Josh Barro, Columnist

Romney Lost Tonight. So Did America.

October 17, 2012 at 3:42 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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I guess you want to know who won the debate, and the answer is PresidentBarack Obama. He was as alive tonight as he was asleep two weeks ago. Hedefended his record and called out Mitt Romney on his flip-flops. Romney lookeddefensive and rattled, particularly when he badly botched the exchange onLibya.

But setting aside the horse race, I found the substance of tonight’s debateincredibly depressing, because neither candidate made a remotely convincing casethat he can fix America’s economy.