Yes, the third presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on foreign policy was, unsurprisingly, boring, but at least it was good boring -- for a Democrat, that is. It was only surprisingly boring if you bought into the pre-debate hype generated by the media, which pointed to this as a make-or-break moment for both candidates.
I won’t repeat what others have said already, only what stood out to me. Barack Obama finally mentioned Mitt Romney’s economic record when he was the governor of Massachusetts, which ranked 48th compared to other states. I don’t know why it took him this long to mention that stat. Romney’s running on his record as a job creator, but his job creation record in Massachusetts was pretty dismal.
Romney’s tone towards China seemed to have softened. He actually said he wanted to work with China on our trade issues. He no longer wanted to get “tough” on China. It only took him a couple of debates to shift his position on that topic.
Romney’s constant need to have the last say on every question had already become annoying since the second debate. By the third debate, it had gotten a bit overbearing. I’m glad he finally chilled out towards the end of the debate and started agreeing with everything Obama had to say on foreign policy.
Romney looked sick throughout the debate, like he ate something bad and had to use the restroom as soon as the debate was over. He just didn’t look good. But then if you’ve been jabbed that many times by Obama, you’d look pretty sickly too.
Obama was prepared with plenty of zingers for Romney’s oft-used attacks on his foreign policy. We’ve all heard about the “horses and bayonets” response to Romney’s criticism of the size of today’s navy. Romney’s “apology tour” gets a mention here and was easily dismissed by Obama.
Overall, it seemed that Romney just didn’t have anything more to say after the first debate. He shocked Obama then by reversing his positions on issues he championed during the Republican primaries, siding mostly with Obama but with slight differences. I was wondering what other surprises he might have up his sleeve for the second and third debates.
Surprisingly, he had none. That’s why it was easy for Obama to pick his policies apart in the subsequent debates and win them both. Although Romney had probably gained the most from these debates overall, losing the last two can’t be good for his campaign’s momentum.
The third debate was watched by 59.2M people, about 5M-7M less than the previous two. That’s not bad, considering that it was going against Monday Night Football and MLB playoffs.
