Following the shellacking he received at the hands of Mitt Romney at the first presidential debate, Barack Obama, at a rally in Denver the following day (presumably after he had a chance to acclimate), and with the help of his handlers, his teleprompter, and a backdrop of carefully selected sycophants, spoke of meeting a "new" Mitt Romney.

"When I got onto the stage, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney," Obama joked at the Denver rally.

From President Obama's perspective, he was right. From his perspective, the real Mitt Romney was the one crafted by his campaign staff in Chicago (and furthered by his friends in the media). A composite, if you will. Obama prepared to attack the strawman Mitt Romney that they had spent months, and several hundred million dollars, in creating. What he met on stage was, well, Mitt Romney. As Obama parried and sparred with the strawman Mitt Romney, the real Mitt Romney took him apart. The real Mitt Romney challenged and exposed each and every one of Obama's contentions, something the media, his handlers, and his supporters had never before done.

Interestingly enough, we saw an alternate Barack Obama as well. As the Chicago machine had crafted a "composite" Mitt Romney, what became obvious on Wednesday evening was that Barack Obama's entire presidency has been a composite of the same type. Obama wasn't the "intellectual heavyweight" that we had been presented via press release and gushing homage. He wasn't the great speaker that we were led to believe. He wasn't even cool.

No, what we saw, for maybe the first time ever, was the real Barack Obama. We saw someone who appeared uninterested in the details required by his job, and more surprisingly, the arguments in support of why he believes as he does. We saw a listless performance, uninspired and uninspiring.

Going forward, with less than thirty days to election, the question becomes, will the Chicago machine, enabled by a compliant media, adequately suppress the real Mitt Romney through continued attacks against their synthetic strawman while at the same time suppressing the real Barack Obama in favor of the media composite?

As both the media and "the machine" have much invested in maintaining their social/political power, you can bet that they are going to go into overdrive to maintain the composite that they've spent four-plus years creating. 

The American people got a peek behind the curtain. Let's hope (and pray) that this was enough to move the needle towards reality, and away from the mirage created by the Chicago scriptwriters.