STUCK IN A MOMENT YOU COULD AT LEAST TRY TO GET OUT OF

I don't agree with his insistence that Mitt Romney is an honest man, but I think National Review's Yuval Levin has a point otherwise:

In the days since last week's presidential debate, the Democrats have fallen into a very peculiar sort of disarray. Four days on, they are still, and apparently on purpose, sustaining the "Romney won big" story by furiously making excuses for Obama's poor performance. He didn't do that badly, but listening to Obama himself, his campaign, and his bewildered surrogates the last few days you would think that Obama was utterly destroyed by some kind of evil genius who was equal parts master actor, pathological liar, and bully. You should watch the debate again to see how silly this is. And it's hard to understand why the Democrats continue to advance this story. I bet that if you polled people today about who won and lost the debate, Obama would do even worse than he did in Wednesday night’s instant polls, thanks to his and his campaign's continuing self flagellation.

I agree -- drop the Artie Fufkin act:





Obama's been witty in attacking Romney as two-faced, and he's been witty doing a mea culpa.

But enough. The longer his campaign talks about Wednesday's debate, the longer the main political story in America is "Obama did a horrible job in Wednesday's debate."

Now it's possible that President Chill-Out-I-Got-This is thinking that the news cycle will change soon, and that will make this as much a memory as a dozen other allegedly campaign-ending moments for both sides. It's possible that Obama is looking at polls suggesting that Romney's bounce puts him no better than even, which means that, if the bounce fades rather than creating momentum, Obama's lead will seem secure again soon.

But Obama and his team could try helping to dig the news cycle out of its rut. Try making some news -- you're a major-party nominee and you're the president, dammit. At least drop any references to the debate, even in ads -- OK, sure, I'd make an exception for Big Bird references -- and get surrogates and party members to do the same. The sooner this isn't the subject, the better for Obama.