Obama on debate with Romney: ‘I had a bad night’

DAVID ESPO

STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

SIDNEY — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama con­ceded Wednes­day he did poorly in a debate last week that fueled a come­back by his rival in the race for the White House. Mitt Rom­ney barn­stormed bat­tle­ground Ohio and pledged “I’m not going to raise taxes on any­one” in a new commercial.

A peren­nial cam­paign issue flared unex­pect­edly as Rom­ney reaf­firmed he is run­ning as a “pro-life can­di­date and I’ll be a pro-life pres­i­dent.” He spoke one day after say­ing in an inter­view he was not aware of any abortion-related leg­is­la­tion that would become part of his agenda if he wins the White House.

Rom­ney and Obama maneu­vered in a race with 27 days to run as Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Repub­li­can run­ning mate Paul Ryan looked ahead to their only debate, set for Thurs­day night in Danville, Ky.

What­ever the impact of the Biden-Ryan encounter, last week’s pres­i­den­tial debate boosted Rom­ney in the polls nation­ally and in Ohio and other bat­tle­ground states, to the point that Obama was still strug­gling to explain a per­for­mance even his aides and sup­port­ers say was subpar.

“Gov. Rom­ney had a good night. I had a bad night. It’s not the first time I’ve had a bad night,” Obama said in an ABC interview.

Asked if it was pos­si­ble he had handed the elec­tion to Rom­ney, the pres­i­dent replied: “No.”

“What’s impor­tant is the fun­da­men­tals of what this race is about haven’t changed,” he said. “You know, Gov. Rom­ney went to a lot of trou­ble to try to hide what his posi­tions are,” he said, refer­ring to abor­tion as an example.

Despite the pres­i­den­tial dis­play of con­fi­dence, pub­lic opin­ion polls sug­gested the impact of last week’s debate was to wipe out most, if not all, of the gains Obama made fol­low­ing both par­ties’ national con­ven­tions and the emer­gence in late sum­mer of a video­tape in which Rom­ney spoke dis­mis­sively of 47 per­cent of Amer­i­cans whom he said pay no income taxes. They feel as if they are vic­tims, he said, adding they don’t take per­sonal respon­si­bil­i­ties for their lives.

Eager to cap­i­tal­ize on his new­found momen­tum, Rom­ney told more than 7,000 packed into a west­ern Ohio rally: “We can’t afford four more years of Barack Obama.”

The Repub­li­can chal­lenger made three pub­lic appear­ances in Ohio on Wednes­day and will spend two of the next three days in the state.

“Ohio could well be the place that elects the next pres­i­dent of the United States,” he said. “I need you to do that job. We’re going to win together.”

Romney’s new tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial was an appeal to vot­ers’ pock­et­books — and also a rebut­tal to Obama’s claim that Rom­ney had a plan to cut taxes by $5 tril­lion on the wealthy that would mean higher taxes for the mid­dle class.

“The pres­i­dent would pre­fer rais­ing taxes,” Rom­ney is shown say­ing in an exchange from last week’s debate. “I’m not going to raise taxes on any­one. … My pri­or­ity is putting peo­ple back to work in America.”

Unem­ploy­ment and the econ­omy have been the dom­i­nant issues in the race for the pres­i­dency, and while Rom­ney gained from the debate, last week’s drop in the job­less rate to 7.8 per­cent gave Obama a new talk­ing point for the Demo­c­ra­tic claim that his poli­cies are help­ing the coun­try recover, how­ever slowly, from the worst reces­sion in decades.

Rom­ney also sought to lay any abortion-related con­tro­versy to rest as he cam­paigned across Ohio, a bat­tle­ground with 18 elec­toral votes and one of the places where he has gained ground since last week’s debate.

“I think I’ve said time and again that I’m a pro-life can­di­date and I’ll be a pro-life pres­i­dent,” he said, renew­ing his promise to cut off fed­eral aid for Planned Par­ent­hood and imple­ment a ban on the use of for­eign aid for abor­tions overseas.

But by the time he spoke, Obama’s aides had already jumped on com­ments from an inter­view with The Des Moines Reg­is­ter in which Rom­ney said “there’s no leg­is­la­tion with regards to abor­tion that I’m famil­iar with that would become part of my agenda.”

Stephanie Cut­ter, Obama’s deputy cam­paign man­ager, told reporters on a con­fer­ence call that Rom­ney was “cyn­i­cally and dis­hon­estly” hid­ing his posi­tions on women’s issues. “We’re not say­ing he’s changed his mind on these issues. We’re say­ing he’s try­ing to cover up his beliefs,” she said.

For entirely dif­fer­ent rea­sons, one promi­nent anti-abortion group agreed that he shouldn’t.

As if to remind Rom­ney of his pre­vi­ous state­ments on the issue, the head of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List dis­trib­uted an arti­cle he wrote last sum­mer vow­ing to pro­hibit fed­eral fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood and to sup­port leg­is­la­tion that would “pro­tect unborn chil­dren who are capa­ble of feel­ing pain from abortion.”

“We have full con­fi­dence that as pres­i­dent, Gov. Rom­ney will stand by the pro-life com­mit­ments,” said Mar­jorie Dan­nen­felser, the group’s president.

Vice pres­i­den­tial encoun­ters rarely make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in a White House cam­paign, although aides engage in the same sort of attempt to shape pub­lic expec­ta­tions as when the men at the top of the ticket are ready to face off.

For Ryan’s camp, that meant whis­per­ing that the 42-year-old Wis­con­sin con­gress­man and House Bud­get Com­mit­tee chair­man was com­fort­able dis­cussing spend­ing issues and domes­tic pol­icy, but might not be able to hold his own on for­eign pol­icy, a Biden strong suit.

The vice president’s side let it be known that Ryan is smart and wonky, a man who knows the bud­get bet­ter than any­one — but it’s a ver­sion that omits men­tion of Biden’s nearly four decades of expe­ri­ence in gov­ern­ment and his role as Obama’s point man in bud­get nego­ti­a­tions with Repub­li­cans on an elu­sive deficit-reduction deal.

Romney’s wife, Ann, took a turn as guest host on ABC’s “Good Morn­ing Amer­ica” and spoke can­didly about expe­ri­enc­ing depres­sion after she was diag­nosed with mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis 14 years ago. She said horses helped her recover her men­tal health.

“I was very, very weak and very much wor­ried about my life, think­ing I was going to be in a wheel­chair as well. Turned to horses, my life has been dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent,” she said. “They gave me the energy, the pas­sion to get out of bed when I was so sick that I didn’t think I’d ever want to get out of bed.”

Mrs. Rom­ney is part-owner of a horse that com­peted this sum­mer in the Olympic sport of dres­sage, the equine equiv­a­lent of ballet.

Posted by AP News on Oct 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.