With just four short weeks to go until the election, the 2012 race for the White House has tightened up considerably. Romney's performance in the first presidential debate has given him a solid boost, for now, and Obama is slipping in a number of very key states. Romney has still not "sealed the deal" by any stretch of the imagination, but then again, neither has Obama -- even though a week ago, that's where it looked like he was heading.

Barring an unforeseen "October Surprise" of some sort, we've got three big political events remaining. The vice-presidential debate happens tomorrow night, and there are still two presidential debates on the calendar. Days before the election, one more monthly unemployment number will be released, but the impact this will have may be minor, since history shows that the closer any political event is to voting day, the less impact it tends to have (for better or for worse).

Before tomorrow night, we'll be hearing a whole lot of "vice-presidential debates haven't ever mattered," mostly uttered by the same people who told us, a week ago, that "presidential debates rarely change anything." Since these nattering nabobs of negativism (to use a famous vice-presidential phrase) were wrong before, one has to at least consider that they may be wrong again. Tomorrow's debate may matter a great deal to the voters. The first presidential debate was watched by a jaw-dropping record number of viewers (upwards of 70 million), and it's all anyone's been talking about since in the political world (even the Big Bird stories were tied in to the debate). So perhaps quite a few folks will tune in tomorrow night as well, and perhaps Joe Biden and Paul Ryan may prove to move public opinion this time around.

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Taking an overview of the 2012 election can quickly lead one to some awfully cynical conclusions, such as "American politics is broken," or the more succinct "Washington is broken." After all, politics is supposed to be about issues, but politicians (especially on the campaign trail) are more interested in high-flown language rather than getting all nitty and gritty with details. The whole situation leaves me with a rather bizarre feeling: missing the likes of H. Ross Perot.

In 1992, the candidates from both major American political parties seemed to come to a handshake agreement that certain issues would be conveniently ignored on the campaign trail. Which was part of the whole rise of Perot on the scene. Perot paid for his own infomercials where he would use folksy, down-home language to describe the problems he thought were being ignored (with exhortations like: "You have to pull the car over the side of the road and look under the hood!"). This, eventually, forced Clinton and Bush to talk about things they would really rather have not addressed in the campaign.

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Among Barack Obama supporters, panic seems to be setting in after his first debate performance was roundly panned. National polls have pulled back into a neck-and-neck contest. This is all fun for the pundits, who (pre-debate) were on the verge of declaring the race all but over (and, hence, boring), but we hasten to remind everyone that this is not how we elect presidents. The national popular vote is meaningless -- just ask Al Gore. Presidential elections are won and lost state by state, which is how this column series examines things.

Having climbed up on our high horse, however, we're going to immediately climb right back down and offer up a bunch of caveats before we begin. State-level polling has a higher chance of inaccuracy, to begin with. Also, state polling is done much less frequently than national polling, so it can take longer for the numbers to show movement. While the polling data has been streaming in on the state level pretty steadily for the past few weeks, it is never as up-to-date as the national polling, so trends take longer to show up. Also, one general caveat about all polling, national and state: it always takes longer for voters' reactions to show up than the casual poll reader might think. So while the debate was last Wednesday night, the effects are just beginning to show up in the polling now, and the effects of the unexpected downward movement of the unemployment number on Friday still largely has yet to show up at all. These things take time, folks. The true picture of where we are won't solidify much until next week, to put it another way.

One last note before we move on to the charts -- from now until the election dawns, we'll be putting out one of these Electoral Math columns once a week, every Monday, to keep closer track of how the race looks. OK, let's get on with it:

[Click on any of theses graphs to see larger-scale versions.]

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The first presidential debate of the 2012 season happened this week, and (it pains us to say) the only person who called the outcome correctly was Chris Christie. Last Sunday, he predicted a "game changer" of a debate, and that we'd all wake up Thursday with a whole new race and a whole new opinion of Mitt Romney. While we rarely agree with Chris Christie about much of anything, we've got to at least hand it to him -- in the midst of the usual pre-debate expectations-lowering game, he went rogue and predicted a big win for his guy, and he turned out to be correct.

I personally became somewhat worried about Barack Obama's debate preparation when I heard that John Kerry was playing Mitt Romney in Obama's debate prep sessions. Now, Kerry's a nice guy and all, but he doesn't exactly seem like someone you'd want to prepare you for a free-for-all with a Republican. OK, Romney and Kerry share lots of superficial characteristics (both from Massachusetts, both wealthy, both devoid of any shred of charisma), but their personalities are completely different. Next time, maybe hire someone along the lines of James Carville for Romney's stand-in, perhaps.

The other big takeaway from Obama's performance in the debate is that quite obviously the folks in the West Wing haven't been reading this column as religiously as they should. There were many opportunities for Obama to pull out a snappy comeback to Romney Wednesday night, and Obama completely ignored just about all of them. If this was some sort of pre-planned strategy, it utterly failed.

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Due to the flexibilities of the English language, that title could have been reversed, without losing its meaning: "Formatting Debates" would have worked just as well. Because while last night I wrote out my insta-reactions to the first presidential debate of the 2012 season, today I'm going to pull back and look at the big picture on the small screen (so to speak).

Last night's debate format was unusual in this day and age. This was reportedly why Jim Lehrer "unretired" to moderate one last presidential debate. It was supposed to be the crowning achievement of a stellar career which included running numerous debates in past years. The overwhelming consensus today is that Lehrer should have stayed retired, and rested on his laurels, because if this was a crowning achievement it was more like a paper crown at a kid's birthday party.

Now, look, I love and respect Jim Lehrer (more so than I do Big Bird). In a world sadly populated by well-dressed, manicured, overcoiffed helium-brains pretending to be "journalists" on television (because they appear non-threatening and oh-so-down-home-folksy while reading lines someone else has written), Jim Lehrer is a giant among midgets. He is usually extraordinarily sharp and has a wealth (and depth) of experience to draw upon. The MacNeil/Lehrer Report (as it used to be called) not only broke journalistic ground, but redefined how good television news could indeed strive to be. The man is a journalistic icon -- with no "scare quotes" necessary around the journalistic bit. Having said all of that, Jim had one of the worst nights of his professional life last night. I've heard some people out there today attempting to defend Barack Obama's performance last night, but I haven't noticed anybody defending Lehrer's.

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There is a whole lot wrong with the way the media reports debates, on that we can all agree, I think. The overemphasis on who "won" and "lost," for starters. The inevitable boiling-down of ninety minutes into a nine-second soundbite from both candidates (which we'll see everyone agree on by tomorrow morning).

In writing about debates, I don't think I've ever called a "winner" and "loser" because it's so rare that a debate happens where one candidate is so overwhelmingly better than the other. And often times the lessons the media takes away from the debates is the wrong one -- some "bad gaffe" that the voters didn't care much about when it actually happened.

So all I'm saying, up front, is don't look for "Obama won!" or "Romney won!" sorts of pronouncements in this column, because they won't be forthcoming.

Caveats aside, here are some general thoughts before I peruse my notes taken during the debate itself. I thought both candidates turned in an adequate, but not overwhelming, performance this evening.

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Obama Gains Ground

Shockingly, after a half a year of virtually no news whatsoever, last month was actually newsworthy in the world of presidential job approval polling. Barack Obama had a good month, and hit a noteworthy milestone in the percent of Americans who approve of the job he's doing.

One note for clarification -- while we know that the rest of the political universe is currently focused on the "horserace" polls this close to an election, what we're discussing here is not Barack Obama's standing with Mitt Romney, but instead whether those surveyed approved of the job Obama is currently doing. An important distinction.

But enough caveats, let's get on with the show, beginning with the overall chart of how Obama's doing:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

September, 2012

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You'll have to forgive the pundit world of late. Political wonks are all in a collective breath-holding moment, as we all sit nervously awaiting the first presidential debate of the season. We tell each other that it's going to be a big event -- possibly the biggest -- in the race for the White House, whether we actually believe this to be true or not. But because we're all waiting for the main event, there is actually time to sit back and examine how Republicans are proving that one of their own put-downs of President Obama was laughable nonsense from the very get-go. I speak (without notes, to be snarky) of "TelePrompTer Obama" -- the caricature which stated that Barack Obama was nothing more than a good speech-giver, and absolutely could not function speaking in public without the crutch of a prepared speech scrolling past his eyes.

This caricature began approximately the day Obama took office, and has been used scathingly by Republicans over the past four years. Obama was nothing more than a puppet, Republicans sneered, tied by the strings of his TelePrompTer, and unable to form a coherent thought or sentence on his own.

This was all ridiculous nonsense, of course, but that didn't stop the Republican Party from having a field day with it. Politicians have been using these devices since the time they were invented -- yes, even Republican politicians such as (say it softly) Ronald Wilson Reagan. The whole slur made about as much sense in the modern world as denouncing a politician for speaking into a microphone. TelePrompTers are hardly "new-fangled" devices, to put it another way. They've been around and been used for decades (although, as we've noted before, the media still has a major problem with the odd capitalization in the brand name, much the same way they got confused over "Etch A Sketch" and "Chick-fil-A" of late... but I digress).

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Mitt Romney has been fighting the image of himself as plutocrat for his entire campaign. He seems to be losing that fight, and just when the whole "47 percent" thing starts receding in the media's focus, here comes yet another "plutocrat moment."

It seems Mitt is a helpful guy, especially when a neighbor needs a hand parking his yacht. Really -- you just can't make this stuff up, folks. Mitt Romney's a regular guy after all, since he helped tie up the boat belonging to the executive chairman of Marriott International.

Unsolicited advice to the Romney campaign: this is not the way to convince voters that your candidate isn't Thurston Howell III. I'm just sayin'....

In other news, Mitt Romney is apparently now less popular than George "Dubya" Bush. That takes a real effort, in this day and age.

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Next up on the presidential campaign schedule: debate season!

The first debate between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama will take place in less than a week, next Wednesday. The inside-the-Beltway chattering class has decided that the first debate is Mitt Romney's last chance to turn the tide and get the public on his side heading into the election. Of course, the second and third debate will also be billed in exactly the same fashion ("It's make-or-break time, folks!") because more conflict means more viewers.

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