Poll numbers indicate that President Barack Obama got a “dead cat bounce” in the wake of the Oct. 16th townhall debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Cornell University student Roberto Matos offers his perspective on the debate in the Cornell Insider:

“We don’t have to settle”

In a debate defined by intense confrontations, direct attacks, forceful interruptions, and repeated personal exchanges, Romney’s task could not be any clearer than it was last night.

First he had to expose Obama’s harrowing record on the economy.

He did so. Despite spirited (and brazen) efforts to overwhelm Romney with attacks, Obama simply could not deny his sorry laundry list of glaring disappointments and broken promises which Romney exhaustively exposed, and which have plagued the President’s economic record to date.

In a compelling and pointed fashion, Romney mentioned the 23 million still unemployed despite millions in stimulus, the heightened prices of oil and gas, the drop in family incomes, the increasingly burdensome price of healthcare, the unpopular specter of Obamacare, the burdensome cost of regulatory impositions and threatened taxes on small businesses, the rise in the number of Americans on food stamps and the enormous expansion of the national (now 16 trillion dollar) debt (despite promises that it would be cut in half). There came a point when I wondered why the election is even being contested, especially after such irrefutable, unanswerable charges.

Obama certainly brought passion last night, but as for a vision describing a change in course from what has already been attempted over the past 4 years, he decided to leave that at home. Regardless of Obama’s sparks (he overcompensated after his listless performance a few weeks ago), he was substantively devastated when it comes to the verdict of his economic record. Romney made this evident for all to see.

Romney made it clear that Obama is now a known factor, that “we simply can’t afford four more years” of lackluster growth and that a strong recovery is impossible without a decisive change in approach to job creation strategy (pro-small business). Romney’s comprehensive indictment of the President was damning and rhetorically powerful: “we don’t have to settle.”

Second, Romney had to convincingly describe an economic prescription which can ail the plight of small businesses and middle class families. His incredibly practical approach to explaining tax reform policy changes, and the likely energetic investment and job-creation (on the part of small businesses) that would follow the enactment of his agenda, enabled him to contrast with Obama’s inability to define a vision for the economy in the next 4 years.