NOTE: This post done last night with its updates today is being moved closer to the top due to continued interest.
The third, final Presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romnmey is now over. (Read the live blogging by TMV’s Pat Edaburn HERE). And. as the University of Virginia’s ace political scientist Larry Sabato tweeted, partisans are unlikely to alter their take on it due to what they hoped it showed: “Glancing down Twitter. Shocker: All Ds think O won, all Rs think R won.”
But the consensus emerging from many analysts is this: (1)it was a good night for President Barack Obama who continued his “comeback” after his disastrous first debate against Romney, (2) it was not Romney’s best night because at most he tried not to lose ground since his camp reportedly feels he’s ahead.
But a CBS News poll of uncommittted voters after the debate was more definitive:
OBAMA: 53%; ROMNEY: 23%, TIE: 24% (Margin of Error: 4%; Sample Size: 521)
A CNN poll gave the edge to Obama, but called it too close to call:
A CNN/ORC International Poll following Monday’s presidential debate found those who watched the third and final head-to-head matchup of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney did not identify a clear winner.
Debate viewers split 48% for Obama and 40% for Romney in the poll, a margin within the sampling error of plus or minus 4.5%
A PPP Poll: 53% Obama 42% Romney
The big question now becomes: can this debate be enough to nudge the small number of uncommitted voters to Obama’s side, re-energize even more his base, and give the Obama camp enough material to use against Romney over the remaining weeks? Can the Romney campaign use some of Obama’s assertions against him. One thing is clear: conservative are giving Romney free reign to move as much to the center as he wants — despite all the ringing declarations in Republican primaries about how THIS TIME the party was going to have a conservative who would proudly litigate conservative principals and show that Americans would support them if they were asserted without hedging. Romney has hedged more than Central Park’s head gardener.
The full transcript of the debate is HERE.
UPDATE: Americablog’s John Aravosis does point out something quite curious and almost unprecedented for a major political event:
Who won the final presidential debate?
Well, get this: It’s been over two hours since the debate ended, and conservative gadfly Matt Drudge has zero commentary on his site about it. He links to a single generic AP story, and doesn’t even try to spin the link.
Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck flipped out at Romney after the debate, and now this from Drudge. The Republicans fear that they lost, and that they lost big.
HERE’S A CROSS SECTION OF NEWS MEDIA AND WEBLOG REACTION FROM VARIOUS VIEWPOINTS:
—Andrew Sullivan:
10.35 pm. After the first truly epic implosion in the first debate, Obama has clawed his way back in the following two, in my view. He has marshalled his arguments as potently as possible; he brought the themes of his candidacy together compellingly. His advantage on foreign policy will not, I think, diminish; it may well strengthen. And that is only just. After eight years of the most disastrous, misguided, immoral and a catastrophic foreign policy, Obama has brought the US back from the brink, presided over the decimation of al Qaeda, the liberation of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, and restored America’s moral standing in the world.
For Romney, he made no massive mistakes. No Gerald Ford moments. And since the momentum of this race is now his, if now faltering a little, a defeat on points on foreign policy will be an acceptable result. But this was Obama’s debate; and he reminded me again of how extraordinarily lucky this country has been to have had him at the helm in this new millennium.
He’s flawed; he’s made mistakes; but who hasn’t? If this man, in these times, with this record, against this opposition, does not deserve re-election, then I am simply at a loss for words. I have to believe the American people will see that in time.
10.34 pm. Obama’s closing statement was his best few minutes in all three debates. Romney’s seems a little desperate and now he – the man whose running-mate is Paul Ryan – is saying he is more bipartisan than Obama.
President Obama seemed to use the authority of his office to put Republican challenger Mitt Romney on his heels in their final presidential debate Monday night, telling Romney he didn’t understand foreign-policy problems as well as he does.
That idea underlay some of the night’s harshest lines from Obama. He scoffed at Romney’s assertion that Russia remained the country’s chief geopolitical foe: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”
And, when Romney asserted that the United States had fewer naval ships than decades ago, Obama retorted that his opponent didn’t understand the modern navy. There were fewer ships, he said, but also fewer “horses and bayonets.”
“We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on ‘em,” Obama said. ” “The question is not a game of battleship, where we’re counting ships.”
Romney, for his part, returned to a criticism that Obama had been a weak and vacillating actor on the world stage. He said Obama had shown vulnerability to bad actors around the world, and done too little to support freedom movements in places like Iran.
“Nowhere in the world, the influence of America is greater than it was four years ago,” Romney said.But Romney also took a notably softer and more conciliatory tone than he had in the past, stressing at several points his desire for peace in the world. “I want to see peace. I want to see growing peace in this country as our objective,” he said in his closing statement. “Promote principles of peace, to make the world a safer place.”
He also picked up a theme of bipartisanship, with words that might have come from Obama’s lets-fix-Washington campaign four years ago. “We’ve got to have a president who can work across the aisle,” Romney said. “Washington is broken. I know what it takes to get this country back.”
At several points, Romney conceded that he would have done some of the same things that Obama did.
–The WP’s Chris Cillizza offers some winners and losers from the debate. Here are a few excerpts (go to the link to read it all):
WINNERS
* President Obama: Obama controlled the third presidential debate in a way not all that dissimilar from the way Romney controlled the first one. Obama clearly came loaded for bear, attacking Romney from the jump for a lack of clarity when it came to his vision (or lack thereof) on foreign policy. If you are looking for moments — and remember that the media coverage over the next few days will focus on just that — Obama had two with his line about “the 1980s calling” in regards to Romney’s foreign policy and his reference to “horses and bayonets” to call into question his rival’s understanding of the modern military. It’s possible that Obama came off too hot/not presidential in some of his attacks but Democrats will take a little too much heat following Obama’s cold-as-ice performance in the first debate. Obama came across as the more confident and commanding presence — by a lot.
* Bob Schieffer: Yes, there was a section in the middle of the debate where the two candidates got into an extended conversation about class size and things looked like they might go completely off the tracks. But, to Schieffer’s credit he did a solid job of balancing the need to keep some sort of structure in the debate while at the same time letting the two men litigate out their difference. Also, huge credit to Schieffer for injecting a bit of humor into the proceedings; his rebuke of Romney for demanding more time brought a smile to the faces of both candidates and his wry “I think we all love teachers” line felt pitch perfect….
LOSERS* Mitt Romney: Romney clearly decided to play it safe in this debate — whether because he thought he was ahead and will win if he doesn’t screw up or because he knows that foreign policy isn’t his strong suit. But, as NFL teams (re)learn every year, playing the prevent defense almost never works. Romney was constantly trying to parry Obama attacks; he knocked some down but plenty go through too. Romney also struggled to differentiate how his foreign policy would offer a break with what Obama has pursued over the past four years. And, he seemed uninterested in attacking Obama on Libya, a baffling strategic decision. Romney was, not surprisingly, at his best when talking about how the economic uncertainty in this country led to uncertainty for the country more broadly but he just didn’t do enough of it to win.
* Foreign policy: It was probably inevitable that a real discussion of America’s role in the world wasn’t going to happen amid polling that suggests that voters overwhelmingly care about the economy in this country. After about 15 minutes of trying to stay on the announced topic, both Obama and Romney started to talk at least as much about domestic policy as foreign policy. The two candidates’ closing statements were illustrative of this fact; neither man made more than a passing mention of foreign policy. It’s hard to imagine that any voter seeking a more detailed explanation of the two candidates’ views on a broad swath of foreign policy matters got it tonight.
The first half hour was a draw, though President Obama scored by default when Romney either didn’t or couldn’t attack on Libya.
After that though Romney began to falter as Obama became more direct, organized and declarative. Romney seemed increasingly lost.
Obama seemed comfortable, happy. The visuals told the story. Romney was sweating a lot and looked like he was in pain. Into the second half of the debate Romney’s answers seemed more jumbled and unfocused. There was even that rambling and generally uncontroversial digression on Pakistan. Why? He seemed lost.
Translated into Romney visuals he had what President Obama had in the first debate: that look of someone who wanted to be anywhere but on that stage.
–Pajamas Media’s live blogging pioneer Stephen Green did his famous “drunkblogging” of the debate. His conclusions:
7:25PM It’s not too early for some final thoughts.
It’s saddening to have been right, when I wrote that Obama would bring the snark. He did. Not very often, but when he did he came across as small and mean. That was the Obama we saw in Denver. At his best, he came across as the commander-in-damn-chief, which is exactly what he is. But most of those flashes came in the first 30 minutes.
Romney needed to come across as a potential commander-in-chief. You know, the same guy we saw in the last two debate. And we saw that guy again tonight — at least in the last two-thirds of the show.
As I write these words, Obama is trying to school Romney on job creation, and all I can think is, “Who does he think he’s trying to [REDACTED] fool?”
That, I think, is as fine a coda for this debate, for this series of debates, as I can muster. Obama has run far and fast from his own record. Romney, I’m sorry to say, hasn’t always hit him for that as much or as strongly as I think he should have.
But is Romney credible?
Yes. Romney is credible. Perfect? No. Credible, yes.
And that’s a win tonight.
Obama came in with an impossible task, to act as a spoiler and to appear presidential.
And that is why he fails.
President Obama and Mitt Romney wrapped up a series of debates on Monday night with a bristling exchange over America’s place in the world as each sought to portray the other as an unreliable commander in chief in a dangerous era.
Mr. Obama picked up right where he had left off in last week’s debate, going on the offensive from the very start and accusing his challenger of articulating an incoherent foreign policy. Mr. Romney opened less aggressively but accused the president of failing to adequately assert American interests and values, particularly in Libya, where an attack last month killed the American ambassador.
What America needed, Mr. Obama said within minutes of the debate’s opening at Lynn University here, is “strong steady leadership, not wrong and reckless leadership that’s all over the map.”
Mr. Romney countered by calling the president counterproductive and interested only in scoring political points. “Attacking me is not an agenda,” he said. “Attacking me is not talking about how we’re going to deal with the challenges that exist in the Middle East.”
The debate, dedicated to foreign policy, was the last opportunity for the candidates to face each other directly before the Nov. 6 election. While international relations have often taken a back seat to the economy and domestic issues during the marathon campaign, whoever wins in two weeks will inherit a world with increasingly complicated challenges, from the tumult in the Middle East to a resurgent Russia to an emerging China.
–Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball team declared Obama the winner, but concludes the impact is uncertain. Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley write:
The conventional wisdom before the debate season was that President Obama would have the edge in a foreign policy debate, and the conventional wisdom was right. The president, through superior knowledge and having — after four years — a record that is defensible in the field, won the third debate on foreign policy. Incumbent presidents typically have the edge on foreign affairs, although Jimmy Carter is, as always, the exception.
The question is, how big did Obama win? Not nearly as big as Romney in the first debate, obviously. But by a decent margin — more than debate two. Do two debate wins on points equal a giant win? No. And that’s Obama’s problem. Voters know him, and they didn’t know Romney — the first debate gave him a chance to make a first impression, and he nailed it. Obama isn’t going to deteriorate further because of this debate: If he goes down to defeat, it will be for other reasons. Meanwhile, it’s doubtful Romney did any real damage to himself, although his attempts to explain his position on the auto bailout — a key issue in vital Ohio — again fell flat.
This debate won’t have the same viewership as the first two; not only has foreign policy not been a major focus of this campaign, but the debate was also going up against “Monday Night Football” and a decisive Major League Baseball playoff game. The candidates tried to direct the conversation to domestic policies whenever they could, but it’s easy to imagine voters who are not familiar with many of the locales and issues discussed tonight. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider whether debates should have a limiting issue focus, or whether all the debates should be about all the issues.
While the president displayed greater mastery of the issues — Romney spent much of the night agreeing with him, playing a prevent defense of sorts — he was also occasionally condescending. Obama’s line about bayonets being obsolete, in response to Romney talking about building naval warships, will be widely quoted in stories about the debate, but we wonder if actual voters will respond positively to that “zinger.” Romney, on the other hand, was visibly nervous in the first part of the debate, and was on less familiar ground on several occasions.
The bottom line for Obama is that he has an enthusiasm problem. Polling consistently shows that registered voters are more supportive of the president than the smaller, likely voter pools — indeed, Romney has a narrow lead in averages of national polls, all of which have now shifted to likely voter models. What did Obama say in this debate that will boost Democratic enthusiasm? Binders and Big Bird didn’t do the trick earlier in the campaign season. Will bayonets? Probably not. However, here’s where the coverage of the debate will be important. Will the media report Obama’s performance as just good, or great? This could have some impact on Democratic enthusiasm.
The nearly universal consensus on Twitter is that Romney won by holding his own, which is all a challenger needs to do in a foreign-policy debate. After watching him talk about international affairs for 90 minutes, does he seem like a guy you’d trust with the button? If yes, then mission accomplished
—Time’s Mark Halperin declares it a tie.
—The National Journal says Obama won the debate, Romney the debate season:
Mitt Romney wins. That’s not to say he won Monday night’s debate or the presidential campaign, but it’s safe to say he won an important chapter: the debate season.
With an acceptable, though far from exceptional, performance in his third and final face-off with President Obama, the former Massachusetts governor became one of the few presidential candidates to make debates matter.
Bottom line: Obama won Monday night’s debate on points, benefiting from the blessings of incumbency and hard-world experience. But the challenger held his own, and thus the state of the race is likely unchanged.
There are ample reasons for both Obama and Romney to feel optimistic about their chances on Nov. 6. But through his own steady performances and a spectacular first-debate failure by the incumbent, Romney has cleared an important hurdle: A near-decisive number of Americans believe that he is a viable alternative to Obama, an incumbent saddled with a weak economy and a pessimistic national mood.
In his second-straight strong performance, Obama repeatedly reminded viewers on Monday night that he is the only candidate who has served as commander in chief. At least twice, he warned that Romney would be a “wrong and reckless” leader. And he caught Romney trying to shift positions on Iraq, defense spending, the auto bailout, and Russia’s role in the world.
“You keep on trying to airbrush history here,” Obama said.
Obama also called Romney out for inaccurately accusing him of apologizing for America. “Nothing Governor Romney just said is true,” Obama said.
“Who’s going to be credible for all parties involved?” the president asked, hoping the answer would be him for a second term.
—Howard Kurtz contends Romney was following a “rope a dope” strategy:
Romney defended himself in the most measured tones. His only initial swipe was recalling that Obama had told Vladimir Putin that he would have more flexibility in dealing with the Russian leader after the election. And in a not-so-subtle effort to distance himself from the last Republican president, Romney said, “We don’t want another Iraq.”
This was not the Mitt Romney of the first or second debate. Sounding like a political scientist at times, he had clearly made a calculation that playing it safe and demonstrating world knowledge were sufficient in a race in which many polls are trending his way. He steered clear of anything that might be interpreted as an aggressive call to action.
Romney thus stuck to generalities and platitudes—he would “go after the bad guys,” he was worried about a “rising tide of chaos”—without drawing bright lines on what he would do differently than the administration.
In fact, Romney congratulated the president on the killing of Osama bin Laden, said he supported what Obama had done in helping prod Hosni Mubarak from power in Egypt and does not favor military intervention in Syria. He also said he would complete the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan in 2014 and acknowledged that the surge there—Obama’s surge—“has been successful.”
It was a rope-a-dope strategy in which Romney had his gloves up but left little substantive distance between himself and his rival.
By the half-hour mark, Romney was getting so little traction on foreign policy that he pivoted to the domestic economy and how America is heading on “the road to Greece.” Obama followed suit, talking about the need for smaller class sizes.
—Michael Tomasky wonders whether Obama’s win will help him at all:
Snap verdict: Barack Obama won, again, for two in row. The CBS snap poll had it (more lopsidedly than I saw it, by the way) as 53 to 23 Obama, with 24 percent undecided. But Mitt Romney’s strategy tonight was the more interesting. Romney clearly came into this having decided that he didn’t have to win this debate. He just had to come across as Not a Crazy Person.
Hence, all the agreeing with Obama, all the adopting of milquetoast positions. I’d imagine John Bolton had to turn this off after about 40 minutes because he couldn’t bear watching it. But I wonder if Romney’s strategy is enough to work…
….My sense is that the Romney team decided: Things are going our way. If we can just tip the balance in Ohio, we have this. So tonight, just don’t mess it up. He didn’t mess anything up, and he probably passed the Gergen test.
In other words, he and his team felt that they didn’t need to move the dial. Obama still did, and does, need to. Two solid debate wins should arrest Romney momentum. But what can he do to build positive momentum of his own? I’m not sure he accomplished that. This wasn’t the kind of debate that fundamentally alters the dynamic of a race.So Tuesday, it’s back to Detroit and the bailout (not that we left it), back to the economy, back to the ad wars and the ground games that are going to grind this thing out anyway. This wasn’t much more than a diversion. Obama won it, but the important question is whether it will matter that he won it, or, did Romney meet a certain threshold and that’s enough for enough swing voters.
The third and final presidential debate was President Obama’s best moment in the campaign so far. He was prepared on every issue and knew Mitt Romney’s record of past statements just as well.
Obama succeeded because he conveyed his unique view of the world from the Oval Office. For undecided voters watching, all they probably heard was that he’s the commander-in-chief. And that’s what Team Obama wanted.
For the most part, Romney made an effort to look presidential by not attacking. He was exceedingly careful and desperately tried not to make a mistake. In fact, despite his rhetoric for the last two years, he now apparently agrees with most of the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
As a result, Romney’s biggest opponent was not the president, it was his own words. Obama did a brilliant job of bringing up past Romney statements — on Iraq, on the nation’s biggest adversary, on Afghanistan, on Osama bin Laden — to make him look unprepared for the presidency.
As the debate went on, Romney tried many times to move the international affairs discussion back to the economy where he was more comfortable. It was as if he had only 30 minutes of foreign policy talking points for a 90 minute debate. As a result he seemed to string together random thoughts which often made him sound incoherent.
Obama won the debate hands down.
A pugnacious President Obama cast Mitt Romney on Monday night as a defense and foreign policy amateur, accusing him of naiveté and shifting positions that would undermine the country’s well-being at home and its security abroad.
“The problem is … on a whole range of issues,” Obama said in one biting exchange, “you’ve been all over the map.”Romney took a more temperate tone but nevertheless accused the president of repeatedly apologizing for the country abroad — something the president vigorously denied — and failing to stand up for its ideals, especially during the revolutionary “Arab Spring.”
“We have to stand by our principles,” Romney said. “… But unfortunately, nowhere in the world is America’s influence greater today than it was four years ago.”
The third and final presidential debate focused largely on defense and foreign policy issues, with the two rivals painting vastly different pictures of the world: safer and tighter-knit, Obama suggested; dangerous and more threatening, Romney said.
But on many issues, including Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan and the use of predator drones — which both men endorsed — the two were often largely in agreement, despite their sometimes heated rhetoric.
—William Kristol all but declares Romney to be the next President of the United States:
Mitt Romney is more than holding his own with Barack Obama tonight. Only two other challengers have done as well debating foreign policy with an incumbent president—Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980 and, to a lesser degree, Bill Clinton against George H.W. Bush in 1992. Reagan and Clinton won. Romney is now on track to becoming the third challenger to win in the last 32 years—and the first in 80 years to defeat an incumbent who didn’t have a primary challenge. Tonight, Romney seems as fully capable as—probably more capable than—Barack Obama of being the next president. He probably will be.
Obama took advantage of incumbency to remind voters throughout the 90-minute debate of his experience as commander-in-chief, and Romney’s lack thereof. The former Massachusetts governor, meanwhile, sought to project a deep familiarity with vexing global issues.
………But Obama sought to do to Romney with foreign policy – disqualify him in the eyes of voters – what his re-election campaign had tried to do on Romney’s economic proposals. The president openly mocked Romney’s suggestion, for instance, that Russia is the top geopolitical foe of the United States.
….Romney used a number of opportunities to steer the debate back toward domestic issues, on which the former Massachusetts governor has mostly staked his campaign. Romney got an opportunity to recount his five-point economic plan, and his direct-to-camera closing statement emphasized the economy as much as foreign policy.
The Republican nominee also largely declined to make as sharp of a case about Obama’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Romney has used the administration’s response to that incident to make up ground versus Obama, but scarcely dwelled on Libya – the opening topic of Monday evening’s debate.
As a matter of performance, this was as one-sided a win for Obama as the first debate was a one-sided embarrassment for him. Romney’s ill-at-easeness on nearly every subject that came up was palpable, as was Obama’s barely-contained certainty on all these issues (which burbled out mainly with the “we have these ships that go under the sea, called submarines” line).
As a matter of substance, it was depressing in principle that this was the level of presidential-campaign discussion on China, India (nothing, or close to it), climate change and the environment (nothing I heard), energy (next to nothing), Europe (ditto).
But it was more striking as a matter of substance that on virtually no issue did Romney make an actual criticism, of any sort, of Obama’s policy or record. Including topics where he used to disagree, like the timeline for withdrawal for Afghanistan! Instead it was, “I agree, but you should have done it better.”
I have no idea whether anyone was still watching at this point. I have no idea how much these last-of-three debates matter. I have less idea why Obama let himself do what he did the first time around, or why Romney was not better primed for this one. But I know that Obama did very well this evening, and Romney put up his worst showing.
A review of the transcript will show that Romney delivered a lot of incoherent answers, but that probably won’t hurt him with most viewers. He leaned heavily on some of the dated talking points I said he ought to avoid. He referred back to the Green movement protests at least twice, and he trotted out his old favorite of having Ahmadinejad indicted under the Genocide Convention, both of which were reminders that Romney has had virtually nothing new or interesting to say on Iran policy in many years.
Obama effectively ridiculed Romney on some of his more outlandish statements from the campaign trail, such as his “number one geopolitical foe” blunder, but made the odd choice of giving a strong defense of the Libyan war that included a thoroughly dishonest accounting of why he supported the overthrow of Gaddafi. Invoking Gaddafi’s past crimes against Americans might make for a good soundbite, but those past crimes obviously didn’t stop the U.S. from having normal relations with the regime for two years prior to the war. Those past crimes weren’t the reason that the U.S. and NATO went to war in Libya, and everyone should understand that. It struck me as an unnecessary and unforced error on Obama’s part. As for Romney, he surprisingly mentioned Mali several times during the debate, but made no effort to link it to any policy criticism, which he wouldn’t have been in any position to make in any case.
Overall, Obama had the better of the debate, but Romney made no fatal errors and went out of his way to claim that he was deeply concerned to promote peace. If viewers were already inclined not to believe Romney’s hawkish campaign rhetoric, Romney’s debate performance provides some encouragement to them. If one assumes that Romney was just downplaying his hawkish positions for the sake of a general election audience, there was nothing that Romney said tonight that was at all reassuring.
The MSM reaction is similar to though a bit stronger than in the second debate: Obama won, but Mitt got another high-profile chance to repeat his “economic referendum” rap and reassure swing voters he isn’t determined to go to war with Iran or stick around in Afghanistan.
GOP spinners say Mitt did enough. They are definitely playing the “Mitt’s already winning” and/or “Mitt has Big Mo” cards.
…..So taken as a whole, with Biden winning the Veep debate (though marginally) and Obama winning two of three presidential debates (the “rubber match” pretty clearly), the question now is whether that first debate gave Romney a decisive, irreversible advantage, either by carrying Romney across some “acceptability” threshold for “wrong track” undecided voters or or exciting conservatives beyond all reality.
If the answer is “no,” Obama’s in pretty good shape going into the last two weeks, assuming the Democratic GOTV “ground game” is as good as advertised. Certainly Romney did nothing tonight to attract voters not already inclined to back him.
–Earlier, Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore did live blogging. His conclusion:
* Closing statements: Obama does distilled version of Clinton convention speech, plus stressing second-term agenda without adding anything new.
* Romney: Takes about thirty second on foreign policy, then changes “economic referendum” rap into “two futures” choice, then repetition of bipartisanship pledge, which he can get away with because his party’s base doesn’t believe it.
Having not seen any tweets or spin, I thought Obama won comfortably, but mainly because Romney seems to have decided that two or three repetitions of his economic referendum rap—and showing he wasn’t a war-monger—was all that mattered.
—Robert Reich in The Huffington Post:
I thought the third and last presidential debate was a clear win for the president. He displayed the authority of the nation’s Commander-in-Chief — calm, dignified, and confident. He was assertive without being shrill, clear without being condescending. He explained to a clueless Mitt Romney the way the world actually works.
Romney seemed out of his depth. His arguments were more a series of bromides than positions — “we have to make sure arms don’t get into the wrong hands,” “we want a peaceful planet,” “we need to stand by our principles,” “we need strong allies,” “we need a comprehensive strategy to move the world away from terrorism.”
This has been Romney’s problem all along, of course, but in the first debate he managed to disguise his vacuousness with a surprisingly combative, well-rehearsed performance. By the second debate, the disguise was wearing thin.
In tonight’s debate, Romney seemed to wither — and wander. He often had difficulty distinguishing his approach from the President’s, except to say, repeatedly, “America needs strong leadership.”
On the few occasions when Romney managed to criticize the President, he called for a more assertive foreign policy — but he never specified exactly what that assertiveness would entail. He wanted “tougher economic sanctions on Iran,” for example, or “stronger support for Israel” — the details of which were never revealed.
Obama’s most targeted criticism of Romney, on the other hand, went to Romney’s core weakness — that Romney’s positions have been inconsistent, superficial, and often wrong: “Every time you’ve offered an opinion,” said Obama, “you’ve been wrong.”
….President Obama won tonight’s debate not only because he knows more about foreign policy than does Mitt Romney, but because Obama understands how to wield the soft as well as the hard power of America. He came off as more subtle and convincing than Romney — more authoritative — because, in reality, he is.
Although Monday night’s topic was foreign policy, I hope Americans understood it was also about every other major challenge we face. Mitt Romney is not only a cold warrior; he’s also a class warrior. And the two are closely related. Romney tries to disguise both within an amenable demeanor. But in both capacities, he’s a bully.
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama renewed their personal hostilities against each other tonight, triggering explosive exchanges over foreign affairs in the final presidential debate.
A sarcastic U.S. president repeatedly patronised his Republican opponent, accusing him of being ‘all over the map’ on how to deal with the world, ‘wrong and reckless’ and in one taunt claimed that Romney thought of the naval forces and military force levels of being ‘like a game of Battleship’, mocking the challenger for wanting to bring back ‘horses and bayonets’ to the military.
But Romney held his own in the face of Obama’s sustained assaults, working hard to establish his credentials as a sober and steady statesman with an obviously well-briefed analysis of world matters, from Iran to Poland to Mali.
There were no decisive moments in the 90 minutes in what appeared to be a draw on the night – and therefore potentially a strategic victory for Romney, who went into the debate with momentum and a slight national lead.
If the world could vote on 6 November, Barack Obama would win by a landslide. A global poll for the BBC World Service revealed that 20 out of 21 countries preferred the president to his challenger. But when you watched the presidential debate on foreign policy on Monday night you had to wonder why. Not because Mitt Romney was better, but because on matters of policy, Obama was almost as bad. It takes a friend to reveal the harsh truth to the global community, so here it is: “Obama’s just not that into you.”
No one could love Israel more, care less about the Palestinians, put more pressure on Iran or be a greater fan of drone attacks or invading Libya. Both candidates agreed that America’s task was to spread freedom around the world: nobody mentioned Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib or rendition. “Governor, you’re saying the same things as us, but you’d say them louder,” said Obama. It was a good line. The trouble was it condemned them both.
It was one of many lines Obama delivered that sought not just to correct Romney but belittle him. “When it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.”
When Romney complained that America had fewer ships in the US navy than in 1916, Obama answered: “We also have fewer horses and bayonets.”
Obama’s task was to cast his opponent as an opportunist out of his depth, not waving at the electorate but drowning before them. Promising to be “strong and steady not wrong and reckless,” he painted Romney at every opportunity as a flip-flopper.
–-A Daily Kos diary gives a good summary of some reaction:
David Gergin: President Obama dominated the debate and he won. On Romney: “one of his weaker nights”
CNN’s John King: There’s no question debate coaches would score this for President Obama.
About 25% of debate viewers in the second debate watched Fox – who spun away. This time they are saying it was a draw.7:45 PM PT: Republican strategist Alex Castellanos: President Obama won on points tonight, no doubt.
7:49 PM PT: chucktodd on Romney: Playing prevent defense — as Romney did tonight — often comes with its risks
7:50 PM PT: Jonathan Alter?@jonathanalter
Romney essentially conceded that Obama doing decently on foreign policy, which with strong Obama performancd means Obama won debates 2-1.
7:57 PM PT: From the comments, Brooks and Shields say it was a draw.
7:59 PM PT: Dick Morris thought Obama won
Romney wisely avoided getting entangled in the details of foreign policy. His campaign thinks that Obama is losing credibility on foreign affairs because of the chaos associated with Libya and Syria that people see on their televisions.
And his relative meekness tonight, when compared to Obama’s A-game, reflects a more confident campaign, or at least one that is relatively at ease with the flow of the race. That’s why Obama wanted a fight: He wants to get back to the halcyon days of the summer, when Obama’s campaign had all but disqualified Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat. The attack has changed: Obama focused closely on Romney’s inexperience and his vacillation.
His two biggest zingers, including a rebuttal to Romney’s assertion that the U.S. Navy’s ship roster is too small, took aim at Romney’s relative inexperience: “We also have fewer horses and bayonets,” he said. Romney was passive and did not respond.
In football terms, Romney knelt into the victory formation after every answer. Or he played, in Chuck Todd’s view, “prevent defense” all night. Maybe he let Obama run up the score too much.
A final point: As much as Obama’s aggressiveness suggests he knows he doesn’t have the election sewn up, Romney long explanation on the auto bailout shows that he knows why he’s losing in the industrial Midwest, where the auto bailout has been Obama’s most successful issue. “I love American cars,” he said. “I would not do one thing to hurt the U.S. auto industry.
As I expected, Romney brought Moderate Mitt to this debate. Practically the first word out of his mouth was “peace” — and throughout, he stressed that he wanted to foster peace. In fact, he had a simple two-track message, peace/strength. And I do think, taking his performance as a solo, that he hit his core objectives: he was 1) moderate Mitt, and 2) versed Mitt, reeling off for-show nuances like the power hierarchy in Pakistan, and rattling off 4- and 5-point plans and systematic rebuttals. . Oh, and as always, 3) Dominating Mitt, talking over everyone. Objective 4) was to paint a weak Obama, and that one didn’t go so well.
One thing Romney did well –advancing his image as a peacemaker not a warmonger — was deliver firm one-word answers to “should we” questions. Should we divorce Pakistan? No. Should we have propped up Mubarek? No. Should we take more decisive military action in Syria (beyond arming the ‘right’ rebels)? No.
On the peace front, the Etch-A-Sketch was in full shake….
So Romney could not be wiped off the stage. But Obama brought his A-game, and trumped him on fundamentals, effectively rebutting every charge of weakness, coming off every inch the seasoned, tested leader, and, crucially, puncturing some of Romney’s most enduring lies, effectively calling Romney a liar to his face (“that’s his biggest whopper’; “you keep trying to airbrush history”). The key points on which he gave the lie: 1) that he had somehow been slow or timid about building an effective sanctions regime — he spelled out that it was painstaking work that required the cooperation of all major powers (“we’ve been able to mobilize the world”); 2) that he had ever gone on an apology tour; 3) that Romney advocated federal guarantees to facilitate the auto industry bailouts; and 4) that he (Obama) had let China roll over the U.S. on trade policy.
In the first exchange or two, Obama had me worried a little, because he addressed himself to Hawkish Mitt without appearing to notice that Moderate Mitt had taken over the vocal chords. I feared a reprise of the first debate, with Obama trying to debate a Mitt who wasn’t there. But he adjusted soon enough, and just as I’d fantasized, commenced saluting the on-stage Mitt repeatedly for effectively endorsing his own policies before pivoting to highlight the contrast with Mitts Past.*
I don’t know if Obama will get a poll bump. Romney performed well. But Obama was every inch the commander-in-chief. And he pierced the veil of the challenger’s bogus attacks on his alleged weakness.
Throughout the debate, Mitt Romney smiled, agreed, and avoided fights. Barack Obama did everything he could to get into fights. That’s not what incumbents in a comfortable lead do.
The biggest issue to come out of this debate, though, was Barack Obama totally claiming that sequestration was Congress’s fault — he signed it into law — and that it would not happen, despite it being the law of the land.
Within mere moments after the conclusion of the debate, the Obama camp already walked it back. It is never good for the President of the United States when, immediately upon conclusion of a must win debate, his campaign team is already walking back his bold statements. His jokes about sequestration will haunt him in military towns and his dismissiveness of the American Navy will hurt him in key swing states.
Mitt Romney won this debate. Barack Obama, by the end, when not distracted by the handwriting on the wall, must have secretly been contemplating how good a deal he could get from U-Haul on moving boxes.
—Booman:
Tonight was the worst ass-kicking any presidential candidate has ever received in a debate in the history of presidential debates. Mitt Romney was slaughtered. And let me explain why.
Ordinarily, the Democratic candidate does much better on substance than the Republican. This has certainly been true since at least 1992, including in the vice-presidential debates. But the problem is that the majority of the voting public is not well-versed enough on substance to know who is telling the truth or which statements are realistic and which are ridiculous. I don’t say this to denigrate the intelligence of the American electorate; it’s just a fact that most people can’t devote enough time to politics to have informed opinions about policy. That’s particularly true of foreign policy.
As a result, it was possible for George W. Bush to make a fool of himself and still win a debate against Al Gore because Al Gore acted like a jerk. It was possible for John Kerry to completely decimate George W. Bush three times and still not win the election. And it was possible for Sarah Palin to appear on stage with Joe Biden without the entire Republican Party being struck by a lightning bolt. The reason Mitt Romney lost bigger tonight than any candidate in history is because he lost on every measure other than substance and he lost on substance, too.
Simply put, Mitt Romney was the beta-dog all night in every exchange. Obama never took his eyes off him. He never failed to attack. Romney was reduced to agreeing with Obama on half the questions. Romney got pushed around by the moderator. His demeanor was weak. His expression was weak. His arguments were weak. If this were a 12-round heavyweight bout, Romney lost every round.
…….Having said that, I also told you before the debate started that Obama probably couldn’t move the fundamentals of the race much unless Romney committed a titanic gaffe. Romney didn’t do that.
So, despite trouncing Romney in a way that has never been done before, I do not think Obama will suddenly see a massive shift in the polls. What he will see is a modest bump in the polls. But, God willing, that will be enough to win.
A forceful President Barack Obama put Republican challenger Mitt Romney on the defensive on foreign policy Monday night, with analysts and an immediate poll giving him the victory in their final debate just 15 days before the November 6 vote.
Obama displayed the experience of a commander-in-chief in explaining U.S. policy under his leadership and attacking the views and proposals of Romney, a former Massachusetts governor with less experience on international issues.
Romney ended up supporting most of the Obama administration’s steps involving hotspots, such as the civil war in Syria, and preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, giving the president the advantage in a debate in which his GOP rival needed to question foreign policy of the past four years.
Analysts agreed that Obama won the debate on points, but questioned if the result would have a big impact on voters and the race as a whole ahead of Election Day.
There’s no question debate coaches would score this one for the president,” said CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, while CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen said Obama “dominated the middle of the debate” and emerged as the winner.
Both King and Gergen agreed that Romney avoided sounding like an overzealous advocate of military action — which is how Obama and Democrats seek to portray him.
Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist and CNN contributor, conceded Obama “won tonight on points, no doubt about it,” but added that Romney showed the cool and calm leadership style of a commander-in-chief to show that making a change in leadership now would be safe.
And last but most assuredly not least: Read John Aravosis must-read roundup HERE.
UPDATE:
—Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
Watching Sean Hannity on Fox, I’m sure not feeling much excitement about Romney’s performance. He spent five minutes talking to Sarah Palin, and they spent most of the time expressing disappointment about what Romney didn’t say. “He just didn’t have time to make all the points he needed to,” Palin sighed. In the end, they used nearly the entire segment imagining the attacks Romney should have made, rather than defending what he did say. I’m not surprised, since Romney went out of his way to be as un-Foxlike as possible on the warmongering front….
Hilarious line of the night comes from Sean Hannity: “Marines still use bayonets, so maybe somebody should educate the president about how the military works.” Seriously? Apparently so. Later on Hannity was crowing about the Marines using horses in Afghanistan too. This just reeks of desperation.
Republicans are spinning hard to make this sound like an Obama debacle, but if you read between the lines, conservative reaction to the debate hasn’t been very positive. Romney decided — probably with good reason — that he needed to be extremely restrained tonight, and this meant that he barely mentioned any of the Republican pet rocks that keep the base so riled up. No Churchill bust. No failure to meet with Netanyahu. No attacks over Benghazi. Only a bare mention of the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in Egypt. This has left conservatives mostly mooning about what Romney should have said and relitigating Benghazi all over again. They think Obama has proven himself the weakest world leader since Neville Chamberlain, and they just don’t understand why Romney didn’t mop up the floor with him.
The conventional wisdom, such as it is, is that Romney took this tack because he needs to build support among women, and bellicosity doesn’t play well with that demographic. Maybe so. We’ll see if that works out for him. But it sure has left a long trail of despondent conservatives behind him.
– Three weeks ago in the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney was the one who was aggressive, while President Obama seemed to be playing it safe — and, as it turned out, too safe. Last night here in the final debate before Election Day, those roles were reversed: It was Obama who was drawing the contrasts, who looked energized, and who was in control of the conversation. And it was Romney who was playing it safe and often trying to point out similarities rather than differences. Obama was the candidate with more to prove; Romney simply wanted to clear the bar on the minimum height. Using another sports analogy: As anyone who watches football can attest, prevent defenses sometimes work (because they’re designed to prevent a big play and a quick score) and sometimes they don’t (because the defense loses its aggression and appears flat footed). Romney and his campaign clearly made the calculated risk that, with their momentum in the polls, playing it safe was a wiser strategy. If a race is tied, do you really play prevent defense? Only if you believe the race trajectory favors you. And that’s what the Romney campaign believes.
*** Why a foreign-policy debate might matter and why it might not: But will last night matter? On the one hand, the subject matter was foreign policy (which has been Obama’s strong suit and Romney’s weak one), and the outcome shouldn’t have been too surprising given that Obama is the incumbent president and that Romney is a former one-term governor. On the other hand, look in our new national NBC/WSJ poll and see where Romney had made some of his biggest gains since the debate season began: He had narrowed the gap on who would be the better commander-in-chief from eight points (47% to 39%) to jut three (44%-41%). In addition, 53% of registered voters said they were comfortable with Romney being president, compared with 50% who said that about him before the debates and 56% who said that about Obama. Yes, foreign policy and national security aren’t the top issues in this election. But they matter when it comes to portraying strength and assessing if someone is prepared to be president. In that respect, last night helped the president and had the potential to hurt his challenger. What could save Romney? There are only two weeks left in the campaign. And given everything Obama has to do, making his affirmative closing argument, does the campaign have the time to two message tracks?
To regain momentum, Obama had to take last night’s confrontation with a thorough thumping. He didn’t. He barely won it again. Good for talking points this week, but not enough to knock out Romney, who’s built a national polling lead and keeps creeping up in swing states.
=.
For the first time the business executive has now passed the crucial 50% level in Gallup tracking polls. And no one who’s accomplished that at this stage in a campaign has ever lost.The debate was moderated smoothly by CBS’ Bob Schieffer, who generally tossed out questions and let the two each have two minutes and then discuss among themselves. Neither was verklempt.
Obama was aggressive, on the attack, a tactic usually associated with someone trailing. Attacking me, Romney calmly noted, is not an agenda. Obama was at times condescending and snide, even explaining to this foreign policy neophyte that diplomacy is not a game of Battleship, that the navy has few horses now and aircraft carriers are ships with airplanes on them.
Munching their cold pizzas, Obama’s debate-watching parties probably loved those rehearsed lines.
But it sounded more like a grimy Chicago aldermanic sniping match than a genuine president.
Romney didn’t take the bait. Obama was undoubtedly fully-prepared to argue the lies and contradictory timelines stemming from the Benghazi murders and the now thoroughly debunked video excuse.
But Romney crossed up Obama, as he did on Oct. 3. It no doubt disappointed some conservatives, who wanted Obama team scalps over the first death of an ambassador in 30 years. But, guess what? Those weedy arguments about administration duplicity are being made all over cable TV every hour anyway.
Instead, Romney took a bolder, bigger picture approach, kind of like a president. He praised Obama for taking out al Qaeda’s leadership, without slipping in some tempting zinger about being the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to keep a drone kill list.
But then, shockingly for someone perceived as a foreign policy hawk, Romney said, “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.” Understanding domestic war-weariness, Romney even agreed that the end of 2014 was a good time to bring most troops home from Afghanistan. This blew out of the water any Obama plan to paint the Republican as a rabid warmonger
Unfortunately for Romney, the atmospherics of being in constant retreat during a foreign policy debate don’t scream “presidential.” Romney needed at least a few instances of standing his ground if only to show that he can think for himself and isn’t cowed by the guy who’s been doing the job for four years. If you look like you’re getting pushed around in a domestic policy debate, it’s probably the bully who’s losing points with the audience. But if you look like you’re getting pushed around in a foreign policy debate, the joke’s probably on you.
On competence, meanwhile, I think the Romney campaign fell prey to another subtle misunderstanding. The conventional wisdom in foreign policy debates is that the challenger only has to demonstrate a basic fluency. But, again, that’s when you’re actually laying out policy differences with the president. If you’re not laying out any differences, minimal competence isn’t enough. After all, why would a voter simply want a less competent version of what they’ve already got?
The problem for Romney is that’s more or less what he presented tonight. Though he didn’t commit any major mistakes, he came off as generally less sure of himself than Obama—whether it was his rambling tour d’horizon of the Pakistani political system (“You have the ISI, their intelligence organization, is probably the most powerful of the three branches there, then you have the military and then you have the civilian government…”) or his rote inventory of Navy ships (which earned him the “not a game of Battleship” smack-down from the president). What would have been a perfectly acceptable level of knowledge had he been articulating an alternative path looked instead like one guy scoring worse on the same essay question.
So, yes, the Romney campaign was clearly right to assume that most Americans won’t base their vote on foreign policy. But voters clearly will base their vote on whether a candidate looks and acts like a president and sounds ready to be president. And I think they coughed up a few points on both counts tonight.
–-Political expert Charlie Cook on what this means:
President Obama seemed to win the debate on points, but Mitt Romney seemed to take the course pass/fail and clearly passed. Yet it seems unlikely that this third debate will have nearly the impact that the first debate had in boosting Romney and hurting Obama, or that the second debate had in stabilizing the race. Clearly, Romney wanted to come across as nonthreatening and broadly acceptable; he also wanted to clear the threshold for being commander in chief. He did not take risks, being careful on a subject that is not in his lane.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that the momentum that Romney built up after his first debate victory had continued to grow, but my sense was that it was arrested by an Obama win in the second debate, albeit less decisive than the Romney’s victory in the first. Going into this third and final debate, the national polls looked dead even, and, coming out of the debate, my guess is that the polls will still be dead even.But if the national polls are looking even, that doesn’t mean that the election is an even-money contest. Although this race is very close, the road to 270 electoral votes is considerably more difficult for Romney than it is for Obama……
……..It’s that in five of the six (Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Wisconsin) Obama is still leading in most polling, particularly the last two, while in Florida, it seems awfully close to dead even. If Obama carries Ohio and Wisconsin, where he is ahead in most polling, he gets the 270 with one electoral vote to spare, so Romney could sweep Colorado, Florida, Iowa, and New Hampshire and still come up short. No matter how you cut it, Ohio is the pivotal state, and it isn’t just the history of having gone with every winner from 1964 on and with no Republican ever capturing the White House without it.
To be sure, this race is so close that it clearly can go either way, but the Obama electoral path looks less steep than the one Romney must traverse, and the final debate seems unlikely to have altered that fact.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.