any news story or opinion piece I have seen (if you can tell the difference any more).  He was asked how he would improve education in the United States, a pretty simple question.  As with every other question posed to this charlatan, his answer went to jobs.  I want to create jobs, he said, and with jobs people will have the money so they can move to a neighborhood that has better schools. WHAT????  How wealthy of him to say that.  Get rich with  a Romney-created job and leave your home and neighborhood so your kids can go to a better school.  It was surprising he didn't suggest paying to enter them in private school, like he did.  It is like it is outside his patrone consciousness that most people even when they have a good job slinging hamburgers can't afford or don't want to move to a better school district or send their children to Exeter.  After all, that's what the Romneys do.

And how the hell does students moving from one school district to another improve the education system?  It may give a few individuals a better education and then again maybe not.  First, what happens to the students who can't move?  How do they get a better education that could lift them out of their situation?  There wasn't even a hint of a suggestion how to improve schools for that portion of the population that even with new income can't or don't want to "move on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky."

Second, what would this huge migration of students whose parents now have prosperity with Romney jobs do to the schools in the better districts.  Romney once said school class size doesn't matter, so maybe in his world this isn't even a problem.  But, seriously, what happens when you overload classes in the better districts?  You get just what overcrowding does to schools everywhere else, overworked, stressed teachers; less individual attention to each student; less money to spend for each student; breakdowns in discipline, and an eventual decline in the quality of education.

However that is the partician Romney's plan for improving the education system in America:  Give a guy a job so he can move to a better neighborhood where the schools  are better.  Of course, education also will be better served when Mom is home every day by five to put a hot meal on the table and wash the clothes, too, another Romney program to improve life for the country's great unwashed.

But Romney won the debate according to people who apparently know how to score that sort of thing.  I don't because, you see, I came up in a school district that didn't think it was important to offer debating either as a class or a sport.  No one won either debate.  There was no scoreboard, no inning by inning tally of points,  no statistician, nothing, just impressions of demeanor, attitude, speaking ability, aggression, passivity, and a sort of celebrity-driven culture's image-influenced impressions of victory.

And education lost.  Romney did no put forth one idea that might improve education in this country.  But there is another aspect to his education policy.  Both he and his vice presidential pal Paul Ryan have proposed cuts to education funding as a way to their precious goal of balancing the budget on the backs of a majority of Americans without inconveniencing their rich pals.  And in the background sits their favorite pundit Rush Limbaugh, who voiced the opinion that teachers do not generate wealth, so do not help grow the economy, so by implication they are good targets for budget cutting.

But, Romney won that first debate. It was in all the news outlets, all over the Internet, in the papers, on TV, so it must be true.  Remember the old camera ads with Andre Agassi?  Image is everything?  That is the only way he could have "won."

What's wrong is that it's not important who won or lost.  What's important is the substance of what's said, the opportunity for the general public to hear where the candidates stand on various issues, an opportunity for the public to see the differences between candidates so as to make a more informed decision when they vote.  Waiting until the next day to hear talking heads tell us who won serves nobody.

Actually there is seldom an obvious winner in any traditional sense in a debate like these; mostly winning is in the minds of people who already supported one or the other of the contestants.  However, judging by what we have seen so far, a fairly substantial number of people are losing.