Ayoon wa Azan (He administered to his opponent one blow after another)

President Barack Obama lost his first televised debate with his rival, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and won the second. Monday is the third and final debate between the two men, and a win here will give one of the candidates a clear boost over the other in the presidential race, while a tie will help the incumbent. In the first debate, Obama turned in a poor, lackluster performance that surprised his supporters before it did his rivals, because is famous for being an intelligent, skilled orator. However, Vice President Joe Biden recovered some of what the president lost in the following debate, with Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential candidate. There was special interest in this debate, because the two men are Catholics, but Biden's experience won the night; Ryan was finished, and he had no opinions on foreign policy other than how many times Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Obama realized his mistake in defending his policies in the first debate and went on the attack, which is supposed to be the best type of defense, in the second round. There was no knockout punch, but opinion polls and leading U.S. newspapers were agreed that the president won. I read that Obama administered to his opponent one blow after another, after his earlier, mute performance. I write in the morning, and the time difference in the US means that the debate will be in a few hours; it will cover foreign policy, an area in which Obama is assumed to have much more expertise than Romney. The Republican challenger might be a successor to George Bush's policies, i.e. those of the neoconservatives, which led to America's loss of wars and the launch of an ongoing economic crisis. However after the second debate Romney found that a centrist policy is more popular with voters, and in recent days has begun to make statements that seek to gain the American center. It is true that Romney does not have a foreign policy in the first place, but says what he thinks people want to hear. Thus, there is a Romney for all occasions, from the extreme right to even the left. Logically, it would be better to distance one's self from the policies of Bush, since the US in Afghanistan is fighting its longest war ever, in its 12th year, with losses of trillions of dollars. However, Romney has surrounded himself with a group of fanatical neoconservatives, who played a role in the loss of wars and treasure. They are prepared to incur losses, if given the opportunity. There is a strange irony in the third, televised debate. It will focus on foreign policy more than any other topic, and the most important thing in the fluid presidential campaign, which has yet to be decided, so it will decide who wins. But foreign policy is the last concern of American voters in most states, as the crippling economic situation dominates everything else. I no longer know how many times President Obama has visited Ohio, but I know that he went there before the debate, and will do so afterward. It is one of the swing states, which has yet to go to one of the candidates. The winner needs to get the majority of other swing states, such as Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado and Nevada. If the economy wins out over everything else for American voters, American foreign policy is the aspect that has the greatest impact on the interests of Arabs and Muslims in their countries. Here, the issue is settled. The Republican is an ally of Netanyahu and is calling for new wars, against Iran and others, while Obama has not done what he promised during his first term, and disappointed those who had pinned their hopes on him – but I believe that during his second term he will try to do what he promised in his first term, and what he did not carry out due to the pressure of the Israeli lobby and his Republican rivals. I believe that he will be better, although I am not saying this decisively. The path of relations between the US and our countries is paved with disappointments, and perhaps Barack Hussein Obama will be the exception to this well-known rule.  -- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.