Mitt Romney on Wednesday accused President Obama of failing to lead the country out of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, using the first presidential debate to invigorate his candidacy by presenting himself as an equal who can solve problems Mr. Obama has been unable to.
The president implored Americans to be patient and argued that his policies needed more time to work, warning that changing course would wipe away the economic progress the country is steadily making. The two quarreled aggressively over tax policy, the budget deficit and the role of government, with each man accusing the other of being evasive and misleading voters.
But for all of the anticipation about the debate, and with less than five weeks remaining until Election Day, the 90-minute encounter unfolded much like a seminar by a business consultant and a college professor. Both men argued that their policies would improve the lives of the middle class, but their discussion often dipped deep into the weeds, and they talked over each other without connecting their ideas to voters.
If Mr. Romney’s goal was to show that he could project equal stature to the president, he succeeded, perhaps offering his campaign the lift that Republicans have been seeking. Mr. Obama often stopped short of challenging his rival’s specific policies and chose not to invoke some of the same arguments that his campaign has been making against Mr. Romney for months.
At one point, Mr. Romney offered an admonishment, saying, “Mr. President, you’re entitled to your own airplane and your own house, but not your own facts.”
A boisterous campaign, which has played out through dueling rallies and an endless stream of television commercials, took a sober turn as the candidates stood at facing lecterns for the first time. Mr. Obama, who has appeared to take command of the race in most battleground states, seemed to adopt an air of caution throughout the evening.
“Are we going to double down on the top-down economic policies that helped to get us into this mess,” he said, “or do we embrace a new economic patriotism that says, ‘America does best when the middle class does best’ ”?
For much of the debate, the l candidates commandeered the stage, taking control away from the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, as they kept trying to rebut one other. At times, the moderator seemed as if he had walked off the stage, a result of new rules that were intended to allow for a deeper and more freewheeling discussion.
On a basic level it was a clash of two ideologies, the president’s Democratic vision of government playing a supporting role in spurring economic growth, and Mr. Romney’s Republican vision that government should get out of the way of businesses that know best how to create jobs.
Mr. Romney sought to use his moment before a prime-time audience of tens of millions to escape the corner Mr. Obama and his allies have painted him into, depicting him as an uncompromising adherent to policies that have been tried before. He instead turn the focus on his opponent’s record.
“You’ve been president four years. You’ve been president four years,” Mr. Romney said at one point. He ticked through a list of promises he said Mr. Obama had not lived up to, and said, . “Middle-income families are being crushed.”
For all of the buildup to this first debate, neither candidate delivered that knockout blow or devastating line that each side was hoping for. Still, style points went to Mr. Romney, who continually and methodically pressed his critique of Mr. Obama. The president at times acted more as if he were addressing reporters in the Rose Garden than beating back a challenger intent on taking his job.
Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Romney for his answer to a primary debate question last year in which he joined his fellow Republicans in saying he would not accept a budget deal allowing $1 of tax increases for every $10 in spending cuts. “Now, if you take such an unbalanced approach,” Mr. Obama said, “then that means you are going to be gutting our investments in schools and education.”
Mr. Romney said his position on the tax-for-revenue deal was because of the state of the economy, not necessarily ideology. “I’m not going to raise taxes on anyone because when the economy’s growing slow like this, when we’re in recession, you shouldn’t raise taxes on anyone,” he said.
He said his proposals were unlike those of other Republicans because he was combining tax reform with lowered tax rates. “My plan is not like anything that’s been tried before,” he said. He said he would not support any tax cuts that added to the deficit, in other words, that were not paid for.
The debate, which was held at Magness Arena on the campus of the University of Denver, was the first of three face-to-face encounters between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney. It took place even as voters across the country were already casting early ballots.
All year Democrats have been waiting for Mr. Romney to make a more overt appeal to the sort of moderate voters he needs to win over by highlighting the more centrist positions from his years as Massachusetts governor. And on Wednesday he seemed to highlight his record in ways he had yet to do.
Even as he repeated his plans to repeal the president’s health care plan, he happily embraced the plan he pushed into law in Massachusetts — the basis for the president’s — that is anathema to many in his party.
“I like the way we did it in Massachusetts,” Mr. Romney said of his health care plan, noting, “We had Republicans and Democrats come together and work together.”
But an argument for bipartisanship animated much of Mr. Romney’s message through the night. He said he had worked with Democratic legislators in Massachusetts. And he said that he would do the same thing on his first day in the Oval Office.
The claim drew one of Mr. Obama’s sharpest retorts of the night. “I think Governor Romney’s going to have a busy first day,” he said, “because he’s also going to repeal ‘Obamacare,’ which will not be very popular among Democrats as you’re sitting down with them.”
