It has been widely said that Mitt Romney clearly won the first presidential debate held on October 3, 2012. Here is a transcript of the first presidential debate.

How did he do it? It comes down to that President Obama was unprepared for another shake of the Etch a Sketch when Slippery Mitt was asked about the tax plan that he has been proposing for a year or so. President Obama asked how it was possible to have to have this large tax cut and greatly increase military spending without adding to the deficit. Yes, old Mitt slipped away while denying any increase in the deficit was possible under his plan. He said that he would not increase the deficit. He said it, so it can’t happen.

“My plan is not to put in place any tax cut that will add to the deficit.”, said Mitt Romney. This seems to be something new. Before it was a kind of article of faith that if you cut taxes the economy would boom and revenue would pour into the federal coffers. But does this mean that if the massive tax cuts look like they might cause a deficit, that the tax cuts are off the table? Are they conditional on Congress agreeing to end enough deductions to offset the lower rates. Do we have any particulars on which deductions will be lost?

Further, it is widely assumed that this severely conservative budget will be a decrease over the present budget. So if we massively increase military spending and decrease taxes rates (although that will be wholly of partly offset by decreasing unspecified deductions), it stands to reason that some pretty big cuts must come out of the other stuff. But when President Obama questioned Slippery Mitt on how he would cut education, Mitt slipped away again by saying he would not cut education. So now it seems like the cuts elsewhere would be more severe.

You may have noticed that he did not agree to any of Obama’s expansions to education (more teachers and so forth), he just said he would not cut. Exactly what that means, I do not know. But it does sound much more moderate that previous stances.

So I think most of us figured Mitt Romney would eventually slip away from some of the more conservative positions he has taken and try to move toward the middle but he surprised me and maybe the President by his quick and bold moves during the debate.

But the lack of specifics in his proposals has been maddening. Of course, for most of these changes he has to work with Congress. So it would be foolish to say “this is what will happen”. But it would be nice if he took a position and said “this is what I propose”. Instead all we get are vague statements like – I know how to create 12 million jobs or I will cut the budget.

So trust in Slippery Mitt and trust in our highly-regarded Congress. It seems like such a good plan.