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A better Lehrer

Tom, not Jim

On the morning after his abdication, perhaps President Obama can take comfort in the fact that he wasn't the poorest performer at Wednesday night's debate.

That title goes to Jim Lehrer, a thoroughly distinguished newsman who flailed and floundered -- painfully, endlessly, horribly -- as all of his mushball questions got deftly tossed aside by multi-taskmaster Mitt Romney, who pulverized Obama while stealing the moderator's job as well as the  show.

The Republican challenger adroitly outmaneuvered Lehrer, who seemed to think he was moderating a debate between a couple of gentlemen running for president of the Ho-Ho-Kus civic association...circa 1960.

Which happens to have been a prime time for a peerless satirist who shares the moderator's surname.

Tom Lehrer's pithy wit and catchy rhymes would have lightened the night for anyone saddened by the spectacle of a fine journalist -- and a capable president -- looking so utterly ineffectual.