THE CANDY, BARACK, AND MR. MITT SHOW

Fox Noise is certainly unlikely to admit it, but Mr. Mitt got his clock cleaned tonight. Oh, he scored a few points. But an energized, aggressive Barack put himself back in the game. Mr. Mitt came out on the loosing end of auto industry restructuring, taxes, social policies, immigration, China policy, jobs going overseas, and Candy Crowley.

Mr. Mitt's main thing seemed to be his five point plan of generalities. He cited the plan several times, usually as a solution to a particular problem he was trying to explain his solution for. He seemed particularly fixated on China, accusing it of being a currency manipulator, intellectual property pirate, and general trouble maker. China is definitely not an international economic choirboy, but it's not a criminal enterprise either. Subtle confrontation would seem to be a better long-term approach to dealing with the country than campaign rants.

The Middle East is obviously perplexing to Mr. Mitt. He appears to have the attitude that prevailed among the neocons in the Bush Administration: if America blusters and screams enough, it will get its way. Not sure the nation needs to tread that path again.

Mr. Mitt kept harping on his business background. He alleged that he knows how to create jobs. In fact, he alleged it a number of times. But the specifics, other than cutting taxes, were absent. And the tax issues were clouded by fuzzy math, which Barack pointed out several times.

Perhaps Barack's best counter to Mr. Mitt's incessant call for tax cuts was to remind the viewers that the Bush tax cuts of the early 2000s were a major cause of the current economic problems.

Bottom line: if you ever find yourself in a ticklish situation, say in a redneck biker bar in some remote area of, say, Idaho, and you need someone to watch your back, you could do a lot worse than Candy Crowley and Martha Raddatz. Indeed, if it were a choice between those two and Mr. Mitt with his little three-hour marathon partner, well, it wouldn't even be a choice.