Via: Tuned In
The final debate of the Presidential campaign was nominally about foreign policy. And I suppose it was, to me, at least, because I don’t live in Ohio. As Mitt Romney and Barack Obama faced off one last time, at a table in Florida, Bob Schieffer started things off by trying to engage the candidates on Libya and last month’s consulate attack in Benghazi. Republicans have seized on the attack, its aftermath and the Administration’s handling of it politically—including Romney at the last debate—so the idea, it seemed, was to get to the fireworks right away. The issue barely ignited a sparkler. For whatever strategic reason, Romney declined this time to press the Benghazi issue forcefully. As the topic expanded to the wider Middle East—”the Middle East” makes up about 90% of “the world” in the cartography of US presidential debates—he made little forceful challenge, either. What world issues were the candidates ready to engage on? The auto industry bailout. The deficit. Unemployment and jobs for college graduates. Hiring teachers. All those are world issues, I guess, in the sense that the United States is still part of the world, and also some teachers teach geography. But more than that, it was a seeming recognition that the terms of this election involve the U.S. economy, and there was probably going to be no penalty to the candidate who ignored the topic of the debate to Put America First. Nor did moderator Bob Schieffer act especially firmly to keep the conversation on point—though he did, mostly, strike a balance between the laissez-faire Jim Lehrer approach and the hands-on direction of Martha Raddatz in the vice-presidential debate. (He did, like Lehrer, rely too much on the topic-as-question approach: tell us what you have to say about Libya, &c.) Mostly absent, from questions and answers: Latin America, India, most of Europe, and climate change, for a start. Schieffer may not have had much incentive to command the discussion back to world issues, since challenger Romney did not seem to offer much in the way
Read full story at: Tuned In
Posted: October 23rd, 2012
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