Via Ace, three minutes of fun from Rebel Pundit and the Breitbart crew. The criticism of Jim Lehrer since Wednesday comes from the same basic impulse that’s driving the TOTUS fans here: Obama didn’t do well, therefore the debate was unfair, therefore something should have been different to make it more fair. Deciding whether it was Lehrer or Romney’s phantom cheat sheet or the debate commission’s cruel refusal to let The One wear a helmet with a tiny prompter bolted to it is less important than accepting that some injustice must have occurred to deny O his rightful victory.

The only thing on which everyone can agree in the aftermath is that he was, in fact, truly terrible. And when I say “everyone,” I mean everyone:

“You could tell he was pissed,” said a person close to the president, “But it wasn’t like the end of the world. It was like, ‘That wasn’t good. The next one has to better.’ No apologies. No hand-wringing.”

That night, after a brief, terse chat with his advisers backstage at the University of Denver arena — “He had real clarity about what had happened,” one of them told POLITICO with a chuckle — Obama hopped in his limo, “The Beast,” and sped off to a nearby DoubleTree with wife Michelle…

At first, Obama didn’t think his performance was a complete disaster. But he began Thursday morning by watching excerpts of his own performance and was especially struck by his own tentative, grim demeanor — especially when he and a more relaxed Mitt Romney were broadcast in split-screen. It was worse than he thought, according to one person close to the situation. He was subdued but positive on a conference call with staff.

Follow the link above for the first inklings of the media’s inevitable “Obama comeback” narrative after the next debate. As for Wednesday’s dial-tone performance, for once the New Yorker’s got it right. Click the image to watch.