Final debate: Challenging each other face to face

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama speaks as Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney and mod­er­a­tor Bob Schi­ef­fer lis­ten dur­ing the third pres­i­den­tial debate at Lynn Uni­ver­sity, Mon­day, in Boca Raton, Fla. (AP Photo/Pool-Michael Reynolds)

DAVID ESPO, KASIE HUNT

Asso­ci­ated Press

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama sharply chal­lenged Mitt Rom­ney on for­eign pol­icy in their final cam­paign debate Mon­day night, say­ing, “Every time you’ve offered an opin­ion you’ve been wrong.” The Repub­li­can coolly responded, “Attack­ing me is not an agenda” for deal­ing with a dan­ger­ous world.

Rom­ney took the offen­sive, too. When Obama said the U.S. and its allies have imposed crip­pling sanc­tions on Iran to halt nuclear weapons devel­op­ment, the Repub­li­can chal­lenger declared the U.S. should have done more. He declared repeat­edly, “We’re four years closer to a nuclear Iran.”

The pres­i­dent and his rival found agree­ment, as well, as they sat at close quar­ters 16 days before the end of an impos­si­bly close elec­tion cam­paign. Each stressed unequiv­o­cal sup­port for Israel when asked how he would respond if the Jew­ish state were attacked by Iran.

“If Israel is attacked, we have their back,” said Rom­ney — moments after Obama vowed, “I will stand with Israel if Israel is attacked.”

Both also said they oppose direct U.S. mil­i­tary involve­ment in the bru­tal attempt to top­ple Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashir Assad.

The event pro­duced none of the finger-pointing and lit­tle of the inter­rupt­ing that marked their debate last week, when Obama needed a come­back after a list­less per­for­mance in their first meet­ing on Oct. 3.

But there was no mis­tak­ing the urgency. The two men fre­quently sniped at one another even on issues where they agree, and reprised their campaign-long dis­agree­ments over the econ­omy, energy, edu­ca­tion and other domes­tic issues despite ground rules that stip­u­lated the debate cover inter­na­tional affairs.

Obama and Rom­ney are locked in a close race in national opin­ion polls. The final debate behind them, both men intend to embark on a final two-week whirl­wind of cam­paign­ing. The pres­i­dent is slated to speak in six states dur­ing a two-day trip that begins Wednes­day and includes a night aboard Air force One as it flies from Las Vegas to Tampa. Rom­ney intends to visit two or three states a day.

Already four mil­lion bal­lots have been cast in early vot­ing in more than two dozen states.

On the Mid­dle East, Rom­ney said that despite early hopes, the ouster of despotic regimes in Egypt, Libya and else­where over the past year has resulted in a “ris­ing tide of chaos.” He said the pres­i­dent has failed to come up with a coher­ent pol­icy to grap­ple with change sweep­ing the Mid­dle East, and he added omi­nously that an al-Qaida-like group has taken over north­ern Mali.

Antic­i­pat­ing one of Obama’s most fre­quent cam­paign asser­tions, Rom­ney said of the man seated nearby, “I con­grat­u­late him on tak­ing out Osama bin Laden and tak­ing on the lead­er­ship of al-Qaida. But we can’t kill our way out of this. … We must have a com­pre­hen­sive strategy.”

Obama said he had ended the war in Iraq, was on a path to end the U.S. com­bat role in Afghanistan and has vowed to bring jus­tice to the attack­ers of the U.S. Con­sulate in Beng­hazi last month — an assault that killed the U.S. ambas­sador to Libya and three other Americans.

He also jabbed at Romney’s hav­ing said dur­ing the cam­paign that Rus­sia is the United States’ No. 1 geopo­lit­i­cal foe.

“Gov­er­nor, when it comes to our for­eign pol­icy you seem to want the poli­cies of the 1980s, just like you want to import the social poli­cies of the 1950s and the eco­nomic poli­cies in the 1920s,” Obama said.

The two men are locked in a close race in national opin­ion polls. The final debate behind them, both men intend to embark on a final two-week whirl­wind of cam­paign­ing. The pres­i­dent is slated to speak in six states dur­ing a two-day trip that begins Wednes­day and includes a night aboard Air force One as it flies from Las Vegas to Tampa. Rom­ney intends to visit two or three states a day.

Already four mil­lion bal­lots have been cast in early vot­ing in more than two dozen states.

Bar­ring a last-minute change in strat­egy by one cam­paign or the other, Obama appears on course to win states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia that account for 237 of the 270 elec­toral votes needed for vic­tory. The same is true for Rom­ney in states with 191 elec­toral votes.

The bat­tle­grounds account for the remain­ing 110 elec­toral votes: Florida (29), North Car­olina (15), Vir­ginia (13), New Hamp­shire (4), Iowa (6), Col­orado (9), Nevada (6), Ohio (18) and Wis­con­sin (10).

The tele­vised debate brought no ces­sa­tion to other campaigning.

Obama’s cam­paign launched a tele­vi­sion ad in Florida that said the pres­i­dent ended the war in Iraq and has a plan to do the same in Afghanistan, accus­ing Rom­ney of oppos­ing him on both. It was not clear how often the ad would air, given the fall’s over­all focus on the economy.

Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, cam­paign­ing in Can­ton, Ohio, empha­sized dif­fer­ences between the two can­di­dates on the war in Afghanistan.

“We will leave Afghanistan in 2014, period. They say it depends,” he said. “Ladies and gen­tle­men, like every­thing with them, it depends. It depends on what day you find these guys.”

Romney’s run­ning mate, Wis­con­sin Rep. Paul Ryan, was in Col­orado. “We are in the midst of decid­ing the kind of coun­try we’re going to be, the kind of peo­ple we’re going to be, for a gen­er­a­tion,” he said.

What­ever the out­come of the final face-to-face con­fronta­tion, the debates have left an imprint on the race. Rom­ney was widely judged the win­ner of the first debate over a list­less pres­i­dent on Oct. 3, and he has risen in polls in the days since. Obama was much more ener­getic in the second.

Mon­day night marked the third time in less than a week that the pres­i­dent and his chal­lenger shared a stage, fol­low­ing the feisty 90-minute town-hall-style meet­ing last Tues­day on Long Island and a white-tie char­ity din­ner two night later where gra­cious com­pli­ments flowed and barbs dipped in humor flew.

At the Al Smith char­ity din­ner, Obama pre­viewed his all-purpose fall­back to crit­i­cism on inter­na­tional affairs.

“Spoiler alert: We got bin Laden,” he said, a reminder of the sig­na­ture for­eign pol­icy tri­umph of his term, the death at the hand of U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions forces of the mas­ter­mind behind the ter­ror attacks on the United States more than a decade ago.

The pres­i­dent and his chal­lenger agreed long ago to devote one of their three debates to for­eign pol­icy, even though opin­ion polls show vot­ers care most about eco­nomic concerns.

Growth has been slow and unem­ploy­ment high across Obama’s tenure in the White House. Rom­ney, a wealthy for­mer busi­ness­man, cites his expe­ri­ence as evi­dence he will put in place poli­cies that can revive the economy.

In recent weeks, the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor has stepped up his crit­i­cism of the president’s han­dling of inter­na­tional mat­ters, although his cam­paign hasn’t spent any of its tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing bud­get on com­mer­cials on the subject.

In a speech ear­lier this month, Rom­ney accused the pres­i­dent of an absence of strong lead­er­ship in the Mid­dle East, where pop­u­lar rev­o­lu­tions have swept away auto­cratic regimes in Egypt and else­where in the past two years. He has also accused Obama of fail­ing to sup­port Israel strongly enough, of fail­ing to make it clear that Iran will not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and of back­ing cuts in the defense bud­get that would harm mil­i­tary readiness.

Yet Rom­ney has stum­bled sev­eral times in attempt­ing to estab­lish his own credentials.

He offended the British when he trav­eled to Eng­land this sum­mer and made com­ments viewed as crit­i­cal of their prepa­ra­tion for the Olympic Games.

Democ­rats pounced when he failed to men­tion the U.S. troops in Afghanistan or Iraq dur­ing his accep­tance speech at the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion in late August, and offi­cials in both par­ties were crit­i­cal of his com­ments about the attack in Beng­hazi while the facts were unknown.

Posted by AP News on Oct 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.