bill: so the man responseable for helping governor romney get ready for his three debates is ohio senator robb portman. i spoke with him a bit earlier today. senator robb portman, good morning from boca in florida. good morning bill, how are you? bill: i m fine this morning. i know you re working on little sleep but tell me about last night. what was the governor s strategy in that debate? his strategy was to come across as he did, thoughtful, knowledgeable, reassuring ready to be commander-in-chief. i think it was a good night for him. bill: he did not go after the changing conflicting story on libya. now why was that? well, you know they already discussed that in the previous debate. instead he used libya as an example to talk about the broader problems in the middle east. i thought it was smart because he was able to lay out a strategy to deal with the underlying problem whereas president obama chose not to talk about his agenda or plans for the future. so, it was another exam
stronger, i think our relationships in the pacific are stronger, i think our relationships with our allies in europe are stronger, i think we ve gotten rid of gadhafi, we replaced him with a democratic government in libya. we ve started the transition toward an effective democracy in egypt. it remains for the egyptians to carry through on that. so, and bill: some would argue we don t know what we re going to get in libya. those are unknowns, as another guy named rumsfeld would say. of course. but you asked me where i think we could be stronger, and i ve named our alliances both in the pacific and in europe and our ability, we took out the central node of al-qaeda. our army is getting more rest and recovery now that we re out of iraq x we ve continued to improve our military technology. bill: okay. it s a big world, we have many topics. i wish we had more time but, please, come back over the next two weeks, okay? wesley clark. martha: let s get the other side, fair and balanced for
where again governor romney in tempered and restrained language explained how obama had failed these past four years to do much of anything to slow iran down. martha: there was that moment, let me stay with john bolton for a second. there was a moment where bob schiefer asked what would you do if you got the call that said israel had attacked had attacked iran? what do you think of that mitt romney s answer, saying that wouldn t happen, they would be consulted about it first? i think the change in the relationship between israel and the united states under a romney presidency would mean that we wouldn t be surprised. i think the real risk is, that under obama, that israel feels so isolated, feels so out on a limb, feels that the united states will not do what s necessary to stop this disaster of iran getting nuclear weapons it is more likely to act on its own. if you have a better relationship between u.s. and israel, a relationship of trust, then i don t think there will be any surp
going to miraculously work out some kind of deal, and we all followed the machinations that led to the showdown with john boehner and the deal that led it to fall apart in the first place. i suspect the president s advisers may have been surprised when he said that. i think it s one of those things that seemed like the right thing to say at the time though clearly the president can t back that up with the reality of what has to happen now to cutting the military across the board and making other across-the-board cuts at nih and other places just because we don t have the courage to go in or the leadership to go in and say here s something we need to eliminate, here s something we need to keep doing at the level that we re doing it today. martha: you re on the intel committee. were you surprised there wasn t more on libya, and were you sort of, you know, looking at your tv like i think many folks were and wanting governor romney to come out a little more forcefully with questions and
the president had a very intent look on his face. i wouldn t describe it as a mean look. i would describe it as a man looking for opportunities to strike. the, governor romney, it seemed to me has this benign default expression in which he appears to be interested most of the time. he has a slight smile on his face but not a smug one. i wonder if his was not the more attractive default expression because this kind of thing matters. martha: the importance of the visual medium in all of this. you may recall the president got a lot of criticism in the first debate for constantly looking down in the split screen. brit sort of referenced how all that went this time around. bill: one of the big surprises last night a lot of pewere talking about governor romney s response on libya. it was the first question of the debate on bob schiefer. instead of handling the president on muddled response on terror attacks in benghazi where we left on debate number two, governor romney spoke broadly about t