A combative Obama vs. moderate Mitt

What happened

In the third and final presidential debate, President Obama sought to regain his advantage by sharply questioning opponent Mitt Romney’s foreign policy expertise, while Romney tried to assure voters he’d be a cool and steady moderate, not a hawk. The debate, on foreign policy, saw the two presidential candidates agree on broad outlines of U.S. involvement abroad, with Romney backing away from his previous harsh criticism of Obama’s policies and of his handling of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Romney said he would only consider military action in Iran if “all of the other avenues” were blocked, praised the president’s use of drone warfare against al Qaida and his killing of Osama bin Laden, and backed the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan by 2014—while chiding the president for not doing more to win over the Islamic world. “We can’t kill our way out of this mess,” he said. “We want a more peaceful planet.’’

Obama was more combative, accusing Romney of being “all over the map” on foreign policy, and mocking his opponent’s criticism that the Navy had fewer ships than at any time since 1917. “Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets,” he said acidly, adding that “the nature of our military’s changed.” A CNN/ORC International poll found that 48 percent of registered voters considered Obama the winner, and 40 percent, Romney. National election polls still showed the race essentially tied.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What the editorials said

Romney proved in this debate that he has “no original ideas of substance on most world issues,” said The New York Times. On Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan, he merely parroted what Obama “has already done, or plans to do.” As he fumbled incoherently, he kept trying to change the topic to domestic policy, and his vague plan to create 12 million jobs. If Romney “is going to convincingly complete the transition from severely conservative to agreeably moderate,” said Bloomberg.com, he “needs to get better at explaining himself.” His foreign policy can be summed up as: “same as Obama’s—except better.”

Obama may have won, said The Wall Street Journal, but he “looked smaller doing it,” scoring cheap debating points while Romney chose to “look presidential.” As the clearly desperate Obama kept attacking him, it was difficult to tell “which was the incumbent and which was the challenger.”

What the columnists said

Suddenly, the neoconservative warmonger of the Republican primaries is “Milquetoast Mitt,” said Harold Meyerson in TheWashington Post. Romney spent the debate “Etch a Sketching away” his hawkish statements of the spring, assuring “war-weary voters” that he was no Bush-style interventionist, and mentioning “peace,” or some variation of it, a dozen times. It may be a flip-flop too far, said Alec MacGillis in TheNewRepublic.com. Shifting to the center on domestic issues may reassure swing voters, but Romney’s 180-degree reversal on almost every foreign policy issue makes him look “rudderless and adrift,” instead of a safe alternative to Obama.

Romney’s goal was not to challenge Obama, but simply to show he’s “well-versed on world issues,” said Fred Barnes in WeeklyStandard.com. “He succeeded,” offering an analysis of problems involving several countries in the Middle East, and a specific critique of the downsizing of our military. Liberals are just disappointed that Romney didn’t “conform to their stick-figure caricature of him” as a neocon itching for war, said James Taranto in WSJ.com. “They called Reagan a warmonger too,” remember—even though he later won the Cold War not by fighting, but by projecting strength and confidence. Judging from these debates, Romney seems to have learned that lesson well.

Even if Obama did win this debate, said Ron Fournier in NationalJournal.com, Romney won the debate season. The Republican candidate appeared calm, rational, and presidential in all three debates—and, thanks to a “spectacular first-debate failure by the incumbent,” has proved himself a “viable alternative to Obama.” But while the debates have really mattered this year, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, “the issues, not so much.” No one really knows how Romney would govern as president, or has a “vivid picture of how Obama sees the next four years.” As the election looms, we’re as ill-informed as ever.