I thought Romney started to lose his train of thought towards the end of the debate—a couple of times he seemed to launch into one of his old speeches to very different audiences, and then caught himself. I.e., “we’ve been endowed by our Creator” does not logically segue into a call for religious tolerance. There were several times throughout the debate when he wasn’t particularly smooth, but it seemed to get worse towards the end.

And why exactly was he bouncing up and down on his toes during his closing argument? He’s going kaboing kaboing kaboing the entire time, like there’s some soundtrack only he can hear.

As for Obama—same closing as his opening, which is to say that he started out decently and stayed decent, but there was certainly plenty of opportunities for improvement.

Last thing I don’t get: Lehrer was getting savaged on Twitter when the debate was live, and I just don’t see it. Sure, the two didn’t stick to the debate format. But when they went off script, they did continue making reasonably substantive points. Lehrer got the hell out of the way and let them talk. This might have been a fairly boring debate, but that’s because both candidates were wonky in their approach; I think Lehrer did a fine job of keeping them both talking, and I don’t see that enforcing time limits on questions would have improved on what was said.

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.

One-third of the way through the debate, and my initial impression: everyone on Twitter (and from I hear, in general media) is frickin’ insane.

Someone else made the Etch-a-Sketch comment before I got to it (Chris Matthews? don’t know, quoting Twitter), but Romney goes beyond that: this is Pod Person territory in the first 30 minutes. I’m halfway expecting him to promise everyone a pony.

Here’s the thing: I’m watching Romney and I’m finding what he’s saying to be literally incredible—it’s completely at odds with everything else he’s said before. It’s not winning any points with me, but it’s not supposed to; there’s nothing he could say that would switch me to being a Romney supporter.

But that’s precisely the question. All of the people saying that he’s hit it out of the park are presuming that a) he’s pitching to the undecided voter, and b) that these people are tabula rasa waiting for Romney to create a first impression. I don’t buy that. They might be disinterested, and they might be uninformed, but they show up tonight with a standing level of trust or distrust in both Obama and Romney. And if they’ve never heard of either of these guys, then that standing level of trust is going to be their general impression of politicians.

So if you want to make the case that Romney’s argument is winning him votes, then you have to presume that the undecided, uninformed voter is going to spontaneously trust him here. And I don’t buy that that’s happening: because he’s a politician, because he’s wealthy beyond the dreams of most people, and at least in part because he’s talking out of an orifice that’s pointed in a completely different direction than it has been since 2008.

We tend to assumed that uninformed, undecided people are stupid and that they have no prior knowledge. Not true. And not buying that this is a Romney win in any way that matters. If Romney went into the debate with more generally positive numbers about how he’s viewed personally, I’d be saying something different.