Within hours of having been exposed for the third straight debate as lacking an agenda for a second term, and with his campaign strategy of delegitimizing Mitt Romney in shambles, Barack Obama finally got around to putting out an agenda for the next four years on Tuesday morning. That didn’t keep Obama from using silly personal attacks on the campaign trail to belittle Romney. Obama had begun calling Romney’s purported shifts in policy stances “Romnesia” last week, but on Tuesday decided to equate it to cancer and end-stage renal failure (ESRD) by using the term “Stage Three” along with it (via Daniel Halper):

Obama: Now, we’ve come up with a name for this condition. It’s called Romnesia. (Applause.)

Audience: Romnesia! Romnesia! Romnesia!

Obama: We had a severe outbreak last night. (Applause.) It was at least stage three Romnesia. (Laughter and applause.) And I just want to go over with you some of the symptoms, Delray, because I want to make sure nobody in the surrounding area catches it. (Laughter.) If you say that you love American cars during a debate, but you wrote an article titled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” you might have Romnesia. (Applause.)

Sounds like Obama has a bit of an honesty problem on the Detroit accusation, as even his friend David Letterman discovered when he did what Obama didn’t … which was to check the record.  Beyond that, though, this kind of playground-level ridicule of someone’s name hardly befits an incumbent President.  As I wrote on Saturday, it reeked of desperation when George H. W. Bush did it in 1992, even without using medical terminology best known to apply to cancer and kidney failure.

Call this an acute case of ESRD — End Stage Re-election Desperation.

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!