President Obama didn’t repeat his mistakes in the first presidential debate in Denver two weeks ago. He looked interested in the proceedings on Long Island and responded strongly to attacks and got in plenty of stingers as well as making some clever tactical strokes at Romney’s expense. Romney had his moments, especially when speaking about the president’s economic failures. The Republican also missed some wide-open opportunities to nail the president on issues like the Libya terrorist attack. But that won’t necessarily translate into a complete reversal of the losses Obama experienced after their previous encounter. The question that pollsters will be wondering most about won’t be which of the two candidates scored the most points but whether the bruising and nasty tone of the confrontation turned off more voters than it engaged.

The president’s palpable anger at Romney was barely contained. He fulfilled the Democratic base’s desire to bash the GOP candidate relentlessly but he did so at times by taking the cheapest of shots such as a hypocritical swipe about Romney’s investments and by filibustering and taking up more than three minutes more of airtime than his opponent. Though he stopped short of repeating Vice President Biden’s bullying act last week, it’s far from clear that the most of the public — especially undecided voters — will regard the evening as anything but a muddled slugfest.

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Democrats will be tuning into the presidential debate tonight in hopes of seeing a more aggressive performance from President Obama. For two weeks, we’ve heard little but endless analysis about what the president needs to do to improve on his performance from his first debate with Mitt Romney with most of it centering on his passivity in Denver. There was plenty to critique in what Obama did that night but the idea that his big problem was that he needed to muss up Romney’s hair says more about the disdain Democrats have for their opponents than it does about the president’s problem.

The expectation is that Obama will show up at Hofstra ready to mix it up with Romney but hoping to stop just short of Joe Biden’s bullying act at the vice presidential debate. It is doubtful that the evening will not contain mentions of Romney’s “47 percent” gaffe or attempts to question Romney’s credibility. But if that’s his main focus, he will be making a mistake. Contrary to what Democrats say, Obama’s main shortcoming in the debate was not his lack of aggression so much as it was his lack of interest as well as his disdain for the proceedings. What Americans sensed when they saw that debate was a man who thought having to explain his positions and record was beneath his dignity. Zingers at Romney’s expense tonight may help but they will avail Obama little if he cannot muster more respect for the voters.

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There’s much talk to the effect that tonight Barack Obama needs to get “the vision thing” back. This is exactly wrong. After four result-free years, all this president has is the vision thing. What he needs is “the policy thing,” “the accountability thing,” or, you know, “the record thing.” Which is why he’s in a lot deeper trouble than the popular analysis suggests.

What he needs can’t be conjured in campaign headquarters, and it can’t be faked in front of a Mitt Romney who’s tuned up like a dazzling and encyclopedically informed one-man policy-review team.

In the last debate, Obama’s “vision thing” stuck out so bizarrely against the facts that it was revealed as “the mirage thing.” The mirage took shape with his first answer and only grew more fantastical as the debate proceeded. How, Obama was asked off the bat, did he intend to put America back to work? His answer: by supporting math and science in community colleges. Yet, the Washington Post’s’ supposed wonk wunderkind, Ezra Klein, thinks Obama is too strong on policy details and only weak on the big picture. Today, Klein writes that “Obama can’t describe what he wants to achieve, but he can tell you everything about how he’ll get it done.”

This is, of course, a perfectly reversed description of Barack Obama—in 2008, 2012, and always.

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Shell-shocked Democrats are still trying to figure out what happened to President Obama last night as he got his clock cleaned by Mitt Romney. Most of the post-mortems seemed to center on his lack of aggressiveness on stage and his failure to raise the sort of personal attacks on Romney that have largely characterized the Democratic campaign. The expectation now is that the next time Obama and Romney face off, the president will be more engaged and perhaps ready to attack the challenger in a way that will please his followers. But the question Democrats should be asking themselves today is not just what was wrong with Obama that caused him to be so lackluster, but whether an attempt to savage Romney in person will be such a smart idea.

While the president did mention some of his familiar class warfare themes, pundits were almost unanimous in expressing their surprise that the phrase “47 percent” never passed through the president’s lips. Liberals were also appalled by his omission of any mention of Romney’s Bain Capital experience or tax returns. But if the only lesson the president learns from his defeat in Denver is that he must double down on personal attacks on his opponent, he may be setting himself up for another drubbing on October 16.

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