More thoughts from James Taranto:

We could spend hours quoting disparaging reviews of Obama’s performances from journalists who were never as head-over-heels as Matthews and Sullivan, but we like to pretend as if we have space constraints, so we’ll just take one representative example, also from the Daily Beast, where our friend Tunku Varadarajan writes: “My God, in the four years that we’ve seen him in the White House, I don’t think we’ve ever seen the president so flaccid, so dull-brained, so jejune, so shifty, so downcast.”

This columnist has to disagree. Obama’s lame performance last night seemed typical to us. We can think of a few occasions in which we’ve seen the president less flaccid, less dull-brained, less jejune, less shifty, less downcast. But only a few.

But these qualities–or, to put it another way, this lack of quality–was harder than usual to miss last night because of the contrast with the highly effectual Romney. One reason it came as such a shock to Obama is that it was the first time in his career that he shared a debate stage with a serious opponent.

Think about it: John McCain was feeble. Alan Keyes, whom Obama beat in his 2004 Senate campaign, was crazy. All the Democrats who ran in 2008 were preposterous except Hillary Clinton, and she, as a beneficiary of nepotism, was highly overrated as a politician. He used Chicago-style dirty tricks to dispatch his original opponent in 2004, as well as the state senator he replaced back in the 1990s. The test he failed last night is one to which he had never been put.

But the journalists who are pointing the finger at Obama have three fingers pointed back at themselves. Instead of challenging the president, the press corps–with a few honorable exceptions, like ABC’s Jake Tapper and the guys from Univision–have spent the past four-plus years puffing him up and making excuses for him. The American Spectator’s Jeffrey Lord explains:

The great James Taranto . . . long ago posited what is called the “Taranto Principle.” In short, it means that the liberal media so coddles liberal politicians that they have no idea how to cope outside that liberal media bubble. . . .

Barack Obama has been so totally coddled by the liberal media that he looked absolutely shell-shocked in this debate. Stunned, unhappy, angry, sour–and at some points genuinely incoherent.

Romney has had nowhere near that kind of treatment. He had serious opponents in the primaries–all of whom in their own way forced him to confront his ideas in a serious fashion. Conservatives were on his heels. The Obama media never let up. The man went through the political equivalent of boot camp.

Tonight, the Taranto Principle kicked in. Big time.

Outside the liberal bubble–forced to be alone on a stage with a very serious, very prepared candidate–Barack Obama was in trouble. Big Trouble.

One quibble, on a point of personal privilege: “Great” is not the right adjective. Isn’t “inimitable” in the Spectator stylebook?

Otherwise, though, Lord is right. What we saw last night was the real Obama–a bright but incurious and inexperienced man who four years ago was promoted well beyond his level of competency. The Obama that guys like Matthews and Sullivan expected instead was a character in a fairy tale–a fairy tale written by guys like Matthews and Sullivan.

Oh well, at least there are more debates. The last one, on Oct. 22, is on foreign policy, which is Obama’s strong suit. Then the handsome prince killed Osama bin Laden, and the ambassador lived happily ever after.

Ouch.

I think that it’s not so much that the emperor has no clothes as the clothes have no emperor.

More thoughts from VDH:

The problem for Obama is not that his performance was disastrous, but rather than it was his normal workmanlike coasting. But this time, and for the first time, he was pitted against a skilled debater who had both the better argument and the better intellectual artillery to deliver it. Disengaged cool could not cut it. “My/I/me/mine” first-person overload was of no value. “Make no mistake about it/Let me be perfectly clear” was of no use. “Bush did it” is passé. And the faux-patois of a Reverend Wright-like sermon had no place here. Obama was just Obama without the props.

And more of the theme of how his enablers have done him no favors:

The final irony? The real culprit for Obama’s disastrous night is not entirely Barack Obama, but rather the media training-wheels who assured Obama for years that he was riding on his own; when they went off last night, he immediately fell, and for some reason we are supposed to be surprised?

That’s the best metaphor I’ve seen yet.

…shot an Indian. Maybe her Indian name should be “Lies With Aplomb.”

Was the media:

Last night the GOP contender showed up to kick butt and chew bubblegum, but unfortunately for Barack Obama, Romney was all out of bubblegum. The real loser, though, was a corrupt mainstream media that had just spent months desperately crafting a Mitt Romney that doesn’t exist — a Mitt Romney voters would not find acceptable as president.

We’ve all seen what’s happened month after month after month after month: Obama’s Media Palace Guards have assured us that Romney can do nothing right and Obama can do nothing wrong. This carefully crafted media game-plan (coordinated openly with the Obama campaign) was meant to strip Romney of the single quality voters demand in a president, and that’s competence. If you’re not competent you’re not an acceptable alternative, which means we’re going to vote for “the devil we know.”

But last night all of this blew up in the media’s face, and this morning the American people trust the media even less than they did the night before — and for one very simple reason: they were lied to … again. Where was the bumbling, elitist, out of touch, awkward, wife-killing, gay-hating, corporate vulture who tortures dogs and stumbles through Europe like Chevy Chase in a “Vacation” sequel?

Well, he didn’t show up last night because that’s not who Mitt Romney is. That Mitt Romney is a media creation manufactured out of lies and desperation by those who spend 24 hours a day crafting trip wires, fabricating gaffes, and standing before the elephant of Barack Obama’s failures and asking, “What elephant?”

As I wrote earlier, a lot of votes for Mitt Romney will also be very angry votes against Obama’s supporters with bylines.

I watched, and I thought that Romney did well, but I didn’t think overwhelmingly so. Apparently, though, there’s a consensus that it was a wipe out.

I guess I didn’t realize how poorly Obama was doing because he didn’t look any different to me. I’ve just never seen the Chicago Jesus that everyone else seemed to. It’s almost like the scales have fallen off everyone’s eyes, and I never had them. Was this the moment that everyone else finally noticed that the emperor was wearing nothing but his birthday suit?

I’d also add that Obama has always been a hot-house plant, cocooned in his own advisers and a fawning media. McCain was a terrible candidate and lousy debater. I think that this was the first time he’s ever had to deal with reality, and he just wilted. Jen Rubin agrees:

The liberal media, and MSNBC specifically, have no one to blame but themselves, however. They have never given President Obama the sort of scrutiny he got last night. They have mouthed the president’s false talking points (“a $5 trillion tax cut for the rich”), egging the president on. When Mitt Romney debunked these easily, Obama had nowhere to go. He looked lost without the protective blanket of compliant media and over-eager left-wing bloggers.

…the media, who too often view themselves as on the president’s team, should share in the blame. They built him up. They parroted his excuses and four-Pinocchio attacks. But they couldn’t save him when it mattered most. They made the campaign about gaffes and polls, which are of no use in a debate. They lambasted Romney, man of the 59-point job plan, for lack of detail without ever urging the president to come up with any substantive policy commensurate with the challenges we face. They might want to rethink their approach to presidential boosterism.

Here’s a concept. How about reporting the news, instead of being Democrat campaign surrogates and operatives?

[Update a few minutes later]

Related thoughts from Paul Rahe:

If Barack Obama seemed halting, uncomfortable, exhausted, and depressed last night, it was because he was saddled with defending the indefensible. What could he say? He had promised shortly after becoming President that his program would bring unemployment way down. He and his allies in Congress had sold Obamacare in part as a jobs bill. And the facts were there to be seen — exceedingly high unemployment and underemployment coupled with persuasive evidence that the growth needed to boost the economy was not in the offing. Instead of coming out of a recession, we were on the cusp of a new recession, and nearly everyone sensed it. For the first time in his life, Barack Obama was cornered. For the first time in his life, he was to be held accountable for his achievements. He was the ultimate affirmative action baby, and he had always been given a free pass. He had always run — for chairman of the Harvard Law Review, for the Illinois state senate, for the United States Senate, and for the Presidency — on promise. Now he was an executive running for re-election, and he was going to be held responsible for what he had done and for what he had failed to do. And, to make matters worse, he had been deprived of his security blanket. He did not have a teleprompter to fall back on.

Yup. It’s the first job he’s ever had where he had real responsibility, and he wasn’t up to it. And that was obvious to many of us, but not enough, four years ago.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Another blind squirrel finds a nut. Michael Moore: “This is what happens when u pick John Kerry as your debate coach.”

John Kerry is another person by whom I’ve never been as impressed as I’m supposed to be.

[Update a few minutes later]

A good comment:

Yes, Obama has all the hall marks of a smart, yet lazy student. He is charming and knowledgeable enough to get in a few good comments in class to impress the teacher, but when it comes down to actually putting effort into writing a paper or studying for the final he doesn’t. The thing is you can get very far by being superficially smart. But, there is always a point when some one finally catches you. Obama has just been caught my friends.

In the past Obama always had a higher job to run to to avoid doing and being responsible for his current job. You can’t climb the ladder higher than president though. There is no running now. Now we see what he is really made of.

Now he has to answer to Mitt who is the old fashioned kind of smart student. The one that puts in long hours of study and reads every assigned reading and the optional ones too.

I think that everyone is starting to see that, even his media sycophants.

[Update a few minutes later]

You know, anyone who watched Obama get schooled by Paul Ryan in the health-care summit, and by Netanyahu on Middle-East issues, saw a preview of last night’s debate, if they were paying attention. It’s easy to get him out of his comfort zone when confronted by reality.

[Update a while later]

More on the same theme from Victor Davis Hanson:

For so long Barack Obama has assumed that he will not face cross-examination from the media that he simply has little grasp of policy details, and in exasperation seems to look around for the accustomed helpful media crutch. But there is no such subsidy in a one-on-one debate, and only now it becomes clear just how the media for the last six years have enfeebled their favorite.

I wonder if they’ll learn any lessons? Or if perhaps they’ll finally write the guy off, which means going after him like jackals on a wounded gazelle.