badgenome on 04 October 2012
Sure, Romney and Obama have been making their respective cases at exhaustive length for months and years now, but it's one thing to be able to sit there and make claims and distort your opponent's positions when he can't really respond directly. It's another thing entirely to try and do it to his face. Obama, for instance, is considered very good with prepared remarks. He's very poised whenever he merely has to repeat something he has practiced saying or read it off a teleprompter. But in a less controlled debate environment, he simply melted. That indicates a lack of fluency in the issues of the day, and it's kind of an important thing.
