Jamie Dupree's Washington Insider: The final Obama Romney debate

With about 15 minutes left in the final Obama-Romney debate, Republicans decided to rush their surrogates into the "Spin Alley" reaction area at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. A few minutes later, Democrats followed to get their message out, as both sides declared victory.

The reaction was predictable, as each party slammed the other candidate and trumpeted how their man had connected with the American people and drawn the support of undecided voters.

There seemed to be little news in the debate, though there was an interesting tactical decision right off the bat by Mitt Romney, whose team obviously decided not to have a repeat showdown on what happened with the attacks in Libya that killed four Americans back in September.

Moderator Bob Schieffer gave Romney the chance right out of the gate to slam the President on Libya, but Romney went on without zeroing in for the kill.

The President meanwhile came out of the gate fast, again hectoring and interrupting Romney at times. While Romney initially engaged Mr. Obama, it almost seemed like the GOP challenger then decided to ignore the attack dog routine and stick with his message.

The lack of fireworks left a feeling of disinterest in the media filing center at Lynn University, as reporters confessed later to checking the score of the baseball and football games; there was a lot more idle chatter among journalists during the 90 minutes compared to past debates as well.

It also was a reminder that despite a lot of talk, sometimes the foreign policy differences of these candidates isn't too wide.

"I think, ultimately, they both have very similar foreign policy goals," said Marcheta Wright, a professor of international studies at Lynn, who said she wasn't surprised by all the talk that was not centered on foreign affairs.

"It took them 20 minutes" to turn the discussion to domestic issues, Wright observed. "It wasn't a surprise."

At times, the moderator struggled to keep the discussion about foreign affairs.

"Let me get back to foreign policy," Schieffer said at one point, even though he probably realized he was fighting a losing battle with the two candidates.

The bottom line on this debate probably again depends on which side you support; if you are a Democrat, you think the President showed his leadership skills and experience and made the case that he is well versed in foreign affairs, while the Governor is not.

If you are a Romney backer, you would argue that this type of debate had a built-in home field advantage for the President, and that the GOP nominee more than held his own, and called out the Obama Administration on a number of fronts.

It seemed like the "debate muddle" where both sides say they won, and they might be able to find polling results to back that up.

Even if the President was judged to have won on points, Republicans said it would not slow Romney's momentum, which started in the first debate.

Now, it is a two week run to Election Day.

Source: http://www.krmg.com/weblogs/jamie-dupree/2012/oct/23/final-obama-romney-debate/

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