Nearly all post-debate analysis indicates that President Obama outshone Governor Romney in the third and final presidential debate, which centered around foreign policy.
With moderator Bob Schieffer (CBS’ Face the Nation) steering the debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, this Monday evening’s debate included banter that was far more subdued than the jeering remarks made during the second presidential debate. Schieffer opened with a question “concerning the challenge of a changing Middle East and the new face of terrorism.” This segued into a discussion of recent events in Libya, the turmoil in Lebanon and Egypt, Israel’s position as our nation’s greatest ally, and military presence in Iran and Afghanistan. Romney, surprisingly, agreed with Obama in the majority of these topics. Perhaps in another instance of “Romnesia“, the former governor flip-floped his stance on certain issues. Notably, he no longer seemed to oppose Obama’s plan to remove all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2014, a move he previously considered to be a rushed exit.
When asked to identify America’s role in the world, the candidates digressed back to the discussion of domestic improvement (as Romney said, “We want to end those conflicts [in the Middle East] to the extent humanly possible. But in order to be able to fulfill our role in the world, America must be strong. America must lead. And for that to happen, we have to strengthen our economy here at home.”). We ended up hearing nearly verbatim echoes of the previous debates, from Romney’s five point plan to Obama calling out his opponent on his ambiguous and ever-changing stances.
A memorable rebuttal of Obama during the evening was in response to Romney’s claim that our military power is physically lacking, “You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of battleship, where we’re counting ships. It’s what are our capabilities.”
Obama also threw a punch to Romney in response to his call to Americans to “Come on our website. You look at how we get to a balanced budget within eight to ten years” (which begs the question, why couldn’t Romney explain himself throughout all three debates exactly how he plans to get rid of our deficit without raising taxes?). Obama countered with, the “budget that you’re putting forward…just doesn’t work…and, you know, we visited [your] website quite a bit and it still doesn’t work.”
Obama and Romney, both looking intently into the camera, delivered their closing statements after the packed 90 minutes of debate. Obama used his greatest advantage over Romney, as he did throughout the debate, in his final statement—the fact that he has served as commander in chief. He has already been in the hot-seat for four years, making “real progress digging our way out of policies that gave us two prolonged war, record deficits and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” He concluded with a vow to “work every single day to make sure America continues to be the greatest nation on Earth”. Romney, allowed to close this final debate because of a coin toss, also put the U.S. into a world perspective, saying that, if elected, he would work to make sure “we all together remain America as the hope of the Earth.”
And finally, with the three presidential debates passed, we head into the frenzied final two week period before the 2012 election on November 6th.