Congratulations to President Obama, presidential debate champion! (won 2 of 3)
For the third debate, President Obama won all the instant polls. Perhaps the most significant was the CBS poll of uncommitted voters: Obama 53% Romney 23% This 30 point margin was 10 points more than this poll gave to Romney for the first debate.
The PPP swing state poll of those who watched the debate: Obama 53% Romney 42. Although both men and women agreed on Obama, women by a much larger margin. Women also said the debate made it less likely they would vote for Romney.
The pundits:
Taegan Goddard:
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.
Joe Klein, who wrote he didn't know who has won the second debate, this time wrote:
President Obama won the foreign policy debate, cleanly and decisively, on both style and substance. .. Obama didn’t have a single weak or unconvincing moment.
Josh Marshall:
"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."
James Fallows wrote a reaction echoed elsewhere: " Obama did very well this evening, and Romney put up his worst showing."
Ambinder agree that the Romney strategy was to do no harm, seem harmless, but he isn't sure it turned out to be such a good idea:
"Deciding to let Obama once again be the aggressor carries real risks, because of the large audience, and because the contrasts in tone between the two candidates could be large enough that some voters who initially thought Romney crossed the credibility threshold might have second thoughts."
The New York Times
"Mitt Romney has nothing really coherent or substantive to say about domestic policy, but at least he can sound energetic and confident about it. On foreign policy, the subject of Monday night’s final presidential debate, he had little coherent to say and often sounded completely lost. That’s because he has no original ideas of substance on most world issues, including Syria, Iran and Afghanistan.
During the debate, on issue after issue, Mr. Romney sounded as if he had read the boldfaced headings in a briefing book — or a freshman global history textbook — and had not gone much further than that."
My summary argument: I'll be interested in the viewing numbers for the third debate, especially after the first half hour. It was up against the NCLS 7th game (though it lacked actual drama after the 3rd inning) and Monday Night Football. But the audience for this particular debate may be less important than the stories about it, and about Romney's latest lies, reversals and expressions of ignorance. People probably still defer to informed opinion on foreign affairs more than they do on domestic issues. So the size of the audience for the debate may not matter as much as the stories about it over the next few days. As for overall impressions for viewers who aren't policy experts, President Obama has come across very well in two debates in a week now.
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