Wednesday night’s debate encouraged Republicans and may have disappointed Democrats. 

Mitt Romney was the more aggressive. President Barack Obama held back. 

Romney’s points came in harping on the persistent high unemployment numbers and his claim that he will create 12 million new jobs in the coming four years. 

Obama responded with a demand for specifics that will be made over and over again between now and Nov. 6.

Both men handled themselves presidentially — which is to say that neither made personal attacks or indulged in dramatics.

At this late stage of the campaign, these assessments are calming. The guy and gal in the street can feel comfort from their professional deportment: the take-away from those 90 minutes is that the union will survive until 2016, regardless.

But important differences were emphasized. Romney hit hard on the Republican themes of lower taxes and greater responsibilities for the states. Obama stressed the nation’s responsibility for a quality education system and the opportunity to bring health care costs down through the National Affordable Care Act (Obamacare.)

Romney gave Obama an opening by saying that if he wins, he would expect the other 49 states to create statewide health care plans similar to that which he helped create in Massachusetts when he was governor. That would be the way, he said, to bring health care costs down while providing all Americans health care coverage.

Good luck with Kansas, Mr. Romney. The number of uninsured Kansans is rising. The state government is showing not the slightest interest in creating a state-funded program to reverse that trend. If Gov. Sam Brownback has a Massachusetts-style health care initiative on his must-do list, he has kept it under lock and key.

 IT IS IRONIC, but Mr. Romney made the Republican case when he wised off at a high-dollar fundraiser in May and said that about 47 percent of the American people pay no income tax, feel victimized by the system and depend on government handouts to keep body and soul together.

He hasn’t denied that statement and has, instead, repeated it and said the debate should be about the role government should play in our society.

Maybe the next two debates will touch on that theme.

Wednesday night both agreed a good education was critically important. But if either said how they would (a) increase funding to individual school districts so they could upgrade their faculties, or (b) find other ways to increase student learning, I missed it.

The opening debate was polite and bloodless. Depend on the next two to turn up the volume. The undecideds make up their minds late. They will be the targets on Oct. 16 and Oct. 22.

At the townhall style debate Oct. 16, Romney will be forced to defend his support of low taxes for the rich. The following week, when the focus is on foreign affairs, he will be asked to contemplate the consequences of his unqualified support of Israel’s aggressive stance toward Iran. Is he really ready to start another Middle East war?

October will be full of political fun.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to 800 or more soldiers and the civilian audience at a Landon Lecture at Kansas State University Monday.

Gen. Dempsey directed his speech to the soldiers who filled the upper seats and were scattered throughout the rest of McCain Auditorium and included the ROTC of the university as well as large contingents from Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth. While the nominal subject was the relationship between the nation and its veterans, Dempsey dwelt at length on the qualities that combat soldiers possess and the war environment to which they must adapt.

A soldier must have courage, he said, and illustrated by telling of a man whose job it was to drop from Blackhawk helicopters suspended by a thin steel cable to rescue people in trouble on the ground.

The soldier he had interviewed had picked up 12 soldiers, one by one, who were pinned down by the enemy on a cliff. He and they were under fire throughout the mission. His cable was hit twice by machine gun bullets and still held him. Four of the rescued soldiers died in his arms from wounds. 

That, Gen. Dempsey said, showed courage.

He continued telling his military audience — and the rest of us — the qualities of character men and women in the military must possess, illustrating each attribute with another specific example drawn from men and women he knew or had knowledge of and went from there to say each generation of Americans defines its veterans.

It is up to today’s Americans to define the veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as they return to civilian life, he said.

“We should have a national dialogue on how best to accomplish this,” he said.

He said soldiers sometimes find that returning to the United States and civilian life can be more difficult than war, itself. In combat, he pointed out, the mission is clear. Back home, that one clear mission is traded for the need to make decisions without number. 

The soldier, he said, lives at “Mach 4” speed and can find it difficult to slow down and adjust to a much less ordered life. 

The nation, he said, needs to work with the veterans as they come back from combat experience. 

“This isn’t something the nation should do for veterans,” he emphasized, “it should be done for the nation.”

Touching other topics, Gen. Dempsey said the level of violence around the world had dropped significantly. The chances of war between major nations has never been lower in our lifetimes, he said. But the chances of violent acts by individual groups of terrorists occurring have increased exponentially, he added. 

Today’s military, he said, is organized in massive units, which can oppose the forces of a major nation, but can be devolved into smaller units to fight terrorism, or be aggregated quickly to fight another major war should that be necessary.

He also remarked the military, along with the rest of the federal government, will adjust to tighter budgets made inevitable by the deficit and massive national debt.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.