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With his presidency on the line, Barack Obama delivered a forceful performance in the second presidential debate Tuesday night, chiding Mitt Romney for failing to provide specifics about his policies and painting the Republican nominee as a more conservative version of George W. Bush.
Both men mean business. They are out with smiles, mouthed “Thank You’s” and a perfunctory handshake. The American people have been subjected to political debates for more than a year. But this one is bigger than any other. Romney won the first decisively, and pulled ahead in many of the polls. Now, the rematch.
The argument for reelecting President Obama is not obvious, since the economy is bad, but it’s not all that complex either. I’d say it’s a five-part argument. And tonight, the president finally made all five parts. The big news from this debate will probably be the searing exchange over Libya, but after I shredded Obama’s no-show last time, I should acknowledge that this time Obama actually presented a case for four more years.
I don’t know who “won” this debate. The President won on the substance. He was, obviously, far better–sharper, more energetic, more effective–than he was in the first debate. In the crucial first half-hour, he successfully hammered Romney on his baloney-laced tax plan; he mentioned that Romney wanted to cut funding for Planned Parenthood on at least 3 occasions, perhaps more, perhaps one too many; and demonstrated Romney’s inconsistency by pointing out that Romney, the great defender of fossil fuels, had once stood in front of a coal plant in Massachusetts and said “This plant kills” and shut it down.
TIME’s politics team brings you up-to-the-minute Twitter commentary and coverage throughout the Hempstead, New York debate.
Maybe Hillary Clinton reads Swampland. Because on a day when I wrote that, on the question of diplomatic security in Benghazi, “the buck should stop with her” and not the president, Madam Secretary stepped forward to say, “I take responsibility” for inadequate security at the U.S. consulate there on September 11.
More likely, Clinton was responding to the unusual political dynamic that I described, in which Republicans, after years of trashing Hillary at every opportunity, suddenly seem not to remember her name–because in the home stretch of a presidential campaign, it’s Obama they want to attack, not his Secretary of State.
Mitt Romney’s pledge to create 12 million jobs is a cardboard cutout of a campaign promise. It looks great, even bold, from one angle, but there’s really not much behind it. As this publication and others have explained, economic forecasters of all stripes already expect the economy to add roughly that number of jobs from 2013 to 2017.
The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has come out with a new report showing that an overhaul of Medicare, of the sort the Romney-Ryan campaign favors, might increase costs for seniors.
The Obama campaign wasted no time in seizing on the report as proof that the GOP candidate’s “irresponsible” plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system would have “devastating consequences” for seniors. A spokeswoman for the Romney campaign fired back a statement saying the plan would include “no increase in out-of-pocket costs from today’s Medicare.” The Romney camp also cited a disclaimer in the report that said it should not be taken as an analysis of any particular proposal, including the Romney-Ryan plan for how to reform Medicare.
So what to believe?
Before Barack Obama and Mitt Romney debated in Denver, some very smart political scientists tried to dampen the overheated expectations game with a dose of historical context. Debates, they argued, usually don’t matter that much. They loom large in our recollection of past races because they offer a snapshot of a candidate’s strength or fecklessness, but they are rarely decisive. Many pundits trumpeted this perspective. Then Romney beat Obama in Denver and took off in the polls, turning a race that seemed like Obama’s to lose into a nail biter with three weeks to go. What happened?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said late on Monday that the buck stops with her when it comes to diplomatic security, not the White House.
On Sunday’s talk shows, Republicans remained indignant about Joe Biden‘s statement in last week’s debate that “we did not know” about requests for more security to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi shortly before the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The White House has clarified that Biden was not talking about the entire Obama Administration, but the White House itself, which seems an entirely reasonable position. But senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie was not buying that line when pressed by Fox’s tenacious Chris Wallace:
The facts of the case are this: a Sept. 11 attack carried out by armed extremists in Benghazi, Libya, took the lives of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Nearly everything else is unclear. Given that it took the Federal Bureau of Investigation three weeks to gain access to the consulate, which was left unsecured during that time, a conclusive investigation is unlikely. No one knows exactly what happened that night and any one who claims differently is lying. And no matter how many resources the government devotes to “bringing those responsible to justice,” as President Obama has promised, it’s unlikely that a crystal picture of the attack will ever emerge.
But that hasn’t prevented the attack from becoming a political football in a campaign season, with each side bending scant evidence to make their case.
