– and just like in football, that’s how you win the contest. The President sounded very credible, which was only compounded by his seemingly intimate knowledge of Romney’s foreign policy positions. And, all this was in spite of the split screen (which didn’t do him any favors). Of course, Obama has often sounded good – problem is, he hasn’t followed through.

That all said, Romney wasn’t horrible – just less good than many of us hoped. He certainly held his own, but played it safe. Way too safe. Yet, if Romney’s mission last night was to present himself as a plausible alternative to Obama on foreign policy, I think he achieved that goal. He knew his stuff and certainly passed the commander-in-chief-test. But this was a debate, and you can’t keep yielding your time to your opponent by asking him questions and waiting for an answer (we saw this in prior debates too). And, it’s a little hard to differentiate between a Romney foreign policy and the President’s when one frequently argues that Obama’s foreign policy is a failure while simultaneously agreeing with a good portion of it. It’s a nice gesture to give your opponent some credit, but Romney was doing it on every other response (or so it seemed).

Both gentlemen did well when the discussion turned to domestic policy, but Romney shined most brightly when covering economic issues. That is clearly his strongest suit. I hope undecided voters who’s biggest concern is the economy took note.

Obama, surprisingly, did well on the Israel question; Romney did better. Although, Obama’s description of his trip to Israel was fantastic. On this answer and others, he very effectively talked about regular folks he’s come in contact with – again, very similar to the way Romney so effectively did this in the first debate. Iran was also a strong subject for Obama (who would have guessed that pre-debate?).

Libya should have been Obama’s major weakness in this debate. Problem is, Romney only glossed over it – and when given no less than two perfect openings to hit Obama on his handling of the Benghazi attack, Romney never even brought it up.

The greatest U.S. national security threat question was also set up perfectly for Romney, but he only gave a quick answer and then changed the subject. By the way, the correct answer was the debt. Neither of them gave that answer. If the question was the greatest international security threat: a nuclear armed Iran. My humble opinion.

I’m not one of those that thinks that minor slips of the tongue or tongue twists are that notable or important, but Romney did occasionally contradict himself. For example, he made the point that we can’t just simply go kill all the bad guys, but then not too long after, he said we’ll go kill them all. Huh(?) is right. As an aside, Schaeffer’s verbal “catch Obama’s bin Laden” slip up was kind of funny.

Romney had an very effective hit when bringing up Obama’s planed reset with Russia. Obama had a lot of effective hits, but my favorite was his line about this not being a game of battleship. Obama also very effectively used (and repeated) his “nation building at home” line. Romney really needed a refrain like that.

As much as I like politics and all the red meat this debate produced, I was disappointed that the foreign policy discussion was so limited and contained (in the “foreign policy debate”). There a lot going on in the world. Yes, some of it was brought up, but a lot of it wasn’t. The most glaring example was what’s going on in the European Union right now. That can have a far bigger impact that most of what was debated last night – and it ties straight into our economic challenges here at home.

A couple random notes:

• Obama mentioned our military and the military of France in the same sentence. That just seems a bit insulting, no?
• Obama’s constant hanging “and…” is driving me nuts. I’m quickly becoming an advocate of Obama being required to use a teleprompter.
• I missed the rule for these debates that says Obama gets minutes more speaking time than Romney, but it happened in each of the three debates.

ience members by giving answers to questions not asked; Romney disregarded Crowley often; and both candidates completely disrespected the clock and the fact that the audience was there for a reason – to ask questions. They walked all over time limits such that many of the questions did not get asked. That’s unfortunate.

There weren’t a lot of one-liners, but to the extent there were, Obama won that contest. My favorite was the “sketchy deal” line.

Romney was VERY effective at outlining Obama’s horrible record, particularly on the economy. At times, he set it up very well for Obama to frequently be on defense, but instead, Romney was the one largely on defense, trying to refute just about every word out of Obama’s mouth – and thus, using much of his time to respond instead of advance. I loved it when they both were about to get in each other’s faces (I’m a shake-it-up kind of guy), but in the end, all it did was have Romney give Obama a chance to “correct” the record (from Obama’s perspective), when it would have been just as effective for Romney to say what we wanted to say without inviting a response.

And, WOW, what a missed opportunity on Libya. Sure, Crowley had no business interjecting (she’s supposed to be moderating, not participating in the debate), but the bottom line is that Obama didn’t even attempt to answer the question and Romney should have insisted he answer to question asked.

With respect to Obama, if there is one thing that seems more and more apparent in these debates, it’s that he is over his head with this presidency thing. Sure, he can sound good at times, but overall, he really doesn’t seem to grasp the enormity of the responsibility he has, nor what it takes to get the job done in a way that moves our country forward. His past strengths of sounding great and instilling hope for a bright future are all but gone now (he doesn’t sound all that great, and he seems the furthest thing from optimistic lately). His proposals are the same as he proposed 4 years ago, and yet can’t seem to come up with an acceptable answer as to why he should be given another 4 years to do the things he proposed in his last campaign, and he hasn’t really offered anything new for this campaign. The best excuse he can muster is that he didn’t have cooperative Republican partners to get stuff done (like on immigration reform), yet the lack of GOP cooperation didn’t stop him from ramming through ObamaCare without a single GOP vote when his party controlled both houses of Congress.

faceoff with Ryan. Ryan was the candidate of ideas and optimism, and he wins the prize for best one-liners.

Biden was aggressive, and while that would normally be a good thing, he took it way too far. He rarely let Ryan speak without interrupting him once if not multiple times, and he left unanswered several good questions – not to mention all the facial expressions. Yet, if I ever had a record as bad as the Obama/Biden record was, I’d want Biden in my court. He was masterful at making all the excuses in the world for their lack of success, and yet, it didn’t sound all that much like he was making a lot of excuses. He kept asking for equal time to respond to questions, all the while being ahead about 2 minutes ahead in speaking time over Ryan. And, it seemed like Biden must have gotten a new set of teeth that he wanted to show off – and show off he did. Those things were big and shiny!

At a certain point later in the debate the arguing back and forth left me (a political junkie) bored and disinterested. I’d bet a lot of regular-Joes out there just stopped listening to both of them.

Ryan’s best response of the night was when he was ticking off the economic stats in Biden’s home town of Scranton, comparing where they were when Obama/Biden took office and how worse they are today. There was nothing Biden could say.

Biden’s best response of the night was when he brought up Ryan writing the Vice-President for stimulus funds for Ryan’s constituents, where Ryan wrote that the stimulus will help create jobs – all the while saying the stimulus was bad and wouldn’t help create jobs and spark the economy.