Transcripts For CNNW Debate Night In America 20121023

As commander in chief, i will maintain the Strongest Military in the world, keep faith with our troops and go after those who would do us harm, but after a decade of war, we all realize we have to do some nation building here at home. Weve been through tough times we always bounce back because of our character, because we pull together. If i have the privilege of being your president for another four years, i promise you i will always listen to your voices, i will fight for your families, and i will work every single day to make sure america continues to be the greatest nation on earth. Thank you. Bob, mr. President , folks at Lynn University. Good to be with you. Im optimistic about the future. Im excited about the prospects as a nation. I want to see peace. We have an opportunity to have real leadership. Americans will continue to promote principles of peace to make the world a safer place, and make people in this country more confident that their future is secure. I also want to make sure that we get this economy going. And there are two very different paths the country can take. One is a path represented by the president which at the end of four years would mean we would have 20 trillion in debt, heading toward greece. Ill get us on track to a balanced budget. The president s path will mean declining take home pay. I want to make sure take home pay turns around and starts to grow. The president s path means 20 million out of work struggling for a good job. Ill get people back to work with 12 million new jobs, i want to make sure we get people off food stamps, not by cutting the program but by cutting jobs. Americas going to come back, for that to happen, we are going to have to have a president who can work across the aisle. I was in a state where my legislature was 87 democrat, i learned how to get along on the other side of the aisle. We have to do that in washington. Washington is broken, i know what it takes to get this country back. Well work with good democrats and republicans to do that, this nation is the hope of the earth, weve been blessed by having a nation thats free and prosperous thanks to the contributions of the greatest generation that held a torch for the world to see, a torch of freedom, hope and opportunity. Now its our turn to take that torch. Im convinced well do, we need strong leadership. Id like to be that leader with your support. Ill work with you. Ill lead you in an open and honest way, and i ask for your vote. Id like to be the next president of the United States to support and help this great nation. And to make sure we all together maintain america as the hope of the earth. Thank you so much. Gentlemen, thank you both so much. That brings an end to this years debates. We want to thank Lynn University and its students for having us. As i always do at the end of these debates, i leave you with the words of my mom, who said, go vote. Makes you feel big and strong. Good night. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [ applause ] a more civilized debate than the first debate. There were a few areas where they got into it, they fought over it. You can see the children up there, mitt romneys five sons, the wives, grandchildren are all there. Standing on the stage for a few minutes. This was a debate where they wound up agreeing, basically in terms of the big picture agreeing on a lot, libya, syria, even on china, basically the thrust was one of agreement, even now at times they had little rhetorical flourishes against each other. Its going to be interesting to see what happens as far as the vote is concerned. Our Fact Checkers are going through all the facts. Our focus group is taking a close look to see what they thought were minds changed as a result of this debate. Were going to have an instant poll coming up soon of people who watched this debate. Well continue to show these pictures. Candy crowley is on the scene. What did you think . I thought they came with very different agendas tonight. The president came to rough up mitt romney. I think he acted like a person that had to sort of stop some momentum. He went after him, youre all over the map, thats not what you said before, i mean, almost every single answer from the president had something to do with mitt romney. I feel as though mitt romney approached this like a position, first do no harm. He didnt come in to necessarily w win. I think he came in as a man whos had a certain amount of momentum over the last few weeks and not wanting to ruin it. I want to bring in James Carville democratic strategist. Ari fleischer is with us. Impressions . Its obvious that the president came to attack governor romney came to agree. It seems like that someone gave governor romney the same drug they gave the president before the first debate. He was trying to run the clock out, he agreed with me, i dont know how many times. He didnt have very much to say to tell you the truth. I dont this debate is going to change a thing about the trajectory of the race. Mitt romney has the momentum, you almost got the sense that the American People are so focused on the economy this cycle, Foreign Policy is not going to move people. I do think mitt romney had one goal in mind when he came here tonight. And that was to make sure he could appeal to women voters. He a tone about him. The president wanted to define him as the too muscular republican. Mitt romney wanted to define himself very differently. He was not going to be painted as a war monger. This debate didnt matter, the reason theyre going to say that, this debate was rowdy. You know what happened out there tonight. And ill give you credit for coming up with a good talking point. The public is it focused on the economy. I think weve all seen that and known it for a year. Stick with me. We want to go back to anderson. You certainly saw the advantage of being a sitting president and getting briefings for the last four years. The president is the commander in chief, he does this every day. Theres no question debate coaches would score this one for the president. However, i think its important, governor romney came in here not to push to the right, he pushed to the middle. The president has let governor romney move toward the center, the president challenged him more on that front. The question is, does this impact the race, all this talk about iran, afghanistan, libya and the like . I dont know. I thought both campaigns could come out of this happier tonight. In the early part of the debelate, i thought mitt romney did fairly well. President obama dominated the early part of the debate. The lines of the night . The bayonets. Exactly. I think mitt romney did something important, he passed the commander in chief test. I think it leaves a very competitive race, i dont know whether its going to tip it or not, as say, i think president obama has had two very good nights. I think by doing a very surprising thing, by coming at obama occasionally from his left to say, were not going to kill our way out of this, he avoided the trap of being the war monger, i think he did that successfully and came across as a responsible sounding commander in chief. Lets listen to one of the things mitt romney said tonight. Greatest threat of all is iran four years closer to a nuclear weapon. And were going to have to recognize that we have to do as the president s done, i congratulate him on taking out osama bin ladin and going after the leadership in al qaeda, we cant kill our way out of this mess. It is what he was saying is, are those the policies he would have as president . He seemed tore agreeing with president obama an awful lot. He actually, where he attacked him, he attacked him from the left, he said you dont have enough of Civil Society strategy. You dont have enough of an education strategy toward islamic extremism, youre just the cowboy. Whats strange here is, this was a version of what mitt romney did in the first debate. Romney surprised obama in the first debate by being more cen 2ri69, im not going to do anything to raise the deficits. Except this time obama was ready, and i think that david is exactly right, he knew how to effectively. Gloria, your point, lets hear one of the comebacks from president obama. I think governor romney hasnt spent a lot of time looking at how our military works. We have fewer ships in the navy than 1916. We also have fewer horses and bayonets. We have aircraft carriers, we have ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. A little sarcastics. That was pretty brutal. An easy to come back from. Governor romney has used that for weeks now. Right. If there were a word cloud over mitt romneys head tonight it would have been peace. He emerged as the peace candidate. It was his strategy. My blackberry started buzzing from conservatives when mitt romney said troops out of afghanistan in 2014. Before this we had been hearing, okay, the generals on the ground have to make the decision. His point tonight was the troops are getting ready for 2014. General mcgovern has risen again . Is there was a very clear romney strategy tonight. That is in a country that thinks were on the wrong track, headed the wrong way abroad. We see the world on fire. We want change. And mitt romney is safe change. He was make change safe. He was hugging obama, where they agreed, being a reasonable republican. Who came in on the attack tonight . Barack obama. Why do you attack . Because youre behind. And tonight we saw a very aggressive obama who used the same strategy as in the second debate, attack. It didnt help him in the second debate. I think he won tonight on points, barack obama, no doubt. But the political win tonight, romneys momentum, if he has it in ohio, is undimmed tonight. He passed the leadership test, hes a safe republican, thats not the opponent that barack obama has been planning for a year to run against in just a couple weeks. I thought that he did not pass the commander in chief test. I thought he sat there and looks sort of out of his depth often, he was kind of sweating, kind of nixonian style. I thought he was out of his depth. And then he changed his position on so many things. I brought my etchasketch to keep track of all the times he changed his position. He changed on iraq, afghanistan. This is, i think the only memorable thing that he said was that great line about we cant kill our way out. But again, that was from the left. Obama made thats not from the left, lets clear that up. Ill finish my point, you finish your point. Obama made important points for people in ohio, he said, if we listen to you, sir. We would be buying cars from china instead of selling cars to china. Obama improved his game, i thought romney collapsed tonight. Can we make one point, though, that democrats are not the only people who think we cant kill our way to a Peaceful World . That republicans actually arent for killing a lot of people. That republicans think if you have peace through strength, a stronger nation, you can avoid problems throughout the world . Saying that because strength is important to project and to be able to extend across the world. Republicans say, we should fund more Civil Society. Arab scholars at the United Nations. All those words were going to have a lot more from our panel obviously, lets go back to wolf right now. Our expert team of producers, researchers, reporters, theyve been very busy throughout the course of these 90 minutes trying to figure out if the candidates were telling the truth. John is ready with our first reality check after this debate. John . One of the first heated moments is when they spard over troops in iraq. President obama claimed mitt romney said the u. S. Should still have some troops there. You say youre not interested in duplicating what happened in iraq. But just a few weeks ago, you said you think we should have more troops in iraq right now. What are the facts here . In 2011 romney said this, we should have left 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 personnel there to help transition to the iraqis own military capabilities, and then just a couple weeks ago, he said, americas ability to influence for the better in iraq hadden undermine by the abrupt withdrawal by our entire troop presence. Our vert is, true with important conte context. Coming up, this is the important context, on iraq, mitt romney claimed president obama was looking to keep some troops there as well. Which the president denied. You and i agreed there should have been a status of forces agreement. What i would not have done is left 10,000 troops in iraq that would tie us down. That would not help us in the middle east. What are the facts here . Well, leon panetta was negotiated to keep 3,000 to 5,000 troops in iraq, within a status of forces agreement. This fell apart over the issue of weather u. S. Troops would have certain immunity from prosecution. Our verdict from what mitt romney says is mostly true. The president was willing to leave some troops in iraq the forces agreement negotiation collapse. Theres a result all u. S. Troops out of iraq. Good initial reality check, john, thanks very much. Jessica yellin, jim acosta are joining us as well. Lets go to jessica first. You have a guest . I do. Im with david axelrod, one of the most senior advisers in the Obama Campaign. The president asked mitt romney, the navy, he compared it to bayen ets and horses. Now, already the Romney Campaign is saying this can be put to use in their benefit in norfolk and portsmouth. Important swing areas. Did the president hand him an open something. Thats the way they think about all these policies. They think about it in very narrow political terms. They said, we dont have 2 trillion extra to spent on defense, that the pentagon isnt asking for. And we have other needs in terms of rebuilding our country and in terms of our National Defense. We have to have a National Defense for the 21st century. We dont need the navy of 1916, because we have aircraft carriers and submarines, we have a modern 21st century, strategic scheme that he is unaware of. I think this was just the whole night was a case of a president whos a strong decisive commander in chief who knows what he believes, says what he believes, is consistent in his beliefs. And governor romney who is wrong and reckless and all over the place. This was a rather decisive evening. At one point the president said that to sequester, which is this big fiscal cliff were facing at the end of the year, he said its not going to happen. Are there secret talks going on . How can he be sure . When people vote on november 6th and the president is reelected, a strong message will be sent that the American People want a balanced approach to solving this problem, there are plenty of people on both sides who want to get that done, and will get that done. We cant get it done if you take the position that governor romney has taken, which is, were not going to ask for one extra dollar from any american no matter howellthy to solve this problem, there isnt a person who knows anything about this, who suggests we can do it, if we did, it would wreck our economy and retard our ability to grow. It would be disastrous. The president understands there are partners there for him. But the American People are going to put this imprint on this issue on november 6th. David axelrod, thanks very much. The obama team is feeling very good about this debate in this hall dont. And a big relief all around from them. Thanks very much. Jim acosta has a special guest as well, jim . Im with ohio senator rob portman. I want to ask you about an exchange that happened at the end of the debate. It was over the auto bailout for the car industry. The president reminding viewers about the op ed letting detroit go bankrupt. Mitt romney said i never said i would liquidate the industry. The president said you cant air brush the history. Did he not say he opposed the auto bailout. Thats great for us to get the issue out. The facts are, its president obama who took the Auto Companies through bankruptcy. Governor romney advocated that policy as well. He also advocated government help for the Auto Companies to get them back on their feet. What he didnt advocate is leave a lot of people out of retirement. He also shut down a lot of dealerships, picking and choosing, which ones would be closed or not. He chose to close two auto plants, also were still at about 20 billion if you were to have the bailout go into effect, the Auto Industry as it stood at that time would cease to exist . Not, not at all. Just the opposite. Just like macys, just like 7eleven werent through bankruptcy. He opposed the bailout . No, he wanted to do it sooner, president obama waited to do it later, he didnt want the government to play a central role in picking winners and losers. Very quickly on Foreign Policy, mitt romney agreed with the president on the killing of osama bin ladin, the use of drones and in afghanistan withdraw by 2014. After he criticized the president in the course of the year, it sounded like he agreed a lot with the president tonight . Where he agreed with the president , he said so. I think that was refreshing to a lot of viewers who are watching, including a lot of undecided voters. He also laid down very clear which the president did not do. I thought it was a great night for mitt romney. He was thoughtful, knowledgeable. The president did not sink his battle ship . He certainly did not. I think if anything, mitt romney seemed like the guy who was more ready to be commander in chief. He was more president ial. Thank you, appreciate it. Wolf, well send it back to you. Soledad obrien was watching with a group of uncommitted worker workers. How did it go . If you were watching on tv, you saw those squiggly lines. That was our focus group of watchers. They dialled up if they liked it. Down if they didnt. Roughly divided. 12 women, 13 men. Were crunching the final data right now. I should say, two professors at smu are crunching the data. At the beginning when the debate veered off Foreign Policy and went to education. Both men were talking about education, acting as if they were still talking about Foreign Policy, we saw a lot of people in our focus group, realizing they had veered off the topic. President obama got in a dig about mitt romney saying the navy was the smallest since 1916. He said, we have fewer horses and bayonets as well. We got some big laughs out of the crowd. Im going to start with them if i can. Often in the media we talk about moments. I think its just part of the game to keep you away from the facts. Mr. Romney was talking about education. He said i would love to. You seemed very effective by that. I noticed you rolling your eyes a lot. Tell me about that moment for you . My name is ann. I just felt it was totally unnecessary. I was very actually, i was uncomfortable with it, he was really digging for something. Digging for something, and he it was unnecessary. Shawn, you told me earlier you are unemployed, youve been looking for work for a few months. You told me earlier you were hoping to get something out of this debate to make a decision. Did this conversation help you decide . Really, i was looking for more of an option out of romney. Tonight he was weaker than at first. I think ive made a decision to stick with president obama in this election. Some folks have made their decision. We started with 25 undecideds. You dont have to tell me who youre voting for. For a lot of people, thats something personal. Raise your hand if tonights debate has changed your opinion. Some people making some Big Decisions tonight. And have changed out of the undecided category. Lets go right back to anderson. Were awaiting the results of our poll that weve had at the end of each of the debates. Well bring that to you as soon as we get them. Lets talk a little bit more about what we just heard. As you pointed out, poor john, people remember them, and actually, thats why theyre negative ads . People hate the attacks, the negative ads, you ask them why did you make your choice, they resite their choice. One of the great things in traveling in the last several weeks, people say theyre sick of them. They cant escape them, including during your daytime programs when theyre aimed at women. Which sporting events do you watch, the campaigns are targeting different voters at different times of the day. People cant escape them, even though they dont like them, theyre remembering them. Do you think tonight moved the needle in any direction . It wasnt a debate as much as a discussion. Romney agreed with obama. The one area where i think obama gained an advantage, he quickly pointed out that romney was indecisive or waffled on an issue oregon back and forth. He kept saying, being commander in chief is about being consistent. I think that was probably the most effective line of attack. Did he set a vision for why he should have four more years . The president . Not any more than i think weve heard other than in the you know, in the summation. But i think what was striking to me. I heard from someone working with the president. In the word cloud should have been i agree. What we heard from mitt romney that may muddle things with him. With people who were looking for a clear way to make a decision. Is it okay to say, i agree now, when earlier you were saying Something Else . Thats the problem. If you watched the primary debates, romney was much more muscular and attacking the president on Foreign Policy. If you look at one thing i was struck by. Afghanistan, he said, the surge worked. Now, i dont think ive heard any republican say that. And, in fact, you could make a reasonable argument that the surge had mixed results. The other side of looking like a commander in chief, though, that was one of the big tests tonight, youre also auditioning for that job next to the nuclear button. And you dont want to be too hot. And barack obama was on the attack tonight. I thought at times he was a little disdainful, petulant, it was personal, not just policy. I think he paid a price for the aing tas. And these debates are not only important tonight, its the next week. Theyre going to play, there are going to be a lot of obama on the attack bytes. A lot of i agree bites. Thats smart strategy for romney. It almost seemed like romney was if this debate had gone on for 30 more minutes, romney was going to endorse obama. Thats a strong no, look at 9 21, obama went to almost 80 on intrait. People watched this, they were confused by mitt romney, they saw consistency from obama and moved his direction. Is that enough to change things on the ground . I dont think we know. I think president obama had two very good back to back debates. He came back for his base. There are a lot of people out there who are thrilled. There are a lot of republicans who are disappointed they didnt see more energy with romney tonight. I dont think that romneys point tonight was to try to be more aggressive than obama. He was trying to avoid the trap of being painted as a war monger. As someone who can get us into war. He was trying not to be the prosecutor, but to be the president. You have to look at the three debates cumulatively, what did they do . Romney proved himself an incredible challenger. Wolf . We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world, im wolf blitzer here at the cnn election cent center. Were beginning our coverage, how the candidates did in their final president ial debate. In this hour were releasing the results of our poll, who do they think won the debate. Theyve caught several things already in fact checking. And Soledad Obrien is standing by with undecided voters in central florida. Were looking at when they gave their highest everyone lowest marks to these two president ial candidates. President obama bristled when mitt romney accused him of going on a world tour. You went to the middle east and you flew to egypt and to saudi arabia, and to turkey and iraq. And by the way, you skipped israel. Our closest friend in the region. But you went to the other nations, and by the way, they noticed that you skipped israel. And then in those nations and on arabic tv you said that america had been dismissive and divisive, you said that america had dictated to other nations. Mr. President , america has not dictated to other nations, they have freed nations from dictators. If were going to talk about trips weve taken, when i was a candidate for office, the first trip i took was to visit our troops. When i went to israel as a candidate, i didnt attend fundraisers, i went to the holocaust museum, to remind myself of the nature of evil, and why our bond with israel will be unbreakable. And then i went down to the border towns which had experienced missiles reigning down from hamas, and i saw families there who showed me where missiles had come down near their childrens bedrooms, and i was reminded of what that would mean if those were my kids. Which is why as president we funded an Iron Dome Program to stop those missiles, thats how ive used my travels. When i travel to israel and when i travel to the region. And the central question at this point is going to be, whos going to be credible to all parties involves . Both candidates speaking very growingly of their support for israel. One thing i noticed is that a few weeks ago on 60 minutes, the president said israel was one of our closest allies in the region. Tonight twice he said, israel is our greatest ally in the region. A new answer, but significant for some voters out there, no doubt. We want to take a look at where the race stands. Well see if the debate moves the dial, if it moves voters. The past debates have increased the republican intensity. The second one without a doubt, president obama came back with the democratic base, stopped some of the romney momentum. Now we enter into 14 days. Each of the campaigns has to make critical decisions. They will do this with the polling they have after tonight. We have a race thats playing out. Nine tossup states across the country. The president has an advantage and a decent advantage. Heres how we scored it coming in, you need 270 to win. 237 to 191 coming in. These nine states, they go from nevada in the west to New Hampshire in the east all of our tossup states. The debate was in the state of florida. That one has been trending governor romneys way. They feel more confident about it. If the Obama Campaign agrees, privately they do. They think its moving that way. Do they slow down, stall, cut some of their television advertising. Thats whats going to happen over the next 14 days. The president has an easier path at 270, when you look at all these tossup states, they will have to make calculations where do we spend more on tv, less on tv . Where do we need our friends to help us out. Where do we have to gin up the turnout operation. If you look at this i think the president won the battle tonight to mention ohio more on this debate. Why is that state so important . No republican has ever won without the state of ohio. Increasingly again, im going to do a hypothetical. Democrats think coming into the debate, this one was starting to get away, the state of florida. You can be certain even though the president might have had the right answer on policy, will debate that one, the answer about navy ships will play in the state of virginia. If this happens, florida, North Carolina and virginia going to republican, how does the president block governor romney . This is the key right here. We cant win without it, he cant win without it, ohio is the big battleground in the days ahead. If the president can keep ohio and he can win where hes leading now in iowa, wisconsin, if nothing else changed in the map, thats 271, gets the president over the top. Were going to watch, governor romney is going to try to block the president by keeping ohio in play. As we go through this again. The thing i would watch over the next couple days, how do the travel schedules change and watch the tv money it will go up in some states down in others. That will tell you where they think the final Battle Grounds are. The point about virginia and navy ships, thats a huge issue. The president was comparing navy ships to horses and bayen ets . Essentially, governor romney says you need to build more ships. Technological advances mean you can have fewer ships and sar catticly saying, we have aircraft carriers, you land planes on them. Theres a legitimate debate. Theres a huge and legitimate debate about cyber war. Life and bliks are not fair, you can be certain governor romneys going to try to use this one. John, thanks. Our expert team of producers, researchers, reporters, theyve been very busy trying to figure out whether the candidates were telling the truth, the whole truth nothing but the truth. John better man joins us with a reality check. I want to talk about russia. President obama charged that mitt romney said russia is our biggest foe, romney defended himself. A few months ago when you were asked whats the biggest geo political threat facing america, you said russia, not al qaeda, you said russia, in the 1980s or no, calling to ask for their Foreign Policy back. Russia, i indicated is a geo political foe. Not a not on a geo political foe, and i said in the same paragraph, and iran is the greatest National Security threat we face. What are the facts here . This came up in an interview with wolf blitzer. Romney said that russia was the biggest geo political foe of the u. S. He went on to say that iran and north korea were also big foes, lets listen. This is to russia. This is without question our number one geo political foe. They fight every cause for the worlds worst actors, the idea that he has more flexibility in mind for russia is very troubling indeed. You think russia is a bigger foe right now than iran or china oar north korea . Is that what youre suggesting, gov summer . Im saying in terms of a geo political opponent, the country the world lines up against is iran. When these terrible actors pursue their course in the world and we go to the United Nations looking for ways to stop that, when assad is murdering his own people, we go to the United Nations and who is it that always stands up for the worlds worst actors its always russia, particularly with china on the side. Romney did call russia our biggest geo political foe. And when pushed by wolf, he expanded to include iran and north korea, he said, interestingly enough, russia is Still Standing behind all of them. Interesting stuff, and interesting to see. It reminded me of the interview i did with romney a few months back. Lets go to candy. Im still here with James Carville. And i know i dont have to ask a question, hes been leaping out of his seat here to try to get in on this conversation. What is bothering you . Whats bothering me is this, if you want to pick the winner of the beauty contest, dont pick who you think is the prettiest girl, pick who you think the judges think is the prettiest girl. People look at these things, who looked president ial, who looked in command . Who looked strong . Who was articulate, coherent . The answer is obama, this is this is not were getting lost in the weeds, yes, this was clearly if you watched this, the president looked like the stronger guy. He looked like the guy that had something to say, he looked like the guy that was on the attack, im sorry, i after the first debate it was evident to me that the president was not on his game, i said so, this is as evident as it can be that of all of the things you look for in a president , it all went to president obama. Maybe there was some things in there, it was a strategic thing that may mean something to this part of the country, that part of the country or what geo political means, in terms of the overall impressionist debate, im sorry, i think its pretty clear he did well tonight. Its hard to see that, when you look at the conditions around the world over the last four years and whats happened as mitt romney described it with the arab spring and how were in a much more dangerous world than we were four years ago, i dont think people are going to run to that conclusion, i think they saw a candidate in mitt romney who was president ial, passed the commander in chief test, and thats what mitt romneys goal was tonight. How do you win elections . Mitt romney was able tonight to repeat his core argument against barack obama, which is that hes presided over a weak economy for four years and things havent gotten better, he tied it to Foreign Policy. I think its impossible for anyone to say, this race is going to move voters. For the second debate. And there are two questions. The first question is, who won the debate. We know james thinks that president obama won the debate . Would you agree . My point is on a Foreign Policy debate like this, theres no one winner or not. You can say the president won on points, he seemed to be more aggressive than mitt romney tonight. He was more aggressive, this is about winning elections and in that sense its not about who won the debate. Thats the second question, will this move the race . Something is going to have to move this race, because were looking at them dead even in our poll. The course of this race was set after the first debate. That was one of the most powerful debates in american politics. Nothing is going to change the trajectory of this race after the second debate, the third debate. If being strong, being president ial, being coherent, being articulate season the going to move it, then nothings going to move it. He was all those things tonight. If this would have been a Little League baseball game, they would have called this after four innings. Thats evident to anyone who watched it. At least have obama winning back. Maybe the world is messed up, maybe the deficit is high, maybe these other things, we can argue that, we cant argue what happened in the 90 minutes. Is it going to be a major force in moving these numbers . I dont know that. The question is not, did obama win the debate . He did. The question,did he win the election tonight. That we dont know, well know in a couple weeks. You all sort of agree. You both think that i think the president was more feisty tonight. I think also he had to, hes punching from behind. Given what happened in the first debate. Hes been more aggressive in the second and third. Governor romney wanted to send a signal to women voters that mitt romney is a man you can trust in the oval office. Hes not going to bomb tanks . I think he wanted to seem thoughtful. That was his approach. You never do yourself good running for president looking weak. And i think governor romney looked weak tonight. My view. Well check back in five days. How it moved the polls. Were going to bring you the results of our polls as soon as we have them. I dont think we can know. I think that its very clear the president won this on points. What was interesting to me, i think the president was very successful in trying to make mitt romney look out of date, behind the times, not only on the warship thing, but also on the russia thing. Were getting the results of the polls, let me go to wolf for that. Thanks, very much. Here we are. We now have the first results of our poll. These are this is a poll of registered voters across the country who watched tonights debate. We have a verdict on who won. 48 say president obama won, 40 say mitt romney won. 59 say obama did better than expected. 15 say he did worse. 23 say he did as expected. As for mitt romney, 44 say he did better than expected, 26 say he did worse. 26 percent say he did about the same as expected. This is a scientific poll of debate watchers only. We found a higher percentage of republicans tend to tune into these debates than democrats, were still crunching more numbers, stand by, youre going to find out how the debate influenced peoples votes. Um next, well tell you how debate watchers rated the candidates abilities as a commander in chief. Anderson . As we get more of these numbers and look at them. Well be able to parse it out a little. Does that surprise you . Does it change anybodys vote . There are people out there, the president won the debate, we think more republicans are watching. He won the poll. Some republicans are saying the president had a stronger debate tonight. Many of those republicans arent changing their vote. I think the tightness here would have been a bigger gap in favor of the president. Style and substance, the president won the debate, but this is a reflection of our polarized country. We came into this race, 4747 a point or two nationally. Most of the battleground states are the same. Did anything happen tonight thats going to change anyones mind for mitt romney . I think not. Theres a tiny slice in this country of truly undecided voters left. Are they going to vote on Foreign Policy . The economy . The leadership part of tonight could factor into that. The leadership part, look, you could be sure the candidates have to adjust on this starting now. What will be on new tv ads. It was interesting to see our focus group, when people were asked if this changed their minds. The majority of them raised their hands saying tonight pushed them toward one direction or the other. Theres another poll out of just undecided voters. The gap for obama is much higher, i think they are exactly right. Theres a small sliver of people you are looking at. You can see the occasional chances that romney took to distinguish himself. For instance, months as you say, is very much in play. A lot of Jewish Voters there, and romney decided he would take. He was going to take one further step and say he would indict ahmadinejad presumely for war crimes, im not sure how you can do that. Clearly that was a kind of rhetoric flourish directed at a specific set of voters who he was trying to sway. He also said many times, iran is 230ur yefour years closer to nuclear weapon. He just repeated that over and over again. And president obama had very specific things about where he went in israel, a particular town he went to where rockets landed. One of his best moments. When he got angry out there a couple times, i thought obama was at his best. What we saw tonight was obama came in, slightly favored to win the president densecy, he comes out of this a little stronger to win the presidency. He i agree with john, i thought it would be a bigger split. I think what that poll suggests, given the composition of whos in the poll, the president had a clear victory tonight. It wasnt a blowout. I want to disagree with James Carville, its only whos the most whos the strongest, whos the most aggressive thats the most appealing at a debate. I think had romney done that tonight. He would have hurt himself. What he has to do is to be a comfortable person. Everyone knows hes they saw him in the first debate being strong and aggressive, theyen watt to make sure hes not a bomb thrower. You have the legacy of the last republican president. Exactly right. Romney is trying to say, im not george w. Bush, im not going to get you into another war. He didnt seem quite comfortable to me. I just think there were times you didnt mind the sweat. We should take a quick break. We are the only Cable Network with a scientific poll like this. Well tell you if the debate influenced peoples votes. Thats really the most crucial question and also how it may have influenced their votes if it did. [ ross ] we are at the bottom of the earth patagonia, chile. 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Its not a dream. Americas natural gas. Putting us in control of our Energy Future, now. And the candidates speech is in pieces all over the district. The writers desktop and the coordinators phone are working on a joke with local color. The secure cloud just received a revised intro from the strategists tablet. And while i make my way into the venue, the candidate will be rehearsing off of his phone. [ candidate ] and thanks to every young face i see out there. [ woman ] his phone is one of his biggest supporters. [ female announcer ] with cisco at the center. Working together has never worked so well. Weville more results coming in from our poll of registered voters who watched tonights debate. Can president obama handle the responsibilities of commander in chief. 63 said yes. 36 said no. We asked the same question about governor romney. 60 said he could handle the responsibleabilities of responder in chief, 38 said he cant. About the same numbers for both of these candidates. This is a scientific poll of debate watchers only. Weve seen over the course of these debates, a higher percentage of republicans tune in than democrats. Debate watchers will tell us how this faceoff affected their all important vote. Lets turn to alex castellanos. What was not discussed tonight, you pointed out benghazi, i dont think it was used. Very lightly. I think thats very interesting. If you watched all day long on tv, it was benghazi, trying to make the president diminish the president s leadership standing from my point of view, politicize a tragedy. And when it was time for him to sit down and be the commander in chief, romney, he made a different decision. I think thats important, because i think for most americans you see a tragedy like this, i knew ambassador stevens, his parents have asked, please stop politicize this, i hope this gets moved out where it should be. Lets talk about real issues, i was glad that romney did not continue politicize this tragedy in this country. Well, i would have thought it interesting to have a debate tonight on a legitimate issue worthy of discussion, which is why was an American Ambassador in a dangerous place left unprotected on 9 11. And why did this president continue to plame a movie for two weeks . Apparently in the mind of your nominee, this kind of attack is not worthy of being president. Its not worthy of this country. That was a decision bsh. I aplowed him for it, and i applaud the president for his job. We have some more information on our poll, and also some fact checking. Lets go to wolf for that. Thank you. Our expert team of producers, researchers have been busy trying to figure out whether the candidates were busy telling the truth. President obama was bragging about certain policy success in libya. He said the u. S. Held gadhafi at a fraction of the cost of the war in iraq. We were able to, without putting troops on the ground. At the cost of less than what we spent in two weeks in iraq, liberate a country that had been under the yoke of dictatorship for 40 years. What are the facts here . The total cost for the first five years of the war in iraq was 646 billion. Which breaks down to 700 million for two weeks which is less than the 896 million the u. S. Spent on military intervention in libya. Our vert is false. He exaggerated by 200 Million Dollars when he compared it to two weeks in iraq. We want to move on to the apology tour, thats been a favorite line from the republicans on the campaign trail. Mitt romney claimed as he has many times in the past, president obama went on an International Tour apologizing for u. S. Policy, when he took office. He said he would meet with all the worlds worst actors in his first year, simm down with chavez, kim jongil, with castro and with president ahmadinejad of iran, and i think they looked and thought, thats an unusual honor to receive from the president of the United States, and then the president began what i called an apology tour, going to various nations in the middle east and criticizing america. I think they looked at that and sawweakness. So what are the facts here . When the president took office, he did travel to several countries talking about american Foreign Policy, in france, for example, he said america has shown arrogance and has been dismissive even de ricive. He criticized him for that very same speech. In none of the speeches did the president say hes sorry. Our 1rerd is, its false to call the president s speeches an apology tour even if he was critical of past Foreign Policy. He issues no apologies. Theyll keep iran from producing nuclear weapons, tom foreman is standing by with another reality check. Both candidates came in tonight knowing iran is one of the biggest issues out there, Irans Nuclear ambitions and its been an issue since the first day barack obama took office. We then organized the strongest coalition and the strongest sanctions against iran in history. Governor romney has often talked as if we should take premature military action. I think that would be a mistake. I think from the very beginning one of the challenges weve had with iran, is that they have looked at this administration, and felt the administration was not as strong as it needed to be, they saw weakness, when the president said he was going to create daylight between ourselves and israel, they noticed that as well. They agree on many points here, each man says iran will not get a nuke on my watch. Each says economic sanctions are an important tool. Each one tells how a military strike might be necessary to stop Irans Nuclear program. They do not agree on where you put the emphasis in this equati equation. That has led us to suggest our opponents have been reckless with iran. What we brought in here is a life sized virtual model. We did this because we want you to see what size these things are, and how portable they are, and how easily they could be held in a bunker or a ship. We know theyre reasonably accurate, reliable. We know theyre powerful enough to carry a Small Nuclear weapon in that nose cone right up there. If they get a nuclear weapon, iran would have the ability to deliver it. Not the United States. Not even to europe, really, except to the fringes, it would reach all of the middle east and it would certainly have the range to strike the american ally, israel over there. Iran says it has no designs of developing a nuclear bomb, it does not want to strike israel. Its widely believed israel has a contingency plan for striking Irans Nuclear production facilities to try to stop this if need be. The danger . No one knows if it would really work. If it didnt work, iran would have the Nuclear Program to say it needed it because it had been attacked. When mitt romney talks about strength, thats what hes talking about, hes talking about the notion that the president has to make it very, very clear that america will stand with israel if such an assault happens. Wolf . As you noted, the white house has said it will stand by israel, officials have clearly downplayed the idea of military intervention. Whats going on here . The white house has preferred not to talk about the military. They talked much more about sanctions. What theyre talking about is the real. The currency of iran. And since sanctions have been put in place by the u. S. And other countries, look at what happened, it used to be 12,000 iranian rials to the u. S. Dollar. Now its 35,000 rials to the u. S. Dollar. That creates economic and social and political pressure on the leaders of iran so that they have to negotiate about that Nuclear Program. They have to be willing to say well give up on some of that if youll get rid of some of these sanctions. What if they keep saying, well negotiate here but theyre building up a weapon over there. Whos being reckless about all of this . We have to give this a rating of incomplete, because nobody really knows until this story plays out. Only when iran gives its Nuclear Program or announces it has a bomb will we know who was reckless and who was right. Wolf . Thank you. Lets find out how the candidates came across to debate watchers. We have more results coming in now from our post debate poll. Who seemed to be a stronger leader . Look at this, 51 said president obama, compared to 46 for governor romney. We asked, who was more likeable . 48 said president obama, 47 said governor romney. We asked who spent more time attacking his opponent. 68 said president obama compared to 21 who said governor romney. Lets go back to candy. Thanks, wolf. Still here with James Carville and ari fleischer. Some of these numbers are good for governor romney. It doesnt just who won the debate. Heres how i think you have to look at all three together. In the first debate, mitt romney scored six runs in the first three innings. The second debate, president obama scored a run. Tonight he scored a run. He lost 6 to 2. This is the trajectory of campaign. This is what i was saying when the debate ended, maybe mitt romney got beat by the president on the president being more feisty. When it comes to voter behavior, i dont think this debate changed a thing. As your internal polls are starting to show, its unchanged. Numbers like that dont move a thing. Before you answer, you wanted to also talk to david gergen. Its been so long i forgot what david said. I said i thought the president was more articulate, more coherent and president ial. I think those things matter. Eni think clearly everybody agrees with the president on this debate. Traditionally the cnn poll has been eight points more republican than the electorate have. I dont know what the case was tonight. They havent shared their numbers. That would be interesting, if he won by eight points in a sample that was eight points more republican than the electorate, that would be a bigger victory for the president. The country is 7 generally 7 more democratic in terms of selfidentified. More republicans watch the debates than the democrats. Right, which is going to lead you to a skewed result. The sample is more republican than the general election is. 48 to 40 said the president won the debate. I dont know what wed argue about. I would never argue with you. I have to cut us off here. Send us back to anderson. Im going to let you crunch the numbers anderson. Ill get right on that during a commercial break. For military history buffs as i am, and James Carville is a former marine, they still do use bayon bayonets, the army discontinued them in 2010. Did the debate influence peoples votes . Well have more poll numbers on that. [ woman ] its 32 minutes to go time, and the candidates speech is in pieces all over the district. The writers desktop and the coordinators phone are working on a joke with local color. The secure cloud just received a revised intro from the strategists tablet. And while i make my way into the venue, the candidate will be rehearsing off of his phone. [ candidate ] and thanks to every young face i see out there. [ woman ] his phone is one of his biggest supporters. [ female announcer ] with cisco at the center. Working together has never worked so well. Lets look at how our focus group of undecided florida voters responded to the candidates tonight. We measured their reaction as they listened to the president and governor romney. The green light represents men, the yellow line represents the women. Heres president obamas best moment of the night, according to this focus group. It happened around 9 15 p. M. Eastern. The candidates were discussing the war eye iraq. The u. S. Has no troops left in the country after failing to reach a status of forces agreement. Listen to them talking about the situation in iraq. The other thing we have to do is recognize that we cant continue to do nation building in these regions. Part of American Leadership is to make sure were doing nation building here at home. That will help us maintain the kind of American Leadership that we need. That was the president s high point. Lets take a look admit romneys best moment, he peaked at 9 48 p. M. Eastern. Bob schieffer asked the candidates if an attack on israel would be considered an attack on the United States. Governor romney said yes, and went on to explain how he would avoid that scenario all together. Its the right thing to do to have crippling sanctions. I would have put them in place earlier, its good we have them. I would tighten those sanctions. I would say that ships that carry iranian oil cant come into our ports, i imagine the eu would agree with us as well. Not only ships couldnt, i would say companies that are moving their oil cant, people who are trading in their oil cant. I would tighten those sanctions further. That was mitt romneys highest point. Lets go to the focus group. Ernie hull who is up here on the top left side from where i am said that he really felt that what mitt romney said about avoiding an attack upon israel really resonated with him. Tell me why you thought that was a high moment for you. I feel like our support of israel has been not clear over the past four years and romney was very forceful in addressing his support of israel. We saw wolf many times whenever the candidates got negative, we saw immediately the dial testers go down, whenever they were speaking affirmatively and strongly, you could see the dial testers for both men and women would go up. Stand by, lets take a look at the low points for the debate for both president obama and governor romney. Well begin with the president s low point. It came at around 9 54 eastern after governor romney accused the president of being weak and taking an apology tour across the middle east. The president pushed back and the focus group didnt appreciate his tone. Nothing governor romney just said is true. Starting with this notion of me apologizing. This has been probably the biggest whopper thats been told during the course of this campaign. That was the president s lowest moment according to this focus group in orlando. Governor romneys low point happened much earlier, 9 39 p. M. Eastern. Bob schieffer asked governor romney where he would get the money to pay for a bigger military. He talked about cutting domestic spending programs. Come on our website, youll look at how we get to a balanced budget within 8 to 10 years, we do it by reducing spending on a whole series of programs. I get rid of obama care, there are a number of things that sound good, but frankly we just cant afford them. And that one doesnt sound good, and its not affordable. Id get rid of that one from day one, to the extent humanly possible we would take that out. We take program after program that we dont absolutely have to have, and we get rid of them. Lets go back to soledad. What did y make of that . You know, we saw a very big gender gap this time around. Ive been doing focus groups for a while for cnn, this time around we saw a huge gender gap, especially when questions were about education, domestic spending. And also about the 911 story. You were very moved when the president was talking about the girl who was four years old when 9 11 happened and she was moved when osama bin ladin was killed. Everyone started killing me because my father worked under the world trade center, it brought back memories of me thinking, oh, my god, my dad, whats going on with my dad, because we had no idea what was going on. When she talked about when he talked about that, it just brought back that memory. Now that my dad is no longer with us. Hes looking down on us saying, okay, we got him. And that is a victory for us. So it just reminded me of what a blessing is still and that we can still celebrate these peoplepeople a peoples lives that lost their lives for something that was totally unnecessary. I know that tone was important to the folks in the focus group. We could see it, we were watching the squiggles, as soon as the tone got edgy, all of a sudden, everyone would dial down. How important was tone for you, sir . Substance is always more important, i can understand how frustration can take over someones point of view from time to time. A jab is sitting there, they get a chance to throw it, they do. When they do stick to substance, were better informed. There were moments when people were laughing out loud, when they tried to do the strong shift, talk about education and not Foreign Policy. Did those moments resonate with you. Its important to me. It gives me a different perspective on things. Because nonverbal communication is just as important as verbal. Yeah, it does make it makes a difference in things. Wolf, well send it back to you. Very interesting stuff, thanks. Well get back to you. Were standing by for the final numbers of our poll of debate watchers, were peoples votes influenced by what they heard tonight . Also, youll be able to watch the debate again in its entirety coming up later. When you take a closer look. At the best schools in the world. 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So i never missed a beat. Were more than 78,000 people looking out for more than 70 million americans. Thats health in numbers. Unitedhealthcare. To treat your antiaging concerns . Join the counter revolution and switch to olay prox. Achieve antiaging results so you look up to 12 years younger. See results in 28 days. Guaranteed or your money back. Olay prox. We have the final results just in from our scientific poll of registered voters who watched tonights debate. We gave you the headline a little while ago, 48 say president obama won, compared to 40 who say governor romney won. Will that change any votes . Look at these new numbers just in. We asked who did the debate make you more likely to vote for . 24 said president obama, 25 said governor romney. 50 basically said neither. Anderson . A sign of how divided things are. First, lets go back to candy with the debate hall. Weve been chewing over a couple things that were surprising to us in the debate. And the first was, that mitt romney had a clear shot at libya, benghazi, who didnt give security when security had been asked for in the state department cables. He didnt take it, why . I was surprised. I thought he would, i dont know if there was intelligence information he was briefed on that made him drawback. Or it was an overall tone he wanted to establish tonight. He wanted to be president ial, rise above, and not get into a tit for tat on every issue. One of the things were seeing in those last numbers is that we may have reached the point of diminishing returns on these debates. Its about even instead of who, did it make you more likely to vote for president obama or mitt romney . What changes these poll numbers now . Im not sure theyre going to change a lot. I think were going to into a close election. I think the president s up a couple points. Its somewhere going to be close. I suspect that nothings going to fundamentally change on election day. If someone gets a point or a point and a half in a race like this, its going to be an enormous change. Little things echo out the big things, generally its a change in mood or people from one party tend to get more fired up about the way the candidate did or didnt do. I think its going to be interesting to see over the next four days what happens. No one believes its going to be a drastic change. Little changes need a lot. You have unemployment numbers coming up. On friday this week, we get the snapshot of how the economy grew. That could be big. One of the things we were talking about also is how often israel i got a tweet from a reporter, president obama mentioned it 33 times. He wanted to make sure he didnt have a problem with israel. Hes been on the defensive over that issue and whether or not he supports israel strongly. Mitt romney hit those points. President obama won first. The issue is whether republicans or mitt romney can get between 25 and 30 of the jewish vote. If republicans lose the jewish vote 41, its a big set back. If they lose it 31, its a huge victory. Everything matters now. Everything matters. Weve gone down to the margins. The big picture is not going to change. Thanks. Anderson . I think its back to you. It is fascinating just having watched the president in these last two debates. It makes you wonder all the more what happened . Where was the president in that first debate, given the kind of radical change in the second and third one. I think he was sitting on a lead . He was risk averse, he was ahead in the polls, and he didnt want to take any chances. So he was kind of absent. He came out swinging and he came out swinging again tonight. And i think it worked for him. But he also tried to make the point that mitt romney was reckless, was a phrase he used. What mitt romney, the trap he did not walk into this even was to appear reckless on Foreign Policy, and i think they were very, very careful about that, because this country doesnt want to go to war again. He was trying to appeal to that tiny sloois of voters. There are people who will see our poll results and say, the poll seems skewed. The president won the debate, and yet it didnt really seem to change anybodys vote . We should be careful about all these polls, these are polls just of debate watchers. Weve had more republicans watching the debate. 4872 hours, youll get a sense of whether this changes the fundaments in the race. If you take our polls for what theyre worth. The president won. By debate viewers, they scored him in the last two debates. The first debate changed the fundamentals of the race. He was on a path to win at that point. And governor romney was the issue in the campaign. After the first debate, the incumbent president became the issue in the campaign. If the election were today, the president would get a narrow victory. After three debates, the trend line is moving governor romneys way. In all nine tossup states, governor romney was in a similar position the movement romneys way is now slow, but its still moving romneys way. It keeps moving romneys way, even at the slow pace he is right now, it will be is there any possibility of changing that this debate was one clear way, now theyre going state by state. I think its interesting. We all talked about the first debate. The second debate, the president won, people came out saying, romney would do a good job handling the economy, the president won again, and the polls suggest that romney came out and passed the commander in chief test. Neither the second nor the third debate has in the early hours at least, seemed to have changes the race. Our own poll again taking into account the composition, suggests it hasnt changed very much. Then earlier tonight said intrigue spiked up to 80. There was an 80 chance of obama winning. For the debate intrigue was at 64 obama. It spiked and ended up the night at 61. It basically no change. Very good. I wonder, if youre looking for change. These are all small issues, the race is so evenly divided. The most important thing that may have happened in the next two or three weeks is that housing in america has begun to recover. Jamie dimon said it two weeks ago, he thought the housing recovery was so strong. And Jpmorgan Chase has a lot of mortgages they take a look at. The Federal Reserve may raise interest rates. If that happens, this is the election to win, whoever presides over it, it will be romneys recovery or obamas recovery. We have another reality check ahead. Well see what buzz words from the debate are trending on facebook. This new phone is amazing. Im watching natalies ballet recital and im pulling photos right from the video. Great idea, we can pick one and frame it here, watch this. She nails almost every move. 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Tax efficient and low cost Building Blocks to help you keep more of what you earn. Call your advisor. Visit ishares. Com. Ishares. Ishares. Yeah, ishares. Call 1800ishares for a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. The third and final president ial debate of 2012 is now over and our exclusive poll shows president obama won to former governor mitt romney. He scored important points with voters. 48 of debate watchers we surveyed said president obama won compared to 40 who said romney won. 59 said president obama did better than expected. 15 said he did worse. 23 said he did about the same as expected. As for governor romney, 44 said he did better and 26 said worse. 26 said he did about the same as expected. These debates, all three of the president ial debates will play a in what happens on november 6th, so will ad spending the next few weeks. Ad spending, there is a lot of money to be spent the next two weeks. A lot of money, but with the days running out, the candidates have to make tough decisions. The first you will see, this one is confusing when you look at it. Let me bring up the ad spending. Let me look at tv ads, its confusing. Lets pull up the state of florida. The dark blue is obama and dark red is romney. The super pacs. Look at the orlando market in florida. About half of the ad spending, just shy is done by the Obama Campaign, money out of president obamas campaign fund. Romney has a smaller slice because she getting help from super pacs. Florida has been trending romneys way. The Obama Campaign has to make. Do we keep spending as much as 5 million a week just to hold our own . Thats coming out of the campaign. Or do they decide to reduce spending in florida and not give it up completely . Both not accepting Public Financing. We are in a new world of freer spending. Do they want to decide we need to build a fire wall here on ohio. The same thing is happening. Half of the ad spending by the Obama Campaign and a smaller slice by romney and getting help from the republican super pacs and the president getting less help from the democrats super pacs. The president is going to have to make decisions. In a state of colorado, you are spending about half from the Obama Campaign fund and less help from the super pacs. You look at this map and decide what we get for the money. Are we moving the polls or holding our own. If you are holding your own, cut back there and move it up here into the midwest where this race is going to be decided. I want to switch the map before i go into the discussion. Heres the state of play. Does the president spend so much from his campaign down here . If you believe that is trending in that direction, two weeks ago you do that to keep it in play. Now you are looking at the race to 270, you have to make decisions. Assume the president may cut back here. He may cut back here. Not pull out, but cut back. They trend red and the question is where do you wick to try the line . We know the campaign used this as ground in the election. We have this as a source of strength where they are ahead of these two Battle Ground states. These are the two strongest right now. Ohio right behind and romney doing well in the west. The question is you have only so many days left. Where do you drop the plains. Where does governor romney and ryan go. Just as important or more important, campaigns have to make decisions and the Obama Campaign recently borrowed 15 million. Monis not scarce. These guys have raised a boat load of money and not taking Public Financing and not subject to caps, but you are at a point where you have to make consequential decisions and every decision is make or break. We are talking to democrats and they will wait and see what happens in the 48 hours with the numbers. If the answer is no and florida and North Carolina are moving his way, they think the smart thing to do is scale back and build a fire wall in the midwest. You have done commercials for candidates. How does it work logistically and how often are they polling and how much communication is there between the ad people and the poll people to determine our ads . Sometimes the ad people tell you way too much communication with the polling people. The ad guys and they do the math. Its a little bit about and they are polling around the clock. They are tracking every single night and dropping a night a few days ago and adding current days. They are focus grouping everything that goes out. Every day they get new polls . All the time. You are betting the future of the leadership of the free world and they sound like we are spending a lot on this president ial election. We spent that much on halloween candy this year in the United States. How much of this do they pretest of what they will say in the debate. Do they pretest a lot of lines these days . It depends on the nature of the campaign. The closer you get to the candidate and who he is, the less you test. Some of this stuff you can test the sincerity and the strength right out of it. I would be surprised if for example the Romney Campaign, i can speak with that with the Obama Campaign if they were testing lives tonight, they tested speech concepts and things like that. For a debate like this, you dont focus group. A decision not to go after benghazi for governor romney for weeks, is that something . Thats a decision you would do without a poll. No poll will tell you how to lead the country. Not to go on the attack is a decision. Maybe that is in regards to women voters, for example, to talk about education and on the president s part is talking about women voters. Tonight it was to hug obama. Why did he do that . A couple of reasons. You want to hug the opponent where you are weak and punch where you are strong. Barack obama has been much like george bush in many aspects and its where independents and republicans find him more acceptable. Bob gates was george bushs secretary. He has stature. Other interpretation. Make yourself safe. Paw. You dont have what you need for beliefs. I was trying to explain strategy. He has a point. The democrats and president obama have a legitimate argument and a guy who came into the debates is not the candidate we saw in the primaries. We go back to the etcha sketch. It may. I got a score card. Where republicans and president Obamas Administration have more agreement than on anything else like social issues. Why all the attacks . My question is this is three debates and romney has systematically moved to the center and this one was startling. The surge in afghanistan worked. He is the peace candidate and wants to fund Civil Society. Obama just thinks he can shoot his way against al qaeda. I am wondering is there anything in the Republican Base or are they determined to beat obama . I am wondering at what point do people say this is what we fear and this guy is a liberal moderate from massachusetts. Werent they previously attacking the administration for dropping mubarak too soon . Governor romney said it was the right thing to do. He said in syria before he said there should be a no drive zone, he said no troops on the ground. You go through with iran and he said there should be no bilateral talks and now there should be talks. You look at that and you can say well, that proves maybe thats a good thing. Then i guess we can disqualify barack obama because he was against terror suspects before he was govern it and was going to close, but he didnt. Most of the guys im getting some emails tonight from republicans who are disquieted a little bit from seeing mitt romney go to the middle. By the way, this is the primary process. You started on the wings on both sides. This is the romney they were worried about. Is the real romney . Is that the question . This is why. Mitt romney who is conservative and a business guy whose faith and family form his core. There is also a practical problem solving business man. Most of us have two hands. We really dont know who barack obama is. Four years, he has been consistent going after al qaeda. We will come back to the panel. Candy . Hey, anderson. Still sitting here at this point. I think they are getting ready for a class. Lets pay it forward or move it forward. What are you looking for . We come out here and say this is a wash and the polls are still basically 4747. What are you looking for . This is a lace from the beginning will focus on the economy and have the two big data reports. Growth numbers are coming out this friday and the final friday before the election we get unemployment reports. Those are the two external events that we are looking for. They can be washes or another sign of weakness in the economy, but if it happens to be growth, we dont know. Then we have the battlefield. Will it change . We are talking about the seven or eight or nine states. Will pennsylvania come in or michigan come into play . Those are the things that matter . Some big gap in the final. I dont imagine they will have one in the last couple of weeks. If michigan and pennsylvania come into play . Obama is a goner. He will lose. If they come into play, you wont miss out. I dont think thats going to happen. I see probably five or six state tracking polls with people call me and i have National Polls and i digest everything. Im a political guy and on the phone all the time. I dont think we are going to see big changes, but what i found interesting tonight with the strategy is you meet a guy by agreement. I dont remember reagan beating carter by agreement. The whole agreement is you disagree. Obama weakened america, but he agrees tonight by ten different times. I thought it was from the strategic point, i thought it was interesting and i agree with alex. There was push back and they will still vote for him. There will be push back on the right. You are not supposed to agree with this guy. He is a bad guy. Isnt the governors ace in the hole with conservatives who might think he was too agreeable tonight with president obama . The truth is its his goal to credential himself as commander in chief. He was able to do that in this debate. Its a reflection from the reality of how complicated Foreign Policy is. Maybe mitt romney pointed them out, but they are not disagreements on everything. They were argue being nuances. It seems as though at least in mitt romneys view they acted good and i think people see that and take that. I think its interesting and the reaction to this will be it certainly was somewhat of a different strategy and so much invested in benghazi. Now the issues dont. All the president can say is you had a chance to ask me about it and you will be doing this on television. Romney precluded himself from doing it by his lack of bringing it up when he was up there. I thought that was an interesting thing. He was not attacking the president on Foreign Policy and it was at the waters edge. You should be happy. I am, but he attacked the president pretty good on Foreign Policy. The polls show that the people thought the president attacked 68 and 21 romney. I want to see what the difference that will have on women. Women traditionally dont like to seat attack, attack. We will see if that changes the numbers. Thats mitt romneys weakness. I think there was one point, anderson, between them on who was the most likeable. That has been a sore spot for mitt romney. Thats good. He attacked and i have no idea. Of course obama attacked. Absolutely. Thanks. We are standing by with a reality check on getting tough for china and what it means for the economy. We will be able to see the debate again in its entirety. Grab a beer and popcorn and watch it all again. [ man ] in hong kong, on my way to the Board Meeting. Annes tablet called my phone. Annes tablet was chatting with a tablet in sydney. A desktop in zurich. And a telepresence room in brazil. The secure cloud helped us get some numbers from my assistants pc in new york. And before i reached the top, the Board Meeting became a congrats we sold the company party. Wait til my wifes phone hears about this. [ cellphone vibrating ] [ female announcer ] with cisco at the center, working together has never worked so well. [ female announcer ] with cisco at the center, music is a universal language. But when i was in an accident. I was worried the Health Care System spoke a language all its own with unitedhealthcare, i got help that fit my life. Information on my phone. Connection to doctors who get where im from. And tools to estimate what my care may cost. So i never missed a beat. Were more than 78,000 people looking out for more than 70 million americans. Thats health in numbers. Unitedhealthcare. Chinas Economic Club came up late in the debate. He would label the chinese as currency manipulators if he became president. Joining us with the reality check. Both men talked about china as an important trading partner, but suggested that china has stolen american jobs through unfair trade practices. Listen. We are going to insist that china plays by the same rules as everybody else. In part by holding down artificially the value of their currency it holes down the prices of their goods and means our goods are not as competitive and we lose jobs. Thats got to end. The promise from each man is Pretty Simple and direct. I will crack down on china. Can they do that and do they have their facts right . Listen to the numbers. That seems to be correct. In fact we lost about 2 million jobs to china. Most have been manufacturing jobs. Lets put together this map that shows you where they have been lost. All of the darker orange is where they lost the most like texas, oregon and california. Over the past dozen years, they lost about 3 of their jobs to chinese competition. The candidates say this is largely because while we base our value of the dollar on the free market and that determines labor costs, the chinese are currency manipulators. Thats the accusations. The idea is that they take their currency and they manipulate it so that it keeps it low so labor stays inexpensive and more people wont work there. Cant have a to one comparison. U. S. Productivity is much higher than chinese productivity. None the less, as close as we can get, we will try this. If you went to a factory and you want that people to create a product and the manufacturing environment, once you pay all the wages and all the benefits, that will come out to about 34 an hour. If you did the same thing in a chinese company, thats going to be more like 2 an hour. So the Chinese Government has structured their infrastructure and everything around this idea of saying lets take advantage of all of this labor out there and try to get more companies to move here and put a lot of products on the market or around the world that are inexpensive and can outcompete other products. Boy, has it worked. Take a look at this graph about whats happened since 1985. This is where we were in 1985 in terms of how much we were importing to this country from china. How much was sending us here to buy. Look what happened. It has gone up and up and up. Thats the recession. That notch right there. It hit a peak. It dropped some now, but it is way up from where it used to be. Look at the changes in what we sent to them. We were about equal in 1985 and we have not risen nearly as much in terms of the products we send to china. What can the president do about this . You put a trade barrier in place and it will be a pose, but if you do that, china can do the same and that hurts manufacturers. Can you say that companies will be blocked from goingover to use the cheap labor and keep the jobs here, but that makes them less competitive on the world market. There is an issue of china buying so much debt. If china said it didnt want to do that, that can make it harder for the government to borrow money for operating. The bottom line is, when you listen to these men say they will really crack down on china, you can take them at their word. The president has taken steps to do that and mitt romney said he will take steps. This is true, but what impact will it have . China has been a tough competitor and looks like they will continue to be. Even if they mean what they say, that will not be the last word on u. S. China trade. Almost all apple products are manufactured in china whether ipods or ipads or iphone. Humans of thousands of chinese are manufacturing those products sold in the United States and around the world. One footnote to an earlier reality check segment you may recall that president obama said tonight that the u. S. Intervention in libya cost less than two weeks of the war in iraq. It turns out the president was right. When we checked the math, we found two weeks of the war in iraq costs about 5 billion at its height and the libya intervention was less than 1 billion. Mostly cruise missiles launched. Anderson . It was interesting to hear both talking tough about china tonight. The question is what can they do . Its interesting to get a sense of the chinese reaction. I talked to a bunch of Chinese People with various levels. They had always thought they were going to like romney. Three things they like. American business and American Business in general over the last 30 or 40 years, the chinese thought republicans were the party of business and trade and he organized the olympics and the chinese think they went through the olympics. It has been a rude surprise to them that romney has been so tough. Even in this debate, you notice obama kept saying they could be a partner and we want to cooperate with them, but romney hammered away for the most part. This was the place where he softened his stone the least in most of the other areas. He was almost a complete reversal. On china, he was softer and still pretty tough. I imagine they are coming to the conclusion that whatever america may want, they want continuity and not change. The debate is generating tons of buzz and words mentioned the most, stand by for a replay of the debate in its entirety in about six minutes. [ ross ] in the Taihang Mountains of china, handcarved on the side of a cliff is the guoliang tunnel. What . youve got to be kidding me. [ derek ] ive never seen a road like this. Theres jagged rock all the way around. This is really gonna test the ats on all levels. [ derek ] this road is the most uneven surface, and it gets very narrow. Magnetic ride control is going to be working hard. The shock absorbers react to the road 1,000 times a second. It keeps you firmly in control. Whoa [ male announcer ] the allnew cadillac ats. Whoa take the steps to reach yours, everyowith usgoals. With real advice, for real goals. The Us Bank Wealth Management Advisor can help you. Every step of the way. From big steps, to little steps. Since 1863 weve helped guide our clients, so they can take the steps to help grow, preserve, and pass along their wealth. So their footsteps can help the next generation find their own path. All of us serving you. Us bank. Before tonights debate, who would have guessed that the words bay on et and whopper would make the biggest splash on facebook. They had an enormous spike after president obama gave this response to mitt romneys complaint that the u. S. Navy has too few ships. I think governor romney may be as you spend enough time looking at how the military works. You mentioned the navy, for example. We have fewer ships than in 1916. Governor, we also have fewer horses and bay on ets. The nature of the military has changed. We have aircraft carriers where planes land on them. The other term is whopper, burger king will be happy about this. President obama used it to describe mitt romneys charge that he went on a world tour, apologizing to the United States. Nothing governor romney said is true. Starting with this notion of me apologizing. This has been probably the biggest whopper that has been told in the course of this campaign. The mentions of the word whopper. Barack obama made history turn in the debate. He tied george w. Bush for the most appearances in president ial debate, six debates each. Looking at the years have changed him, you see how he looked at his first debate. His hair was much darker. That was in 2008 and the last on the right. He is not the only one whose looks have changed. This is the tv anchorman from 2007 and 2012. I look the same except for the glasses. And wearing the same suit. Pretty much. Its a nice suit. For works. Walter said women do not age. They get blonder. Men get darker glasses. Your hair w