It took but half an hour or twenty minutes or so before businessman Romney veered off into more comfortable domestic terrain, done on purpose and killed a small block of time and Obama happily took the bait (geez Dad can we rap about birth control again? I see an opening!). Not exactly two Kissingers squaring off against each other and sure enough Obama obliquely got his pills in (I'm beginning to think he takes bc pills himself) when he said Romney has social policies more from the '50s, a Mormon cross between Robert Young and Leave It To Beaver but onto to Syria and some other more pressing matters. Bashar al-Assad to date has killed about 30,000 of his own citizens, brings to mind Stalin's old quip that one death is a tragedy 30,000 is a statistic to paraphrase. Obama kept talking sanctions up the kazoo whereas Romney agreed but said while there would be no military involvement under his administration we really need to arm the rebels the right ones anyway. I pretty much watched the whole thing with a quick sidetrip for a whizz and a refill and in my notes there's everything. Obama took out Osama bin Laden which in a foreign policy debate is perfectly fair to point out and also somehow took out Khadafy. The evening started out with Mideast terror/Benghazi of course and perhaps the best line of the evening was when Romney said we can't kill ourselves out of this terror situation but really need to engage the Muslim world to reject extremism (hey Sat the real War Against Women can best be capsulized in the pic of little Malala recuperating in her British hospital room, just thought I'd get that in). So how'd that reset go with Putin Mr. Obama? Romney sees Putin more as a geopolitical foe, I see him as nostalgic for the Cold War and not wanting to move on but Obama somehow sees him in less menacing terms, dunno. Iraq, status of forces agreements, the Red Line with Iran, future talks between the U.S. and Iran not being true, tensions with Israel which even many Dems are concerned about, Obama's global apology tour. Geez this blogpost is beginning to resemble an updated version of We Didn't Start the Fire. Rom's feeling is that the world's worst leaders saw weakness in Obama and this made events in the world worse and yeah China was ripe for discussion (we'll save that for the comments section). Leaving Afghanistan in '014 (we hope) and Romney was quite straight about Pakistan being an ally after all they have about 100 nuclear warheads and if Pakistan somehow became a failed state we wouldn't want them getting into the wrong hands. DRONES, education, a strong economy and the overwhelming need for a strong military which in my view Obama seemed particularly weak on, kind of stammered. I finally figured out the media's formula for determining the winner in these things, if Obama didn't do horribly then he won. Of the three debates this was the most pivotal imo. Of course when I go to my e-mail later and find out who's trending today on Yahoo I may revise that. Oh yeah Bob Schieffer a class act:)