When Mitt Romney started looking like this year’s probable Republican nominee (in fact, way back in 2007, during his first presidential run), I, along with many others, assumed that were he to make it to the general election, one of the main attack lines would be that he’s a flip flopper. In 2004, the Bush reelection team brilliantly exploited John Kerry’s policy reversals to help make the case that he couldn’t be the sort of steady leader that Americans needed in their president, especially during a time of war. Given that Romney had a moderate record as governor of Massachusetts and then had to remake himself as a conservative to win the GOP nomination, it seemed natural that Obama would jump on the “flip flopper” narrative. But much to my surprise, his campaign chose not to.

This is no accident. Back in April, the Politico’s Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin reported that none other than Bill Clinton convinced the Obama team to steer clear of the “flip flopper” argument in favor of portraying Romney as somebody who had embraced “a brand of tea party conservatism that turns off Hispanics, women and moderate independents.” The strategy of trying to portray Romney as some sort of an extremist seemed to be going smoothly as Obama began pulling away in polls in early September after the Democratic National Convention. Yet the plan had one flaw that could yet prove to be fatal. With a single debate performance, Romney was able to undo much of the damage inflicted by Obama’s campaign for months, simply by not living up to the caricature that had been invented for him.