One of the zingers of tonight’s debate was President Obama’s comeback at Mitt Romney’s complaint that our Navy is smaller "than any time since 1917.” Obama first replied, “I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works.” He followed that up with, “You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships that we had in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them.” But never fear, Republicans, because Fox came quickly to Romney’s rescue with the ridiculous suggestion that President Obama was wrong.
Bur first, Brit Hume called Romney “smooth and fluid” and that he didn’t flub anything. President Obama, on the other hand had “a very intent look on his face. I wouldn’t describe it as a mean look. I would describe it as a man looking for opportunities to strike.” On the other hand, Romney had “this kind of benign default expression” with a “slight smile on his face but not a smug one.” That led Hume to “wonder” if he had “the more attractive default expression.”
So you’ll notice that Hume never said Romney won.
Then came Chris Wallace for a fact check. But first, Wallace, too, slobbered over Romney – also without saying he won the debate. Wallace said that if he didn’t know better, he would have thought Mitt Romney was the president and that Obama was the “challenger trying somewhat desperately to catch up.”
The first fact check was over Iraq and Obama’s accusation that Romney wanted to leave 10,000 troops in Iraq. Somehow, Wallace changed that to a question over whether Obama wanted a status of forces agreement and pretended that Obama had denied trying to get one. In reality, Obama was suggesting Mitt Romney had argued the U.S. should have kept more troops than Obama wanted. Wallace was correct that President Obama tried and failed to negotiate a status of forces agreement but he wanted to leave 3,000-4,000 forces. So Wallace was calling Obama out for something he had never said and gave Romney a pass for what he did say.
But that paled in comparison to Wallace's ridiculous attempt to paint Obama as wrong on bayonets in the mlitary. With a malicious grin, Wallace said, “Well, as it turns out, in the middle of the debate, after he heard (Obama's statement), a Marine tweeted Fox News and said the Marines still use bayonets. So it may be not be clear (sic) who doesn’t understand what the military currently uses.”
Um, not even close. First of all, Obama never said the military doesn’t use bayonets at all. He said the military uses "fewer horses and bayonets.” The Washington Post wrote that the military “almost certainly” uses fewer bayonets than it did in 1916, noting, “U.S. Marines still train on bayonets in boot camp… but the Army discontinued bayonet training at its basic training facilities in 2010.”
Don’t tell me Wallace didn’t get the gist of what Obama meant. If Wallace had to grasp at these straws to prove Obama wrong, it indicates he had a very good night indeed. But it wasn't just I who thought so. Three polls found Obama won. And guess who else agrees? FoxNews.com readers. Here's a grab from their voting results as of a few minutes ago.