To be fair the third presidential debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney wasn’t a complete knock-out-drag-down fight, but it got pretty close. Perhaps it was his strategy to remain cool, calm, and collected, but Romney seemed noticeably more peaceful than the president who took the former governor to task more than once.
Being that foreign policy is not his strong point, Romney rode in the passenger seat for much of discourse, even agreeing with the president on more than one occasion. “It was amazing,” Fox News analyst Joe Trippi said, of how often Romney reached a harmonious level with the commander in chief.
“The president came to rough up Mitt Romney,” added CNN’s Candy Crowley, moderator of the second debate in New York, last week. “I feel like Mitt Romney approached this like a physician: first, do no harm.
But it wasn’t all so sugary, having already lost the first debate at the top of the month, Obama wouldn’t allow history to repeat itself. He was not afraid to call his opponent out stating, “Nothing Governor Romney just said is true,” in regards to claims that after becoming president he went on an international “apology tour,” failing to meet with Israel, our country’s biggest ally. As pointed out by the Associated Press, Obama did in fact go on the tour, but not to repent:
THE FACTS: Romney has indeed repeatedly and wrongly accused the president of traveling the world early in his presidency and apologizing for U.S. behavior. Obama didn’t say “sorry” in those travels. But in this debate, Romney at last explained the context of his accusation: not that Obama apologized literally, but that he had been too deferential in his visits to Europe, Latin America and the Muslim world.
Obama said while abroad that the U.S. acted “contrary to our traditions and ideals” in its treatment of terrorist suspects, that “America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy,” that the U.S. “certainly shares blame” for international economic turmoil and has sometimes “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even divisive” toward Europe. Yet he also praised America and its ideals.
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Photos: AP/Getty
Although Romney appeared less aggressive in the area of foreign policy, he perked up when it came to the economy, making mention of his plan to get the country back on track. Yet when asked by moderator Bob Schieffer about where he would come up with the money to increase the military without cutting defense spending, he faltered. “Well, let’s come back and talk about the military, but all the way — all the way through. First of all, I’m going through from the very beginning — we’re going to cut about 5 percent of the discretionary budget, excluding military. That’s number one.”
Schieffer retorted by asking if his proposal would bring on more debt, at which point the 65-year-old referred the moderator to his website. “I’d be happy to have you take a look. Come on our website. You look at how we get to a balanced budget within eight to 10 years. We do it by getting — by reducing spending in a whole series of programs. By the way, number one I get rid of is Obamacare. There are a number of things that sound good, but frankly, we just can’t afford them.”
The president wasn’t always correct either. When Romney stated that when he was governor in Massachusetts high school students got got a “four-years, tuition free ride” at any school in the state, Obama denied it’s validity. “That happened before you came into office,” he said. In actuality, the scholarship program that Romney referred to started in 2004, while he was governor of the state.
Among the zingers that got the Twitter-verse (and other facets of social media) in a fury, was the president’s infamous “bayonets” line. Romney set himself up for another hit when he quipped that the Navy has gotten too small, having fewer ships than back in 1916. “Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines, and so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we’re counting ships,” he replied. The hashtag #horsesandbayonets became a trending topic, and on Facebook there were more than 50 pages dedicated to the phrase.
Several polls taken after the debate showed the incumbent beating his opponent, but as the presidential election edges closer, there is still no clear winner.
Watch the debate in it’s entirety below.
