THREE DAYS IN
OCTOBER
A realistic town hall set, the
Obama adviser said, “makes a huge
difference for the mock debates.”
“Obviously, you want the candidates to know how close their opponent will be, what the personal
dynamic will be. On the town hall
the movements are important,”
the Obama adviser said. “Serious
business! And ludicrous at the
same time.”
Pictures of the Romney mock
set up, in a ballroom at the Marriott in Burlington, Massachusetts,
revealed a striking level of detail.
Romney staff built three-tier risers in a circle, put red hotel ballroom chairs on them, placed a
moderator’s table at one end and
two director-style chairs at the
other end for the candidates, and
draped what looked to be about
10-foot-high blue curtains around
the entire thing.
They set up TV-style lights on
scaffolding that shined on Romney and Portman, who stood in for
Obama, from three angles. There
was a digital timer with red lights
on the ground in front of the moderator’s desk. Perhaps most important, the Romney campaign set up
video cameras exactly where they
would be during the real town hall,
so Romney could practice with
that in mind.
HUFFINGTON
11.04.12
It wasn’t perfectly identical to
the real thing. The debate set at
Hofstra University had six risers,
compared to the Romney’s campaign’s eight. But it was very close.
It allowed Romney and Portman to field questions while walking around and facing questioners sitting in the audience. The
Romney campaign prepared their
candidate for what to do if Obama
invaded his personal space, like
Al Gore did to George W. Bush in
2000. They were most concerned
that Romney not be caught in a
situation where he was seated on
his chair and Obama was walking
toward him or hovering over him,
launching verbal grenades. If seated, and Obama approached, Romney was told, make sure to stand
up to him, literally.
It turned out Romney was more
than prepared for physical confrontation. In fact, he came close
to overdoing it when he essentially told Obama to sit down. All
the adrenaline seemed to get the
better of him when he tried to talk
over the moderator, CNN’s Candy
Crowley. The atmosphere was so
charged that Romney’s son, Tagg,
famously joked a day later that
he wanted to “take a swing” at
Obama (a remark he apologized to