BOCA RATON: President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were racing through last-minute preparations for Monday's final debate, looking to exploit cracks in each other's foreign policy in the home stretch of a brutal election.
With barely two weeks to go before Americans trek to the polls, the two men are diving into the nitty-gritty of international affairs as well as of the latest overseas flashpoints like Iran and Libya for their showdown here in Boca Raton.
But the candidates are all too aware of the domestic pressures they face, with both planning to charge out onto the campaign trail immediately after Monday night's debate to blitz the handful of battleground states likely to determine the November 6 election.
Romney foreign policy director Alex Wong told AFP that while foreign policy is vital and helps draw distinctions between Romney and the president, "everyone acknowledges that jobs and the economy, particularly after these four years of anemic recovery, is the top issue right now in the election."
Wong was in Boca Raton, Florida, site of the upcoming debate and where Romney has been spending the weekend practicing with his top aides.
Obama has secluded himself with his debate prep team in Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.
The race is virtually a dead heat, according to several polls, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of staff, said it was widely understood that the race was boiling down to a few swing states.
"Everybody always knew this was a tight race and that it was going to come down to a few states. And I think that that's where we are today," Emmanuel told ABC Sunday talk show "This Week."
Of those states, Florida, Ohio and Virginia are proving crucial, and both candidates are planning to barnstorm across those states in the coming days.
Obama won all three in 2008, but as a measure of the tightness of this year's contest, they are all up for grabs, with Florida leaning toward Romney, Virginia a tie, and Ohio leaning toward Obama, according to widely read poll averages by RealClearPolitics.
Despite the poll numbers favoring Obama in Ohio, which no Republican won the White House without, "the trend is in our direction," Republican Senator Rob Portman told NBC's "Meet the Press," citing a shrinking Obama lead in the Midwestern state.
And he hit on a theme that has swelled since the first debate on October 3, that Obama is merely defending his record rather than laying out a platform for a second term.
"At least governor Romney has a vision for the future. That's not what you hear from President Obama," Portman said.
Florida's Senator Marco Rubio, like Portman once considered a possible Romney running mate, piled on, saying it was "startling that the president, two weeks from election day, has completely given up on outlining a plan for governing this country for the next four years."
Obama's surrogates rushed to the president's defense Sunday, saying he was focused on improving training, education, infrastructure and research to maintain the US edge against countries whose economies were rapidly becoming more competitive.
And they insisted that a major element of Obama's strategy for Monday's debate will be to remind the American people of the importance of improving conditions at home in order to project strength abroad.
"The most important thing we can do as a country on our foreign policy is strengthen our economy here at home," Emanuel said.
Polling agency Gallup's daily tracking poll had Romney up by six points Friday among likely voters, but its chief pollster Frank Newport said he expected the lead could tighten in coming days.
Gallup data and other polls show that battleground states "look close themselves, but I think right now I wouldn't predict -- we have two weeks to go and a big debate tomorrow night," Newport told Fox News Sunday.
That showdown will draw the candidates out on testy international issues that have risen to the fore in recent weeks, notably Libya, where an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11 left four Americans dead, including ambassador Chris Stevens.
Republicans have seized on the administration's shifting account of what happened, and blamed the president for failing to adapt to a deteriorating security environment and then misleading the American people.
"I put that on the president of the United States," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox.
"This is a national security break down, before, during and after the attacks."
Iran will also feature prominently, especially after a New York Times report late Saturday in which unnamed US officials said Iran was ready to talk one-on-one with Washington about its nuclear program. The story was denied by the White House and Iran.
Comments
Comments are closed.