It’s a good question, for a couple of reasons. First, I think we can establish that Mitt Romney has gotten a bounce from his overwhelming debate win on Wednesday, and that it’s not just an outlier result any longer. But the question still exists as to whether this is a “bounce,” as The Week assumes, which will have a parabola impact, or a pivot point in public opinion that will change the race and momentum. In their roundup, The Week quotes three commentators with different perspectives on the matter (including our friend Andrew Malcolm), but let’s let TW simply frame the question here:

A flurry of new polls indicate that Mitt Romney got a lift from hisstrong debate performance last week, pulling roughly even with President Obama nationwide. Romney also appears to have chipped away at or eliminated Obama’s lead in several critical swing states, including Florida, Virginia, and Ohio. Gallup’s latest seven-day tracking poll, for example, showed Obama leading Romney 50 percent to 45 percent among registered voters in the three days leading up to last week’s televised clash; afterward, they were deadlocked at 47 percent apiece. Will Romney’s post-debate bounce be fleeting, or has it fundamentally altered the race?

I’m inclined to think it has fundamentally altered the race, for a few reasons — some of which I predicted in my pre-debate analysis. Romney had his first opportunity to stand on the same stage as Obama as an equal and talk over the heads of the media directly to voters. That would have helped him even if Obama had done better in the debate, by both humanizing Romney while elevating his stature. With Romney clearly and decisively out-debating Obama, it has elevated him perhaps past Obama in stature, a very bad outcome for an incumbent — and a bell that is almost impossible to unring. That’s why I considered the first debate the most important of the three.

Second, the biggest reason (although hardly the only one) that Obama failed so badly was that he has still not articulated any kind of a vision for his second term. Instead, he spent the debate offering a vague stay-the-course argument while attacking Romney’s proposals, which is still to this day the only agenda on the table for the next four years. In order to fix that problem, Obama has to launch a clear vision of how he will change the current economic trajectory in the next four years other than a promise to raise Mitt Romney’s taxes. Instead, he’s still griping about Romney while refusing to explain why he wants another term at all — which lost Friday Night Lights creator and life-long Democrat Buzz Bissinger at The Daily Beast:

At the debate, Romney did not simply act like he wanted to be president. He wants to be president. He showed vigor, and enthusiasm, and excitement, a man who wants to lead. It may all be ephemeral, because most of politics is ephemeral, a cynical means to the end of getting elected. But he also revealed compassion that, during the entirety of this absurdly long march, had never been in evidence before. He recognized the needs of the poor. He recognized the need for regulation.

His tax plan was admittedly mystery meat. But the tag he has lied is unfair. To the contrary, he has recognized that his original proposal is more screwed up than the infield fly rule, not to mention mathematically impossible. So he is modifying it, coming up with a possible alternative in recent weeks that deductions should be capped at $17,000. Even the liberal party boys, like The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, reluctantly admitted in the typical liberal style that it might have merit one of these millennia. I think Romney realizes that lowering the marginal rate to 20 percent will not fly if he is to lower the deficit and make the plan work. And he is hardly the only candidate to assert something during a campaign that will change once in his office. As I recall, Obama vowed to cut the deficit in half.