DENVER: President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney came face to face for the first time in the presidential campaign last night for a high-risk, nationally televised debate that offered Romney his best opportunity to revive his slipping chances.
Romney trails in the handful of battleground states that will decide the election, and he needs a breakout performance in the three 90-minute debates with Obama scheduled over the next three weeks.
Five weeks remain before the Nov. 6 election, and Obama is determined to avoid any campaign-altering mistakes as he presses his case for a second term.
The debate is a rare moment when millions of Americans fix their attention on one political event. Fifty-two million people tuned in to the first debate four years ago, and 80 percent of the nation’s adults reported watching at least a bit of the 2008 debates between Obama and Republican John McCain.
Just 7 percent of likely voters have yet to pick a candidate, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll last month.
Though polls show the race remains tight, Obama has the edge in national polls.
Romney’s campaign fell further behind in the wake of a secretly recorded video released last month showing him telling campaign donors that 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax and believe they are victims who are entitled to government assistance. As a candidate, he said, “my job is not to worry” about them.
The still-weak economy — Romney’s favorite subject and the top issue for voters — also plays a role this week, when the closely watched monthly jobs report is released Friday. Whatever happens in the debate, the unemployment numbers could have the last word.
Voting has already started and is picking up momentum. All but two of the battleground states, which do not reliably vote Democrat or Republican, have early voting, meaning more people are already locking in their votes every day. The most important of those states, Ohio, started early voting Tuesday.
But Republicans with access to Romney’s polling data said Tuesday that he has begun regaining some support among independent voters, enabling him to cut into the president’s advantage.
The presidential election is not decided by popular vote but by state-by-state contests. The battleground states are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and, to a lesser extent, Wisconsin.
Both men have spent hours rehearsing with proxy opponents yet know to expect the unexpected.
“That’s what so tricky about this,” says Alan Schroeder, author of a book on presidential debates. “There’s never a template for preparing because each one takes its own direction.”
Half of the six, 15-minute debate segments have been allotted to topics related to the economy. The last three segments will focus on health care, the role of government and governing.
Romney has pinned his campaign on the argument that Obama has failed to adequately strengthen the US economy. But this effort has been complicated by recent polls showing growing public optimism about the economy and the president’s leadership.
In recent days, Romney has emphasized criticism of the president’s foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, where a terrorist attack at the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.
Republicans tried to frame the economic debate in their terms Tuesday by pointing to Vice President Joe Biden’s passing reference to “a middle class that has been buried the last four years” at a campaign stop in North Carolina. They cast the comments as an unwitting acknowledgement that Obama’s economic policies have devastated average Americans.
“We agree,” Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan declared in Iowa. “That means we need to stop digging by electing Mitt Romney the next president of the United States.”
Obama’s camp countered that it was the policies of the president’s Republican predecessors that had caused the damage.
In a pre-debate ritual, each campaign has worked overtime to raise expectations for the opponent while lowering expectations for its own candidate.
But both men are seasoned debaters. Romney hasn’t gone one-on-one in a presidential debate, but he got plenty of practice thinking on his feet during the 19 multi-candidate debates during the Republican primaries.
Romney and Obama debate again Oct. 16 and Oct. 22. The lone debate for the vice presidential candidates is Oct. 11.
Obama, Romney face off as election heats up
