When masterful Mittens Romney took the gloves off Two metamorphoses were plainly in view when the two met to discuss domestic policy. People snigger at the magic underpants of Mormonism, which may explain why Romney donned a different pair of preternatural briefs in Denver. He entered the debating phone kiosk as the bland and wimpy Clark Kent, and emerged soaring skyward with his knickers outside his trousers. Sharp, cogent, controlled, aggressive, even magisterial, the clumsy, tongue-tied patrician was reborn as rather more than likeable enough. He was your favourite Osmond uncle from Utah, and you didn't have to be Donny, Marie or even Little Jimmy to be impressed by the presidential gloss. I say monstrous because for eight years this stereotypical wishy-washy liberal has hero-worshipped Barack Obama for his forensic brilliance. His speech in 2008, when the ranting Rev Wright threatened to destroy him, was the finest I have ever heard. The man who held his own with John McCain four years ago offered no hint of the disengaged dullard of Denver. As for Romney, although known as a quick-witted debater, even his dismantling of the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest cast during the Republican primary season hardly presaged the folksily Reaganesque powerhouse of Tuesday. He told some whoppers, notably about his proposed changes to Obamacare and the tax liabilities of the wealthy. But that's politics, baby. Besides, what candidates say in debates, as opposed to their projected personality, is mostly irrelevant. That Romney's cavalry charge to the one-nation centre ground was an act of monumental chutzpah from one who wrote off half his electorate as irredeemable scroungers counts for little. The Romneian volte-face is already discounted. Pro-choice one year, pro-life the next; cuddly moderate in one election, "severe conservative" in another; originator of universal health care in one decade, its fiercest foe in another... this supplest of political minds has taken, abandoned and reclaimed so many positions that it is impossible to penetrate what he believes, and possible for him plausibly to claim to believe anything at all. Obama, visibly shrinking throughout Romney's growth spurt, has strong and consistent beliefs he could barely articulate at all. It is an intriguing paradox that may yet decide this bizarre election. On the other hand it may do no such thing. Apart from any mitigating effect of yesterday's unexpectedly good monthly jobs report, conventional wisdom holds that while a debate may shift momentum, the impact is too puny to reverse as solid a lead as the one Obama had a few days ago. On the third hand (and you'd want to be from a leading centre of Appalachian in-breeding to have one of those), conventional wisdom and the aftermath of such a staggeringly contra-intuitive event have no place sharing a paragraph. It's up for grabs now, as Brian Moore presciently observed, and while gut instinct whispers that Obama will recover his wits and spirit to cling on, as George W Bush did after losing every debate to John Kerry in 2004, this may well be wishful thinking. To my mind, he remains the preferable potential leader of the free world, with a temperament and perspective better suited to avoiding sparking a catastrophic geopolitical forest fire in Iran. Yet one could not suffer his fatigued, distracted waffle, on the night Mittens took the gloves off, without doubting whether he actually wants a second term. If he cannot shrug off the lethal languor in the next debate on October 16, he will be there for the taking, and deserve to be taken. Somehow, he must locate and unleash his inner Lex Luthor. Now that Romney is up, up and away, on no account can Obama turn up without the Kryptonite again.