No dumber than Al Gore’s altitude excuse, and just as nutty given it’s coming from a guy whose campaign has “politely” accused Romney of being a felon and magically infecting a woman with cancer:

“I think it’s fair to say I was just too polite,” the president said when asked about his first debate performance during an interview on the Tom Joyner radio show. “The good news is, is that’s just the first one.”

I think it’s fair to say Obama’s grasping at straws as the fallout from his disastrous debate performance continues to manifest itself in the polls. And he knows it, as his weeklong obsession with Big Bird makes clear. This has been well-covered in the blogosphere and there’s nothing substantive I can add to the discussion other than to agree with Ed Morrissey’s observation, that when you’ve lost Matt Lauer, Bob Schrum, and even Chris Matthews, things can’t be going well for Obama. Much of the liberal punditocacy’s criticism of Team O’s Big Bird campaign centers on the wisdom of reminding voters of the fact that Obama had his *ss handed to him in the debate (after initially believing he won it). How, they wonder, does Obama put the debate behind him when he insists on keeping it front and center via his farcical Big Bird ads?

I believe I have the answer: He has no choice. What else is he going to do? He can’t talk about the economy. The reaction to last week’s jobs report — that would be the one which claimed more jobs were created in September than any one month since 1983 when the economy was growing at 9.3% — has ranged from skepticism to disbelief to outright laughter. And given Obama’s growing Benghazi quagmire/scandal, foreign policy is probably not the best topic for him to bring up at the moment. So I ask again, if not Big Bird, what? Who’s up for more Seamus the dog ads?

Update: Click the image below to listen to Obama’s “I was too polite” silliness: