Romney’s “André the Giant” moment in Wednesday’s presidential debate

Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post:

Man in Black and Fezzik fight in the “Princess Bride.”

The one-on-one dynamic: In “The Princess Bride”, one of the Fix’s all-time favorite movies, Andre the Giant plays a henchman named Fezzik. When faced with fighting a single person after years of battling groups of men all at once (he was Andre the Giant, after all), Fezzik struggles. “You use different moves when you’re fighting half a dozen people than when you only have to be worried about one,” he explains. 

Romney has spent his entire debate life — in his career as a national politician — debating on stage with a group of people, most of whom were trying to gang up on him. Obama’s most recent debate experience, on the other hand, comes from his three general election debates against McCain and, before that, a one-on-one debate with then-New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primary.
Debating— like fighting—one person is different than doing it against a group. Let’s see how Romney adjusts.
And the group Romney fought was pretty lame.  Bachmann, Gingrich, Santorum, Perry?  None of them hold a candle to Obama’s intellect and poise.
But Romney has other problems as well. While the conventional wisdom is that he simply needs to exceed expectations (so if he sets expectations really low, he wins no matter what), we’re way past that at this point.  Romney needs to take Obama down and out in that first debate this coming Wednesday, and it’s not entirely clear how he does that.
Romney will certainly want to focus on the economy, but of course, polls are showing that consumer confidence is increasing as people’s outlook on the economy improves. So it’s not clear the economic message works any more, or at least works sufficiently.
The economy isn’t key for Romney, looking presidential is. He has to come off as a viable alternative to the sitting president, and then some.  Up until now, Romney’s come off rather Keystone Cops-ish, not ready for prime time. And if past is prologue, Romney doesn’t react well when he’s attacked during a debate. He gets all prickly, and prissy. That $10,000 bet comes to mind.
People already think Romney is a bit of an ass and a buffoon.  Perhaps the buffoon part isn’t hard to overcome in a debate (assuming the man isn’t as daft as he often appears), but once people think you’re an ass, it’s not something you live down easily.  Even flip-flopping endlessly on health care reform may not be enough to convince the people to love the man who knew too little.