HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Two alphas in the fight of their lives, President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney sparred with passion and grit in a debate that previewed the closing arguments of a campaign that keeps circling back to bedrock questions about which candidate can do more to strengthen the fragile economy.
Fresh off their latest encounter and with just three weeks left in the race, the candidates fan out in all directions Wednesday to pitch their tuned-up messages directly to voters on some of the campaign’s most treasured turf: Romney in Virginia, Obama in Iowa. Vice President Joe Biden is westward bound for Colorado and Nevada; GOP running mate Paul Ryan returns to all-important Ohio.
It was a re-energized Obama who showed up for Tuesday’s town hall-style debate at Hofstra University, lifting the spirits of Democrats who felt let down by the president’s limp performance in the candidates’ first encounter two weeks ago.
But Romney knew what was coming and didn’t give an inch, pressing his case even when the arguments deteriorated into did-not, did-too rejoinders that couldn’t have done much to clarify the choice for undecided voters.
Tuesday’s debate was the third installment in what amounts to a four-week-long reality TV series for Campaign 2012. Romney was the clear victor in the series debut, Biden aggressively counterpunched in the next-up vice presidential debate, and the latest faceoff featured two competitors determined to give no quarter.
It was a pushy, interruption-filled encounter filled with charges and countercharges that the other guy wasn’t telling the truth.
The season closer is coming up quickly: a foreign policy faceoff Monday at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.
Romney, brimming with confidence, distilled the essence of his campaign message early in Tuesday’s 90-minute debate and repeated it often.
“I know what it takes to get this economy going,” he said over and over. And this: “We can do better.” And this: “We don’t have to settle for what we’re going through.”
Obama, with both the benefit and the burden of a record to run on, had a more nuanced message.
“The commitments I’ve made, I’ve kept,” he said. “And those that I haven’t been able to keep, it’s not for lack of trying and we’re going to get it done in a second term.”
Obama also was relentless in dismissing the merits of Romney’s policies and rejecting his characterizations of the president’s record.
“Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan,” the president argued. “He has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules.”
The candidates were in each other’s faces — sometimes literally — before an audience of 82 uncommitted voters from New York. It’s a state that’s already a sure bet for Obama, but the voters there stood as proxy for millions of Americans across the nation still settling on a candidate.
“They spent a lot of time cutting down the other person,” said 22-year-old Joe Blizzard, who watched with a crowd of 500 students at the University of Cincinnati. “As someone who is undecided, it was a little disappointing.”
Fellow student Karim Aladmi, 21, was more forgiving. “It goes without saying that the knives were out,” he said. “I thought Obama had a strong performance, but Romney made him work for it. I was actually impressed by both sides.”
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