Tonight’ third and final presidential debate will air at 9:00 PM from Boca Raton, Florida. Veteran CBS news anchor Bob Schieffer will moderate the festivities. Although there’s no doubt Schieffer’s a liberal, my guess is he’ll try to avoid pulling a Candy Crowley debacle. But then again, desperation does seem to be setting in with Team Obama and their media constituency, so anything’s possible. The focus of tonight’s debate will be foreign policy, and I’m sure Libya will come up. Let’s hope Romney is more effective at exploiting Obama’s obvious inconsistencies (I’m being charitable) on this issue than he was last Tuesday.
Absent some October surprise, this is the last real chance the candidates will have to substantially alter the trajectory of the campaign. Under that kind of pressure, either one of them could make a game-changing gaffe tonight. Assuming that doesn’t happen, though, it’s doubtful this debate will have the same impact as the first debate, a point Ed Morrissey made this afternoon. David Sanger at the New York Times previews what we can expect, topic-wise, in tonight’s debate:
If the moderator, Bob Schieffer of CBS News, has his way, it will be the most substantive of the debates. He has outlined several topics: America’s role in the world, the continuing war in Afghanistan, managing the nuclear crisis with Iran and the resultant tensions with Israel, and how to deal with rise of China.
The most time, Mr. Schieffer has said, will be spent on the Arab uprisings, their aftermath and how the terrorist threat has changed since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. No doubt the two candidates will spar again, as they did in the second debate, about whether the Obama administration was ready for the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador, and three other Americans.
Expect Obama to mention Osama bin Laden’s name whenever he can, but as the Washington Examiner notes, “I killed bin Laden” is not a foreign policy. The debate begins in a couple hours. In the meantime, here’s a short video of Chris Christie asking the most relevant question of the campaign: “What the hell is Obama doing asking for another four years”
Earlier today on MSNBC, liberals Jonathan Martin and Chuck Todd delivered the news to Chris Matthews that momentum is still on Romney’s side and that, yes, Obama could lose. Tingles seemed to take it in stride, but I suspect he doesn’t really believe Obama could possibly lose. C4P commenter “speppers69″ emailed to let us know that Neil Cavuto will have a post-debate interview with Governor Palin on Fox Business Network.
Update: (h/t DT) Michelle Malkin makes a pretty compelling case that Bob Schieffer will be anything but objective in tonight’s debate. Also of note, Obama has been endorsed by Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, and the Castro family. That says a lot about Obama’s foreign policy bonafides, heh.
As with the previous debates, I’ve embedded two live streams so you have a couple of options. Enjoy the debate.
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