RUTHFULLY YOURS

I have not made a secret of the fact that I would vote for Bozo the Clown or Donald Duck — or even a box of cornflakes — before ever casting a ballot for Barack Obama. Not only because of his disastrous foreign policy, which directly affects me as an Israeli, but also because of his appalling attack on free-market economics — something that involves my pocket. As a U.S. citizen, I am forced by American tax laws to pay lots of my hard-earned shekels to the potential Ponzi scheme we know as Social Security. And I certainly wouldn’t want to hit retirement age and be told that the till I had been filling was empty.

Luckily, the Republican contender for president is not a cartoon character or a breakfast cereal. In fact, Mitt Romney is a likeable guy with values I share, both about what America’s role in the world should be and about what a government’s role in society should not be.

Still, since I want ahim to be elected, it does matter to me what others think of him. That is why I became a bit disheartened two weeks ago when I arrived in the United States for a visit.

The fact that the press is coddling the incumbent and publishing polls indicating an Obama victory on November 6 came as no surprise. Nor have the statements from die-hard Democrats been unexpected. But I’ve been distressed by the response of my Republican friends, whose fear of defeat has made them hyper-critical of their candidate. Romney’s fine — they concede — but he’s no Ronald Reagan. Even Ronald Reagan himself was no Ronald Reagan at this point in the lead-up to his slam-dunk against Jimmy Carter in 1980, but that has not encouraged the nervous nellies among them. Beating the phenomenon that is Barack Obama, they say, requires more than mere charm and good politics; it calls for a superhero.

Well, last night’s first debate between Obama and Romney seems to have caused a seismic shift in that attitude. Romney wasn’t merely cool, knowledgeable, and presidential throughout the hour-and-a-half spar; he wiped the floor with his rival effortlessly. And though all the pundits agree that there was no specifically memorable “aha” moment during the debate, they gave a clear win to Romney. Even Obama supporters suggested that maybe their guy doesn’t do so well without his teleprompter.

It is now the Democrats who are down in the dumps, for the moment at least. They have been so busy trying to persuade swing voters that Romney only cares about the rich; that he will tax the middle class; that he will rob the 60-somethings of their pensions; and — the most ridiculous of all — that he will “throw granny off the cliff.” Indeed, this last idiocy has been part and parcel of the Obama campaign, which asserts that Romney doesn’t care about the poor, the needy, or the wheelchair-bound “grannies.”

Given Romney’s personal and political history, this particular piece of nonsense is as laughable as it is ludicrous. Nevertheless, it has gained some traction in the public, most of whom understand economics about as much as I do — which is to say that our eyes glaze over when we are quoted percentages and figures in the billions and trillions, especially when they are accompanied by decimal points.

All Romney had to do to counteract the claims about his fiscal plans for the future was to say that they were false. It was sweet to watch Obama get stumped by this. It never occurred to the Commander-in-Chief that he would be faced with an opponent in the debate who might actually contradict him.

Romney’s words and demeanor allayed anxieties among many floating voters about his granny-slaying tendencies. The only person they saw Romney pushing off a cliff last night was Obama.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring,’” now available on Amazon and in bookstores in Europe and North America.