Here we are at last. It’s time for the first Pres­i­den­tial debate between Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney. Jim Lehrer mod­er­ates tonight’s debate, hosted by the Uni­ver­sity of Den­ver at 7:00 PM MDT. The focus this time is on domes­tic issues.

The domes­tic focus puts Rom­ney in a bit of a bind, since he has rea­son to strike while the iron is hot, with respect to the issues in the Mid­dle East. But he risks look­ing fool­ish if he comes across as mis­un­der­stand­ing the topic of the day.

And this brings us to a pre­view of tonight’s issues for each of the two candidates.

Mitt Rom­ney

Rom­ney has spent a great deal of time over the past few weeks prac­tic­ing for tonight. In par­tic­u­lar, he has been prac­tic­ing the deliv­ery of “zingers”, in the hopes of get­ting a good press bounce this news cycle. He cer­tainly can use such a bounce; thus far, he has squan­dered every oppor­tu­nity he had up to this point.

Rom­ney will almost cer­tainly focus on the high unem­ploy­ment and grow­ing national debt. Those are his strongest argu­ments, but they also have some weak points. The num­ber of jobs has returned to pre-​​recession lev­els, but the working-​​age pop­u­la­tion has increased, so the job­less rate remains stub­bornly high. And Romney’s eco­nomic plan shows a sharply grow­ing national debt as well.

The for­mer Gov­er­nor also has some major pit­falls he has to avoid.

He needs to give the impres­sion that he is the can­di­date for all Amer­i­cans. Given the domes­tic focus, Lehrer would be remiss if he didn’t ask about the 47 per­cent state­ment that came to light a lit­tle over a week ago. And Rom­ney would be remiss if he hasn’t been prac­tic­ing an answer to that very ques­tion. But it had bet­ter be an amaz­ing answer, because the 47 per­cent state­ment added fuel to the already roar­ing fire of his “I’m for the rich” meme, which has been turn­ing off sig­nif­i­cant parts of his base.

He needs to be very care­ful about how he dis­cusses Oba­macare. The indi­vid­ual man­date is still unpop­u­lar, but his shift from “repeal it all” to “keep every­thing except the man­date” is going to be a land­mine stud­ded field for him to navigate.

He needs to have an answer to his lack of detail on his eco­nomic plan. Promis­ing to cut tax loop­holes, and giv­ing a dol­lar fig­ure on it — but refus­ing to spec­ify which loop­holes they are — says he has some­thing to hide. He could have got­ten away with it if he hadn’t been so spe­cific with regards to the expected results. But once he did that, he has to show his work in order to be cred­i­ble. Peo­ple who aren’t already pre­dis­posed to vote for him see through this sort of thing. His $17,000 deduc­tion cap sug­ges­tion is inter­est­ing, but smacks a bit of being off the cuff.

And he needs to have an answer for his refusal to release his tax returns. If Lehrer doesn’t hit him on that, Obama surely will.

But most of all, he needs to come across as human. His stiff deliv­ery, look­ing uncom­fort­able even when he feigns com­fort, keeps his tele­vi­sion audi­ence at arm’s-length. It’s pos­si­ble to over­come that stiff­ness, but Rom­ney has so many dis­ad­van­tages at this point that he needs all the help he can get.

Barack Obama

Obama’s task is less dif­fi­cult in many respects. He’s ahead in all of the polls, espe­cially in sev­eral key states. He has a rep­u­ta­tion for being more per­son­able than Rom­ney. And he makes fewer ver­bal gaffes than his opponent.

On the other hand, he is expected to do bet­ter. And sit­ting Pres­i­dents tend to have a hard time in reëlec­tion debates. Part of this is the equal­iza­tion that occurs when the two can­di­dates share the same stage; it makes the chal­lenger look “Pres­i­den­tial”. Part of this is that Pres­i­dents nec­es­sar­ily live in a bub­ble, sur­rounded by peo­ple who don’t chal­lenge them much. When one gets used to every­one around say­ing “yes”, it’s irri­tat­ing to be around some­one who is chal­leng­ing at every turn.

And this is the source of Obama’s Achilles’ heel tonight. When he’s at ease, he can be really com­pelling. When he’s annoyed, he comes across as con­de­scend­ing and petu­lant. His job tonight is to stay at ease, and keep the arro­gance at bay.

Obama has the improv­ing econ­omy on his side — though it’s not a pow­er­ful argu­ment, given that it has been a weak recov­ery. He has the ben­e­fits that are already appear­ing from Oba­macare, ben­e­fits which are suf­fi­ciently pop­u­lar that Rom­ney has already said he wants to keep them.

All in all, this should be an inter­est­ing evening.

What do you think is going to hap­pen? What ques­tions would you like to see asked? How do you think the can­di­dates will respond? How will they do in gen­eral, and par­tic­u­larly against expectations?

The debate starts at 9:00 PM EDT (6:00 PM PDT). It will be car­ried by the major net­works, and will also be avail­able online streamed by YouTube. We look for­ward to you join­ing us tonight for the live event, and try­ing out our new com­ment­ing ser­vice as part of it.

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