President Obama and
Mitt Romney engaged Tuesday in one of the most intensive clashes in a televised
presidential debate,
with tensions between them spilling out in interruptions, personal
rebukes and accusations of lying as they parried over the last four
years under Mr. Obama and what the next four would look like under a
President Romney.
Competing for a shrinking sliver of undecided voters, many of them
women, their engagements at times bordered on physical as they circled
each other or bounded out of their seats while the other was speaking,
at times more intent to argue than to address the questions over jobs,
taxes, energy,
immigration and a range of other issues.
Mr. Obama, criticized by his own party for a lackluster debate
performance two weeks ago, this time pressed an attack that allowed him
to often dictate the terms of the debate. But an unbowed Mr. Romney was
there to meet him every time, and seemed to relish the opportunity to
challenge a sitting president.
Mr. Obama’s assertive posture may well have stopped the clamor of
concern from supporters that had been weighing on his campaign with
three weeks and one more debate to go before the election.
The president’s broadsides started with a critique of Mr. Romney for his
opposition to his administration’s automobile bailout in his first
answer — “Governor Romney said we should let Detroit go bankrupt” — and
ended more than 90 minutes later with an attack on Mr. Romney’s secretly
taped comments about the “47 percent” of Americans who he said did not
take responsibility for their own lives.
“When he said behind closed doors that 47 percent of the country
considers themselves victims who refuse personal responsibility — think
about who he was talking about,” the president said toward the end of
the debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
It was as if a different, highly charged president had taken the stage
rather than the reluctant, disengaged-seeming candidate who showed up to
meet Mr. Romney at their first debate two weeks ago.
Mr. Romney stayed acutely focused on Mr. Obama’s record in the face of
it all, saying that the president had failed to deliver what he promised
in his 2008 campaign and arguing repeatedly and strenuously, “We just
can’t afford four more years like the last four years.”
He credited Mr. Obama for being “great as a speaker and describing his
vision.” But then he brought down the ultimate hammer in a challenge to
an incumbent: “That’s wonderful, except we have a record to look at. And
that record shows he just hasn’t been able to cut the deficit, to put
in place reforms for
Medicare and
Social Security to preserve them, to get us the rising incomes we need.”
The two took pains to fashion their arguments toward female voters, with
the debate seeming at times directed entirely at them. Mr. Obama
mentioned Mr. Romney’s vow to cut government funding for Planned
Parenthood at least four times; Mr. Romney repeatedly mentioned that
under Mr. Obama: “There are three and a half million more women living
in poverty today than when the president took office. We don’t have to
live like this.”
And Mr. Romney sought to broaden his appeal to women by softening his
tone on reproductive issues, saying: “Every woman in America should have
access to contraceptives.”
Emphasizing his record of diversity as governor based on his own
recruiting, he said, “I brought us whole binders full of women.”
It is a bit of conventional wisdom that undecided voters seek comity in their leaders. There was none of that Tuesday.
At times the back and forth was personal in small ways. Having already
invoked the 14 percent effective tax rate that Mr. Romney personally
paid, Mr. Obama mentioned Mr. Romney’s investment in Chinese companies.
Then Mr. Romney asked if Mr. Obama had looked at his own pension for its
investments.
“I don’t look at my pension,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s not as big as yours.”
But at other moments the verbal sparring took on a deeper, emotional
resonance, such as when Mr. Romney suggested that the administration was
intentionally misleading in its shifting explanations for the attack on
the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the deaths of
the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other
Americans there.
“The suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the secretary of state,
our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead
when we’ve lost four of our own, Governor, is offensive,” Mr. Obama
said, standing and looking intently at his opponent. “That’s not what we
do. That’s not what I do as president.”
Mr. Obama noted that he had gone to the Rose Garden the day after the attack to say “this was an act of terror.”
KYO:
The euro eased in Asian afternoon trade on Wednesday after getting a
boost from a decision by Moody's not to downgrade Spain's credit rating
and rising hopes Madrid will seek a bailout.
LAMABAD:
Monsoon floods in Pakistan have killed 455 people over the past five
weeks and affected more than five million, according to the latest
figures from the government's disaster relief agency. 
three member bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice
Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry resumed hearing of the Asghar Khan case. Khan
has accused the ISI of financing politicians in 1990 election and
creating the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) to prevent the PPP from
winning the polls. The petition was based on an affidavit of former ISI
Chief Durrani.
y
will be gone from Mumbai’s streets altogether.
ARACHI:
Director education KMC, Shamim Khan was killed when his car was
attacked near Hyderabad Colony on Jamshed Road in Karachi East.
MUMBAI:
Bollywood glamour couple Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor tied the knot
on Tuesday in Mumbai in the most anticipated Indian celebrity wedding
of the year.
KARACHI:
Pakistan will host a World XI for two Twenty20 matches, officials said
Tuesday, in hopes of moving a step closer to resuming home
internationals which have been suspended for more than three years.
