Josh Barro, Columnist

Romney Won Tonight, But Does It Matter?

October 4, 2012 at 3:43 AM UTC

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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The most surprising fact about tonight’s debate is that President Obama spoke for four minutes longer than Mitt Romney did. It certainly didn’t feel like that watching the debate, in which Romney seemed to have far more to say than Obama.

The two biggest knocks on Romney as a candidate are that he is wooden and that he is allergic to policy specifics. Yet on the opening question, about how to create jobs, Romney offered an answer that was both more heartfelt and more specific than the president’s. Romney was the stronger debater throughout the night, but especially in the first 20 minutes, he completely dominated.