3rd Presidential Debate: final thoughts.

A lot more civil, and a lot of nuanced positions.  If you didn't know any better, it was a debate between Mitt Obama and Barack Romney.  Mitt made it clear he didn't want additional wars, but nonetheless reiterated that he'd want to go back to building up a military to prosecute two simultaneous wars.

I'm not sure what was his strategy, but three times Romney said that Obama did right (on Iranian sanctions, on expanding drone usage, on going after Bin Laden despite Pakistan's issues).  And it looks like Romney learned his lesson, because on the issue of Libya -- even given the opportunity to bring it up -- he never reiterated his criticism of the Benghazi speech.

Bob Schieffer punted on calling truths, truths.  Even as the President talked about having the fact checkers review the biggest Romney's whopper -- Obama's apology tour -- and Romney's insistence that his auto bailout plan was the same as Obama's -- Schieffer just seemed to ignore it.

Schieffer also allowed the debate to continuously drift back to domestic issues.  He tried to bring it back, only to have Mitt interrupt and force it back, once.  All told, about half of the foreign policy debate was spent on domestic issues.

Schieffer did try to bring to light, the folly of rhetoric on cutting spending, cutting taxes and cutting the debt, while increasing military spending -- remember that the first presidential debate and the VP debate, Romney and Ryan both said they weren't increasing spending on the military.  But Obama didn't hit back on that issue, either, which was a lost opportunity to highlight a major flip-flop.

On foreign policy, Romney subtly used fear (of a Muslim-driven Middle East) to drive his points of why we need to intervene, while Obama pushed the importance of supporting the Middle East in its move towards Democracy and supporting religious freedom.  They have similar goals, but appeal from slightly different angles.  Remember, Romney repeated the odd criticism of pulling the questionably operational missile defense shield out of Poland, which fuels this notion of a policy driven by fear.

By the way, we now have a well-established Mittism: Death by love.

• Mitt loves Big Bird, and even Jim Lehrer, but would nonetheless cut all public funding.
• Mitt loves green energy, but wouldn't invest in companies who are in green energy manufacturing.
• Mitt loves teachers, but wouldn't support funding to restore funding to teachers at the federal level, after states have cut teachers.

Finally, Barack Obama wins the best line of the night, talking about quality over quantity, when Romney brought up the topic that we now have fewer naval vessels than since 1917: we have fewer horses and bayonets, too, but that doesn't mean we're weaker.  Hilarious point, and a crucial point that you'd have thought a man who was focused on cutting debt would understand: efficiency through better technology.