Obama reverses roles, comes out swinging at Romney in final debate
Responding to Romney’s charge that the U.S. Navy has fewer ships than at any time since World War I, Obama shot back, “Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”
The result was to some extent a mirror of the first debate between the two men in Denver. That time, Obama tried to avoid contentious, partisan exchanges and ended up looking listless. Voters by wide margins said Romney won that first debate. This time, instant polls indicated that voters thought Obama had done better.
Whether this final debate will have anything like the impact of the first one remains to be seen. The first encounter revived Romney’s campaign after several weeks of apparent drift and set the race onto its current course, in which polls indicate the contest is too close to call nationally and in several of the most hotly contested states.
In an excruciatingly tight race, both campaigns believe that women make up the majority of the voters who are wavering on their choices, and the candidates’ differing word choices and overall approaches reflected their strategies on how to appeal to them. Both frequently mentioned their support for gender equality in the Middle East. But much of the night revolved around their different approaches to that trade-off of peace versus safety.