The final presidential debate: Obama attacks early and often

President Obama was the clear aggressor in the final presidential debate.

(Image credit: REUTERS/Joe Skipper )

last updated 8 January 2015

At the final presidential debate Monday night in Boca Raton, Florida, President Obama bolted out of the starting gates with a flurry of attacks on Mitt Romney's foreign policy proposals. "The 1980s called — they want their foreign policy back," Obama snapped at one point, referring to Romney's assertion that Russia was the U.S.'s top geopolitical foe. "No finger-pointing yet," says Adam Nagourney at The New York Times, "but Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are talking over each other, challenging each other's facts and veracity, as Mr. Obama comes in — again — seemingly intent on not giving an inch to Mr. Romney after his disastrous first debate." Here, some reactions from the Twitterverse:

For his part, Romney appeared reluctant to get in a scrappy fight. He congratulated Obama on ordering the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Sounding like a foreign policy dove, he focused on women's equality in the Middle East and economic development, and said, "We can't kill our way out of this mess." He also declined to attack Obama on the administration's response to the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. However, he did ding Obama for telling Russian officials that he would wait until after the presidential election before negotiating a missile shield in Europe. Many commented that it was part of Romney's attempt to look presidential: