The Sun's not yellow it's chicken

Common sense (never mind all the examples of successful political campaigns) tell Mitt Romney to never raise expectation for a debate, yet that’s exactly what Romney is doing.

Now Obama is playing the exact opposite game, he’s doing it right.  Obama has a reputation as a great speaker, a man who is great with audiences and yet the Whitehouse is playing DOWN his expectations as much as they can, even as they pump up the Romney expectations.

The problem is, if people are going into these debates thinking that Obama is going to do ten times better than Romney, and he only does twice as well, that means Obama failed to meet expectations… and that Romney exceeded expectations.

Expectations define most of our experiences.  We’re humans, we are subjective even if we like to pretend that we are rigidly objective. If we pay less than we expect we are happy, if we pay more than we expect we are unhappy — regardless of prices elsewhere. 

Use the word “Disappointed” if it helps.  If Obama doesn’t do as well as expected people will be “Disappointed” with him, even as others will be “Pleased” with Romney.  So to keep people from being “Disappointed” with Obama they are downplaying expectations.

Romney isn’t though.

I have to guess that he is genuinely retarded, or he is going to pull a Dubya Bush and throw the first debate.  See, that way you set the bar really, really low, and when you come back for the next debate you wildly exceed expectations.

But it won’t work.

Romney doesn’t have the love affair with the media that Dubya Bush had, but Obama does.

So, yes, here’s the latest example of Romney pulling a boner:  Setting the wrong expectation.

Man, what an idiot…