I've noted it before but you can tell Romney's team drilled hard into him to make sure to reference specific people he's met (in the case of his first question someone in Pennsylvania).
Romeny: Keep the Pell grant program growing? Not with his budget plan.
Obama takes the first shot of the night with his reference to Romney saying that Detroit should be allowed to go bankrupt.
Mitt Romney with good first response to a student with a great last name, Epstein, but unusual spelling--Epshteyn is the way to go! President Obama unquestionably had a Red Bull before the debate.
Talking about manufacturing jobs to a kid wondering what he's going to do after college is a bit off the point. In the first question the president has come up against the hard reality of the economy he has created.
World demand is down. The world is suffering from a recession. It means lower demand for energy. The president is wrong.
Candy's obviously been listening to Boris on the issue of answering the question. But they both know well that answering the question you want to answer rather than the one you're asked is media training 101.
Even if Obama did cut taxes for middle income families by $3,600 they are still about $1,000 behind on the lost income alone, never mind the increase in the price of food, gasoline, and other essentials.
Peter, if you'd like to go back to the Kennedy tax rates or even the Clinton tax rates then we might find some common ground.
Obama's healthcare reform is all about the government making healthcare choices for people. The president's answer is being disingenuous here.
Mitt is rambling Mitt....of course, he is trying to talk about rights for women.....a loser since he is on the wrong side of all the major issues affecting women. He should have just zipped it.
Halfway through, I'd say it's a draw. Obama had to improve and he has; Romney had to show that his performance in the first debate was not a fluke. People see that Romney's not the villainous man the Obama campaign had made him out to be, and that he's a viable alternative to Obama.
In general I agree with not complaining about finishing the previous question, until I see on CNN that Obama once again is getting a lot more time to speak than Romney is.
Mary Kate has it right ... It's a draw. No one has scored a knock out punch. Obama's combativeness is working for him for the most part but Romney hasn't made any major mistakes.
MKC and Peter R. and Boris are right--we have bipartisan consensus--regarding an even debate style-wise. The critical question remains whose substance independents like more.
Obama did a good job with the "why should I vote for you again" question--and then deftly pivoted to an attack on Romney which has the bonus of tying him to a wildly unpopular GOP congress.
Can we have a question on how Obama differs from Jimmy Carter?
The president used the question about the last four years to attack Governor Romney, not to make a case for himself to be re-elected. Governor Romney is taking him to task, all President Obama can do is smile.
The question Romney needs to raise is not, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" but, "In four years will you be better off than you are now?" Force the choice.
Romney lands a good one with the figure that the difference between where we are and 5.4 percent is nine million Americans. (Who knows whether the figure is accurate.)
Obama is really taking it to Romney and drawing the contrasts. Romney can not explain how he won't go back to the Bush policies---in fact he wants to double down on them. Romney is bordering on "whining." Obama needs to get in the 47 percent pretty quick! That makes his point.
OK, want to make sure it is like the Monocle restaurant in the 1980s here in our U.S. News group: Friendly!
Peter Fenn--Yes I do. He is advocating a pro legal-immigration policy. Beyond that you are putting words in his mouth.
Obama is neglecting to mention that he talked much more about the "spontaneous demonstration" than he did about terrorists. Six times in front of the United Nations. Romney is 100 percent right about the administration's response.
Candy Crowley holds someone to the question for the first time--shocker it is Governor Romney. President Obama picks up the mantle and sets the record by claiming Governor Romney said something.
Okay, Candy Crowley is trying to put words in Romney's mouth. Even the replacement refs would have thrown a flag on that one.
Teachers, cops, firefighters...all government workers.
I thought the debate was supposed to end at 10:30? Overtime!
The president is not telling the whole story on taxation of U.S. businesses overseas. The problem is that under current law, corporate profits are taxed in the country where they are earned and then once again when the money is brought home to the United States. What Romney wants to do is eliminate the double taxation so that companies will have an incentive to bring the money home rather than keeping it parked overseas.
No one threw a knock out punch. Obama was much stronger than he was in Denver, so his base is going to claim more credit than is due. Romney may have taken a few more blows but he was never knocked down. He stayed on his feet the whole time. On foreign policy, Romney was better. On base liberal issues like women's pay and contraceptives, Obama was better. Interesting the way the two candidates both danced around the gun question, proving once again that opposition to the Second Amendment is one of the real third rails in American politics. All told, Romney showed a better understanding of economics but Obama seemed better on politics and the optics of the event--like when he dropped the line about the "47 percent" in his closing statement when Romney had no chance to respond
.
Media will call this a draw, but all the president had to do was speak up and he met expectations. Romney showed that last time wasn't a fluke, and that he's a viable alternative to Obama, which for many voters, he wasn't a few months ago. The momentum was shifting to Romney going into this debate because people saw that he wasn't the evil villain Obama had made him out to be. I doubt this will change that momentum, because Romney held his own and Obama still hasn't laid out his vision for the next four years.
Halfway through, I'd say it's a draw. Obama had to improve and he has; Romney had to show that his performance in the first debate was not a fluke. People see that Romney's not the villainous man the Obama campaign had made him out to be, and that he's a viable alternative to Obama.