As I learned from reading this piece at Huffington Post, tonight’s debate moderator Bob Schieffer has telegraphed his questions, effectively giving the candidates a cheat sheet.
…this final debate will also feature six questions, and candidates will have fifteen minutes to answer each, the same format that was attempted, rather unsuccessfully, in the opening round.
Those six question/discussion sections will encompass the following themes, barring any news event that intervenes between now and then:
America’s role in the world
Our longest war – Afghanistan and Pakistan
Red Lines – Israel and Iran
The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – I
The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – II
The Rise of China and Tomorrow’s World
These are good questions, but it leaves out almost any possibility that we can here a discussion of Europe’s economy or our relationships in Latin America, or anything non-terrorism-related in Africa. Schieffer didn’t just forget Poland; he forgot Russia, which Mitt Romney famously claimed was our biggest enemy.
What about global warming? What about HIV/AIDs? What about global poverty and hunger? No discussion of Mexico’s problem with gang violence and the War on Drugs?
At least legislatively, some of Obama’s biggest foreign policy moves have had nothing to do with the Middle East, Iran, or Pakistan. He signed free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia, and the New START Treaty with Russia. It sounds like he’ll have to create some pretext to shoehorn those accomplishments into the conversation.
Romney’s biggest foreign policy accomplishment so far was to anger the Brits so severely that only three percent of them say that they’d view America more favorably if the Mittster is elected. I guess we can’t talk about that either.
So we know that the moderator isn’t going to be throwing the candidates any curveballs. That is a definite advantage for Romney. He won’t have to bone up on foreign leaders’ names because he won’t be getting any questions about Moldova or Tajikistan.
Since part of this exercise is supposed to be to vet the challenger’s knowledge of foreign affairs so we can reassure ourselves that he’s up to the challenge, announcing the questions ahead of time is self-defeating.
However, at least Obama knows that it’s up to him to expose Romney’s blind spots. Hopefully, he remembers that and has a plan.
One difference between the first debate and this one is that the two candidates will have to sit in near-proximity to one another and cannot get up and walk away to avoid the urge to punch each other in the neck. Given the level of raw testosterone that was wafting around during the townhall debate, this should present a challenge to both candidates. Above all, Mitt Romney is a very irritating man. And his game plan for both of the first two debates was to establish himself as the alpha dog and aggressor. It seems to have worked very well in the first debate, but it allowed Obama to walk him into a trap in the second. The sit-down format is simply not suited for that kind of aggression, but that doesn’t mean that Romney will be able to dial it all the way down. On the other hand, Obama has to avoid losing his patience and letting the whole thing devolve into a shouting match. These men simply do not like each other, and they don’t like losing.
There could be fireworks.
Obama needs to persuade voters that his foreign policy vision will result in a stronger, rebuilt America and era of sustained renewal. Romney’s world view promises more war, conflict and exploitation of our blood and treasure.
Let’s hope Obama does not shoehorn in free trade agreements. Beloved in the beltway, they have a bad reputation with the public for good reason, although their actual effects are compicated, and evaluating them relies a lot on what are your counterfactuals.
Most likely Obama will play it cool and straight but contradict the obvious Romney lies. He has a very strong track record to go on – not just the obvious stuff but even the stuff many of us on the left hate – like targeted assassinations, drone strikes (yes, Boo, we know your brother works at a defense industry think tank who says no drones killed any civilians this year – many other sources not dependent on defense industry money beg to differ), and habeaus corpus suspension – are actually popular with the bloodthirty American centrists. He’s ramped down war and avoided starting another one. And there is that little thing with the Nobel committee ….
Romney is going to talk about how much he loves Israel. Obama doesn’t need to worry here – only .02% of America is an Israeli wingnut and the others who talk wingnut about Israeli are standard wingnuts who actually hate Israel but use it as a convenient reason to justify fights with arabs. None of those people will ever vote Obama.
Romney is going to talk Apology tour. Here Obama is likely to just lay out the facts and gently call Romney a liar which neutralizes the point. He could go farther and link Romney to the extreme Birchers but that’s a hard connection to build this late in the game.
Romney’s going to go after Obama on Iran. I wonder how this polls with the low info swayable middle voter. I suspect that they want to hear that it all will be okay and no war is needed, which is what Obama is selling. Those folks need either a dedicated months-long war-mongering campaign like 2002-3 for them to come over to the side of war or need an incident like 9/11 (and even then they will initially want to hear war can be avoided). Too late for Romney to push this – Obama will come out okay.
Romney will push China. Seriously, giving this topic to Obama with Romney on defense is like putting a baseball on a hitting tee and asking steroid-peak Barry Bonds to take a swing. Both candidates are probably aching to find a way to tie foreign policy to something the voters actually care about – Romney/Bain gives Obama a huge chance.
And of course Romney is going to go after Libya. Sometimes when I hear this I get deja vu from 2004 and the Swift Boaters. I mean, as national security “scandals” go this is by far the weakest one I’ve seen in my lifetime. Kennedy had the Bay of Pigs, LBJ and RMN were up to their armpits in national security scandals, Ford had Mayaguez, Carter had the Iran Hockey Team Miracle Hostage drama, Reagan was up to his armpits from the Lebanon barracks all the way through to Iran-Contra, Bush I had the idiocy of Panama mostly forgotten due to Gulf War 1, Clinton had Oklahoma bombing and a number of embarrassing ATF/FBI problems. And Bush II of course was responsible for the creation of the TSA and all its incredibly stupid rules.
Comparing all those scandals to Libya is like comparing the greatest art thefts in world history to a kid taking a quarter from the collection plate at church.
But, our press still follows the rule that “if the GOP raises an issue as a scandal we must cover it as such and give it a ton of airtime even if we know it is total bullshit”. No sense of proportion, you can be sure that GOP sympathizer and GWB close friend Schieffer will give this issue a ton of time.
So this is probably the single most important point of the debate. Obama really came out well last time on this issue because Romney believed the Fox line and wasn’t prepared for the actual facts – having the moderator correct him really threw him off his game. We know the moderator will do no such thing (or, worse, may correct Obama erroneously) this time.
Obama hopefully will play the “you endangered the security of our people in the field” card when Romney pushes this topic – pointing to Romney’s many factually incorrect statements that actually fanned the flames of public resentment in the middle east. At worst this will give him the strong position. At best it will cause Romney to lost it on TV.
In the end Obama is likely to get a majority of snap pollees calling him the winner and it will all be forgotten when Trump releases his bombshell video of Obama on Wednesday.
If Obama reverts to debate #1 and gets apologetic and plays nice he will lose.
Oh, if only! My dream is for Romney to lose it and call Obama the N word on national television. Of course, that will get Romney another 10% white votes in the South.
what is this Trump bombshell I keep hearing about? also the Gloria Alred stuff.
by this time if anyone had anything on Obama wouldn’t an opponent have been out by now with it?
Ask Mittens to point to Benghazi on a map.
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Game over.
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I was nervous for the first debate. Second debate I was so nervous I almost couldn’t watch. This one I’m looking forward to because Obama should clean Romney’s clock. Romney will try to appear presidential and acceptable, but just what is this “leadership” that Obama is not showing that he will? I hope Obama points out his vascillating on Libya and other issues that, unlike his domestic two face, can signal weakness and be truly dangerous.
Good questions? No way. “The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism” pretty well cuts off a more relevant discussion of terrorism, unless he thinks Pakistan, Indonesia, the former USSR, the Philippines, and others are in the Middle East. It’s a mean reality, but terrorism in that region is not the US’s primary international problem by itself.
Fortunately, the first question should give Obama good opportunities to bring in the bigger issues and accomplishment of his administration.The China one should allow him time to bring up Romney’s outsourcing history.
I wish I thought Obama would open Romney’s “never any light between Israeli and American policy” declaration, but he’ll probably keep away from it, even though the implications for American sovereignty are shocking and a radical departure from everything in America’s foreign relations history, from Washington on.
I’d love to see him point out that so far Romney has lowered America’s credit in the world simply by going abroad. Polls in almost every country except Israel show Obama favored by landslide numbers.
I just hope Obama isn’t listening to whatever idiots told him to dial it down for the first debate. He owns foreign policy and should have no problem putting huge light between himself and the blustering GW Bush retread across the table.
Best outcome – no one watches this debate.
One assumes you mean “no one” in the media. If only. This is CNN’s remaining chance to promote “the best political team in journalism” yet again as a panel of presidential celebrity judges. It’s like catnip.
Except your daughter, of course.
I wonder if – a la the first debate – we’ll see a new Mitt, who adopts Obama’s policies. Would get him applause from the village and appeal to his new moderate supporters.
I hope they DON’T talk about Latin America. They have all done much better since our attention got sucked into the Middle East. I’d hate to think we will go fucking around with them constantly again and undo all their progress.