[Martina]

From Politico:

Nobody had to tell President Barack Obama he had whiffed when he walked off the stage in Denver Wednesday night — nor was he in the mood for a lot of advice.

“You could tell he was pissed,” said a person close to the president, “But it wasn’t like the end of the world. It was like, ‘That wasn’t good. The next one has to better.’ No apologies. No hand-wringing.”

That night, after a brief, terse chat with his advisers backstage at the University of Denver arena — “He had real clarity about what had happened,” one of them told POLITICO with a chuckle — Obama hopped in his limo, “The Beast,” and sped off to a nearby DoubleTree with wife Michelle.

He had had enough of politics for the night.
. . . .

At first, Obama didn’t think his performance was a complete disaster. But he began Thursday morning by watching excerpts of his own performance and was especially struck by his own tentative, grim demeanor — especially when he and a more relaxed Mitt Romney were broadcast in split-screen. It was worse than he thought, according to one person close to the situation. He was subdued but positive on a conference call with staff.
. . . .

Hours after arguably the worst debate performance of his career, Obama charged that Romney is a different man than the guy he faced Wednesday. But it was the president who seemed to be a totally different guy on Thursday. Gone was the distracted, deer-in-headlights mumbler. In his place, suddenly, was someone doing a pretty good impersonation of Obama ’08.

His mood was radically different Thursday — not just calm but buoyant, loose, focused. It reminded several aides close to the president of his response to Hillary Clinton’s stunning comeback win in the New Hampshire primary in 2008. It’s a cliché in his camp that Obama only feels really motivated when his own destruction is in sight, but the magnitude of his lousy performance clearly motivated him as he plunged back into campaigning.
. . . .
With Obama, it’s not just about will — it’s always about mood, too. For all that’s been written about his flop in front of roughly 67 million viewers, the reality, according to the people who know him best, is that he just wasn’t in the right headspace. The president had too many conflicting thoughts bouncing around his head and could never quite reconcile his desire to attack Romney with his fear of alienating voters by appearing angry or unpresidential. The result was a muddle that has given Romney new life.

Obama had always planned to play it pretty safe, but his advisers expected him to be more aggressive, peppering Romney with requests for specifics on his deficit and tax plans. They also figured on him smiling a whole lot more, a key part of winning the body-language battle.

And, to the puzzlement of Democrats, he didn’t mention two of the most effective attack lines — Bain Capital and Romney’s “47 percent” video.

On Thursday, Plouffe told reporters on Air Force One that the omissions weren’t deliberate.
. . . .

“Thank God somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird,” he said. “We didn’t know that Big Bird was driving the federal deficit. … Elmo, too?” But it wasn’t the joke that struck a top Obama adviser watching from stage right, it was the way the boss was gripping the lectern — left hand grabbing the front, right hand in his pocket.

“Look,” the person said, “That’s what he does when he’s really into it.”
. . . .

“It’s not a positive by any means,” an Obama aide said. “But for our supporters, the debate was sort of helpful because they have assumed the race was locked up. It isn’t. But that message hasn’t been getting through. This might scare them.”