GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The third and final US presidential debates took place Monday night and American media have overwhelmingly decided that it went in President Barack Obama’s favour, but doubts are being voiced that debate will matter much to voters. Obama and Romney will now fight it out as they go on the road for the remaining two weeks of campaigning before the 6 November election.
CNN: “Analysts agreed that Obama won on points, but questioned if the result would have a big impact on voters and the race as a whole. ‘There’s no question debate coaches would score this one for the president,’ said CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, while CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen said Obama ‘dominated the middle of the debat’ and emerged as the winner. Both King and Gergen agreed that Romney avoided sounding like an overzealous advocate of military action — which is how Obama and Democrats seek to portray him.”
Los Angeles Times: “The result was to some extent a mirror of the first debate between the two men in Denver. That time, Obama tried to avoid contentious, partisan exchanges and ended up looking listless. Voters by wide margins said Romney won that first debate. This time, instant polls indicated that voters thought Obama had done better. Whether this final debate will have anything like the impact of the first one remains to be seen. The first encounter revived Romney’s campaign after several weeks of apparent drift and set the race onto its current course, in which polls indicate the contest is too close to call nationally and in several of the most hotly contested states.”
The Chicago Sun-Times stayed mainly with a blow-by-blow account in its analysis, but noted “Though the third and final debate between the two was to focus on foreign policy, Romney worked to move the discussion to what he believes is Obama’s biggest weakness — the economy and jobs. Romney referenced a former joint chiefs of staff in saying: ‘our debt is the biggest national security threat.’ For his part, the president used the final debate to portray his Republican rival as inexperienced and indecisive on foreign policy. ‘On a whole range of issues … you’ve been all over the map,’ Obama told Romney. It was another animated, in-your-face debate, with the two unleashing salvos and talking over one another. At point when Obama talked over Romney, the former Massachusetts governor snapped ‘I’m still speaking!’”
