In tight race, foreign policy suddenly assumes critical importance for Obama

Foreign policy, a subject on which President Barack Obama held a clear advantage over his far inexperienced Republican rival Mitt Romney until recently, has suddenly assumed critical importance for both in the last debate of November 6 election race.
The debate on Monday night (Tuesday (Oct 23) morning PST) is the last opportunity when the two candidates would be face-to-face in their bid to woo the still undecided American voters, almost two weeks from the election. It was not until the September 11, 2012 attack on American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, that foreign policy issues could be counted as consequential in the fiercely contested election season.
The Obama Administration has been struggling to satisfy the Americans about the reasons and circumstance of the attack, which claimed the life of the US ambassador to Libya. Meanwhile, Romney has covered a lot of ground, because of his impressive first-debate performance and Obama’s lackluster showing in the same appearance. Obama’s feisty showing in the second debate and encouraging new job growth numbers have not even helped him as he fights to extend his appeal to voters in swing states.
The latest opinion poll on Sunday found the two candidates tied at 47 per cent support of likely voters. Previously, before the first debate, Obama had overall led Romney by three points. The Washington Post captured the political predicament for President Obama when a news story in the paper tersely said that the debate will see “a sitting president who’d overseen the death of Osama bin Laden pitted against a one-term governor, so new to diplomatic thinking that he’d managed to offend a good chunk of Britain during a brief trip this summer.”