By Bud Kennedy
bud@star-telegram.com
Surprise: Turns out this election is between two dull Harvard lawyers.
In a town-hall debate where both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had a chance to say something personal enough to lure undecided voters, both settled back into their old roles as the stiff professor and the number-crunching businessman.
"Neither of these candidates connects with other people well," said Victoria Farrar-Myers, a 15-year University of Texas at Arlington political science professor and former Republican congressional aide.
"There was no Bill Clinton 'I feel your pain' moment. Neither candidate talked with the audience."
On a night when Obama needed to gin up his game enough to seem at least no duller than Romney, he probably managed that.
If Obama gained any ground, it might have been with women hearing his comments on pay equality or flinching at Romney's know-it-all tone to moderator Candy Crowley.
"On the pay issue, the president talked about his daughters, but Romney talked about the economic perspective and business," Farrar-Myers said.
That's what Romney does extremely well.
But talking business might not win voters.
At Tufts University near Boston, political science professor Jeffrey M. Berry has watched Romney since his first campaign in 1994.
"Obama may have saved his presidency tonight," Berry wrote by e-mail.
Romney hammered Obama on failures, Berry wrote. But Obama "clearly scored as coming across as the one most sympathetic to women's rights."
Most political science professors gave Obama a few points for improvement from his pedantic showing in the first debate.
"Obama was a lot better, but it was a pretty low bar," wrote Matthew Wilson of Southern Methodist University.
"This debate was nowhere near the blowout that the first was," wrote Wilson, praising Romney's showing and adding that Crowley "seemed to have a thumb on the scale in favor of the president."
At TCU, professor Adam Schiffer called the debate a mirror opposite of the first with Obama more ready.
"Incumbent presidents typically perform poorly in their first debates," Schiffer wrote.
"They spend four years being told, 'Yes, sir' and 'That's a great idea, sir,' and have trouble adapting ... Obama followed this pattern but, like Reagan in 1984, regained footing."
Farrar-Myers remembered another year when business talk dominated the first debate.
"Ross Perot won the first debate [in 1992]," she said.
"Debates don't always matter much."
That is not what Republicans want to hear.
Bud Kennedy's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 817-390-7538Twitter: @budkennedy
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