Romney is doing a hard sell: “I feel your pain, and I’m going to do a better job than the president of making it easier for you.” One of the bizarre dynamics here is that he’s attempting to co-opt several strengths of the Democrats, while Obama (for reasons that escape me) is doing very little to argue against the underlying principles of the Republican position. (His attack against the negatives in the word “entitlements” is a welcome exception.)

This is part two of what Romney is selling that not only I’m not buying, but that I don’t think that most people will either.

I’m picking up this screen cap from Part 4 of the debate on YouTube: Romney has just said “Fourth” and is running through his reasons why Obamacare sucks. It’s at 1:31 of the segment.

It’s a headroll and a pursing of the lips, and it’s pompous as hell. It’s the facial expression of a guy thinking, “I can’t believe you’re so stupid that I have to explain this to you in the first place.” To be clear, I don’t think that he’s actually thinking that, but I think that it’s a bit of that personality coming through.

I never quite understood why W was the guy people wanted to have a beer with—a recovering alcoholic being about as appropriate for that as a Mormon (and it’s Obama who has his own brewer)—but conceding that people did think of him that way, then these are arguments he could make. Romney’s not the guy who innately sells “I care about the poor deeply and I’ll do more for them than the other guy will.”

For that matter, neither is Obama; the impression I’m getting tonight is that health care and the economy are interesting problems to solve, not things he cares about deeply. (I don’t believe that’s true. It’s just that he’s talking like a technocrat.) But Obama doesn’t have as strong a need to make the sale as Romney does.