Perhaps trying to demonstrate the breadth of his knowledge, Mr. Romney careened from Iran to Poland to China to Latin America to Greece to balanced budgets. He delivered a long lecture on the strategic importance of Pakistan that was the same as Mr. Obama’s position, then later complained, in detail, about spending cuts to the Navy. ...NYT
The polls
A CBS News poll of undecided voters who watched the debate found 53 percent giving it to Mr. Obama, 23 percent to Mitt Romney and 24 percent declaring it a tie. Mr. Obama’s margin of victory in the poll was slightly wider than Mr. Romney’s following the first presidential debate in Denver, which a similar CBS News poll gave to Mr. Romney at 46 percent to 22 percent.
Other polls, conducted among a broader group of voters rather than just undecided ones, suggested a smaller margin for the president.
A Public Policy Polling survey of voters in 11 swing states who watched the debate found them giving it to Mr. Obama, 53 percent to 42 percent. ...Nate Silver, 538
Romney on the defense
Zingers: Remember in the runup to the first debate how Obama insisted that Romney would focus on “zingers” and he would talk about substance? By the third debate, Obama seemed to have decided that a few zingers thrown in here and there couldn’t hurt. His line that “the 1980s are calling to have their foreign policy back” is likely to be the most memorable one of the night (and maybe of the entire presidential debate season). ...WaPo
Monday night’s debate provided an odd role reversal that made Mr. Romney seem on the defensive, particularly because he at times stuttered and sputtered in his haste to make his points. He pronounced foreign names and countries correctly, but also carefully, worried perhaps that a mispronunciation would sink his credibility. Usually, it is Mr. Obama who seems professorial and long-winded. There were long moments when Mr. Romney made the president sound succinct and sharp-edged. ...NYT
President Obama won the night when it comes to memorable one-liners during Monday night's debate.
"We also have fewer horses and bayonets,” Obama said, responding to Mitt Romney's assertion that the military has fewer resources now than at any time since 1916. "It’s not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships," a reference to the well-known board game.
The topic was trending nationally within minutes, and also prompted multiple parody Twitter accounts, including one with more than 30,000 followers before the end of the debate, as well as a Tumblr.
Twitter said the line prompted the debate's highest number of tweets per minute, with 105,767 tweets at 9:45 p.m.
According to Google's politics team, searches for bayonets jumped 7,215 percent during the debate. ...The Hill
Obama wins on Israel... Wins Israel over?...
“And by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel,” Mr. Romney said.Mr. Obama, finally comfortable with the fact that debates require confrontation, replied sharply: “When I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn’t take donors, I didn’t attend fund-raisers, I went to Yad Vashem, the — the Holocaust museum there, to remind myself the — the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable.”...NYT
Nobody wins on this one
The downer of the night came when Romney strongly endorsed Obama’s drone policy, and moderator Bob Schieffer moved right along. The result: Obama faced zero tough questions about it. That’s just terrible, and reflective of the overall narrowness of the debate. ...Greg Sargent,WaPo
The Onion points to the use of a drone during the debate
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