We watched a Mile High miracle

At last, at long last, the presidential campaign has been meaningfully engaged. In Denver last Wednesday, the nation witnessed a remarkable debate between President Barack Obama and his challenger, Mitt Romney. It was remarkable because it was so stunningly lopsided.

Viewed through any prism that is relevant to this form of political theater, the bottom line was inescapable — Romney won and Obama lost. As Winston Churchill said in 1942 during Britain's darkest hour, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Romney brought his A-game to the University of Denver. It was all the more impressive because we had not yet seen it. He was self-assured, thoroughly prepared, and he consistently drew the distinction between the Obama administration's failures and how he would correct those failures. And he did so with specificity. That specificity was and must continue to be his secret weapon.

President Obama was off stride from the outset of the debate. Without his ever-present teleprompter, his comments lacked crispness, were defensive and lacked authenticity.

And there's more. Romney unshackled himself from the right wingnut straitjacket he's been in since the Republican primaries. From tax policy, to health care, to entitlement reform, to the necessity of working with Democrats on Capitol Hill, Romney made clear that he was no ideologue. To the contrary, it was evident that his experience as governor of Massachusetts taught him that reaching across the aisle to the opposition party is not only essential but achievable.

It was encouraging to see Romney call out the president for not having taken advantage of the nation's enormous reserves of oil and natural gas that exist under public lands. But it was disappointing that Romney did not develop this opportunity more fully.

Romney urgently needs to help the American people understand that the nation's immense reserves of oil and gas will, when safely brought to market, make the United States energy independent and much more. The much more includes the creation of millions of good-paying jobs. But even more importantly, bringing these natural energy resources safely to market will produce trillions of dollars of royalty payments that will reignite our stalled economy.

Last Wednesday's consequential debate now puts the outcome of the election in doubt. By the time you're reading this column, there will be new polls showing Romney is closing the gap. And those polls will also show that the gap is closing in the battleground states.

But this campaign goes on for another month. There will be three more debates. It's very unlikely that President Obama will get caught like a deer in headlights again. And no matter how the president chooses to counterattack from now to Nov. 6, Romney must stay focused and disciplined.

That focus and discipline will require that he remain confident and hopeful about his faith in the American people and America's unique and evolving experiment in democracy and self-governance.

It will require that he keep pointing out how the Obama administration has failed to improve the lives of not only the middle class, but also the working poor, and those who live every day with the desperation of poverty and hopelessness.

It will require that he delineate his own list of specific ideas to reverse our downward spiral. And it will require that he continue to explain how working with Democrats in Congress is the only way to get the job done.

And finally, he needs an October surprise, one of his own making. In 2008, Obama first stunned Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and then annihilated John McCain in the general election by opposing their support of President George W. Bush's war in Iraq. More than any other single issue, Obama's opposition to the Iraq War propelled him into the White House.

In Wednesday's debate, Romney repeatedly stated he will not weaken America's defense or its armed forces. No surprise there — that's straight Republican orthodoxy. However, Romney could take that very orthodox position and turn it into a foreign policy initiative that would resonate with an enormous majority of the people and put the president in a cul-de-sac from which there is no escape.

Romney should declare that Obama's escalation of the Afghanistan War, his policy of counterinsurgency, his obsession with nation building in a land that remains medieval, and his unyielding requirement that American forces remain in Afghanistan until 2015, are a failure. Moreover, it's a failure that has hollowed out our military and weakened our national security.

Romney should say that in order to not further weaken America's security and its military, he will end our military operations in Afghanistan.

In other words, America will be stronger by facing the truth that Obama's Afghanistan policy has never been sound, never been smart, never been winnable. Liberal and conservative foreign policy experts now agree on that assessment. The people in large numbers now agree with that assessment. If Romney links American military strength with an end to our military presence in Afghanistan, he will lay the failure where it properly belongs — at the feet of its architect — Barack Obama. When that happens, Obama is finished.

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