Barack Obama was dreadful in the first presidential debate. He seemed confused and hesitant; his thoughts were incoherent.

There seems to be confusion among the Left as to how such a thing could have happened. How could such a celebrated orator underperform? The answer is simple: Obama did not underperform.

Mr Obama is in the midst of an election campaign he is attempting to win without policies. He claims he will cut debt despite having ruled out reductions to the most significant area of spending, welfare entitlements. He wants to avoid war in the Middle East, which is commendable, but not, in itself, a policy. He is against a "war on women," he is against the Boy Scouts of America banning gays. This isn't anywhere close to being a prospectus for governing the world's most important country through a period of crisis -- it's a manifesto for election to a student union.

The argument has always been that we should not expect Mr Obama to share his innermost thoughts with us. The man, so we are told, is such an intellectual giant that we would not understand him if he did.

That is one explanation. The other is that Mr Obama's intellectual development froze around the time he first encountered socialism. He is exceptionally good at reading out from a teleprompter, be that on the campaign trail or when addressing an audience of 12-year-olds. When he is left to articulate complex thoughts of his own, he fails.

The fact is that Mr Obama has a talented, cynical team around him who have been succesful in constructing a narrative in which Mr Romney is a comic villan who wants to ruin the poor and open windows on aeroplanes. Stripped of these people, he has no memorable policies and very few discernible convictions.

The emptiness we saw on Wednesday was the real thing.

This article was originally published in The London Telegraph.

Thomas Pascoe worked in both the Lloyd's of London insurance market and in corporate finance before joining the London Telegraph. He writes about the financial markets.


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