‘Crisp’ Obama rips Romney apart for making ‘parade of wrong promises’ in second debate: NYT

Washington - President Barack Obama regained full command of his vision and legacy, leaving Republican rival Mitt Romney sputtering with half-answers during the second presidential debate at the Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, an editorial in an American newspaper said.

According to the New York Times, instead of windy and lethargic answers, the president was crisp in speaking about his accomplishments and persuasive in explaining how he has restarted economic growth.

Instead of letting Romney get away with a parade of falsehoods and unworkable promises, he regularly and forcefully called his opponent wrong, the report said.

Having left many supporters wondering after the first debate whether he really wanted another four years, he finally seemed like a man who was ready to fight for another term.

According to the report, what he did not do was describe how a second term would be more successful than his first has been, and, in particular, show how he would cut through the thicket of Republican opposition if re-elected.

He missed opportunities to call for a more forceful opposition to assault weapons in another term, and to put forward a clear immigration policy, it added.

According to the report, Obama pointed out that Romney’s tax numbers did not add up, and called his rival’s plan a ‘sketchy deal’.

He offered the better, broader view on fixing immigration, though his own administration has also deported tens of thousands of non-criminals.

The president even got off a few good lines, pointing out that his pension was considerably smaller than Romney’s, and that his opponent was far more extreme than President George W. Bush in proposing to turn Medicare into a voucher system and to eliminate financing for Planned Parenthood, the report added.

He finally took the opportunity to bring up Romney’s dismissal of 47 percent of the country as people who consider themselves victims and do not take personal responsibility for their lives.

But the most devastating moment for Romney was self-inflicted. Continuing his irresponsible campaign to politicize the death of the American ambassador to Libya, he said it took two weeks for the president to acknowledge that it was the result of an act of terror.

Voters who watched the first debate might have been left with an impression that Romney was the candidate of ideas and that Obama’s reserves of energy and seriousness had been tapped out. On Tuesday night, those roles were reversed, the report added.