Liberal gloom lifts as the President finds his punch It was a treacherous time for Obama. George W Bush spent his entire presidency fighting off questions about his intellect. Obama hasn't. But many conservatives consider this President an affirmative action hire who's useless without a script. The President's demeanour and quick answers fixed all of that. His tone let Obama endure the exchanges that Romney clearly won. When a black voter in the audience sighed that "I'm not that optimistic as I was in 2012," Romney unloosed all the economic data in his head - "one out of six people in poverty," and "47 million people on food stamps," and "23 million Americans out of work." It was as good as anything he offered in the first debate. The problem was that he was no longer debating a zombie. Obama looked like a president that could be bearable on TV for a few more years. More importantly, he undid some of the good that Romney had done himself on "likeability" - and Romney did it to himself with a mostly bogus claim that he demanded "binders full of women" to even out the gender roles in Massachusetts. Obama heightened the differences with some subtle personal touches. When a Hispanic woman asked about immigration policy, an issue Obama's been slow to address, he told her that "if my daughter or yours looks to somebody like they're not a citizen, I don't want - I don't want to empower somebody like that." Just days ago, liberals didn't know if Obama was alert enough to deliver that kind of punch. David Weigel is political correspondent at 'Slate'