“No one ever lost money in this world by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” ~ H.L. Mencken; 1880-1956

It’s not that we’re stupid—it’s that we’re in love with alpha men getting all John Wayne on people. We care more about facial expressions, still, than moral character, patience, intelligence, an ability to listen and think ahead.

So that’s good news for President Obama—all he has to do is get angry for a week, work out, stand up straight, and rip Governor Romney’s lies to pieces—and he wins.

Here’s a cheat sheet, as it were:

Debate: Romney Told 27 Myths In 38 Minutes:

1) “[G]et us energy independent, North American energy independent. That creates about 4 million jobs”. Romney’s plan for “energy independence” actually relies heavily on a study that assumes the U.S. continues with fuel efficiency standards set by the Obama administration. For instance, he uses Citigroup research based off the assumption that “‘the United States will continue with strict fuel economy standards that will lower its oil demand.” Since he promises to undo the Obama administration’s new fuel efficiency standards, he would cut oil consumption savings of 2 million barrels per day by 2025.

2) “I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don’t have a tax cut of a scale that you’re talking about.” A Tax Policy Center analysis of Romney’s proposal for a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut in all federal income tax rates, eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, eliminating the estate tax and other tax reductions, would reduce federal revenue $480 billion in 2015. This amounts to $5 trillion over the decade.

3) “My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.” If Romney hopes to provide tax relief to the middle class, then his $5 trillion tax cut would add to the deficit. There are not enough deductions in the tax code that primarily benefit rich people to make his math work.

4) “My — my number-one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.” As the Tax Policy Center concluded…

Read them all here.

Hint: killing Big Bird and the rest of PBS was just about the one and only specific he said that wasn’t a generalization or an outright…yes, lie.

During the debate when he “debunked” Obama’s claimthat he was advocating a $5 trillion tax cut that couldn’t be paid for via the deduction eliminations without massively slamming the middle class, he was so convincing I absolutely would have believed him had I not bothered to read up on the claim.

A huge number of voters didn’t watch a single primary debate. They haven’t read anything about the race. They didn’t watch the party conventions. The only thing they watch is the first Presidential debate. And Romney acted so convincing, he is now in a statistical dead heat.