mr. romney said we shouldn't have left iraq. that we would be better if american troops were still there. i wonder if you feel like there is any sort of foreign policy or military foreign consensus about what we should have learned from iraq, about what we won't do as a country because of what we learned from the iraq war. >> i think there should be a consensus because i think a lot of the lessons are very clear. i think the first bush administration rushed into war based on intelligence that turned out to be wrong, to go after weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist and to end up occupying a country without having thought through a strategy, without having a plan, and finding -- got ourselves deeper into the middle of an insurgency campaign that cost us thousands of lives and put america's blood and treasure on the line for a cause that was really in the end questionable. i think when president obama came in, he was very clear that he wanted to responsibly end that war. and he did that. the discussion here, the question o

mr. romney told that same story about meeting mr. doherty yesterday while campaigning in iowa. >> he skied a lot, he skied in some of the places i had. we had a lot of things in common. he told me that he keeps going back to the middle east. he cares very deeply about the people there. you can imagine how i felt when i found out that he was one of the two former navy s.e.a.l.s killed in benghazi on september 11th. and it -- it touched me, obviously, as i recognized this young man that i thought was so impressive. he -- according to the reports on cnn international that i read, he was actually in a different building, in an annex, a safe place, somewhere else across town when he and his colleagues there heard that the consulate was around attack. and they went there. they didn't hunker down where they were in safety. they rushed there to go help. this is the american way. we go where there's trouble. we go where we're needed. and right now we're needed. right now the american people need us. >> politicians repeat the same stories on t

after his convention, you will recall that mr. romney went on vacation. mr. romney, even after he had such a big win at the first presidential debate, he did not have any big, morning after the debate rallies or anything. he went and did an event that was off his public schedule, but nobody knew for sure he would be anywhere, and there wasn't a big crowd of people around him while he was rallying the troops to his big win. it was a very quiet morning. and then again today, after the second presidential debate, mr. romney did no public events in the morning. i mean, i don't know if it means anything important, but it is an unusual choice for this candidate that no other modern candidate has done. and mr. romney, it wasn't just a fluke. he keeps doing it after big events. that said, mr. romney did not take the whole day off today. this afternoon, he did a rally in virginia and then he stayed in virginia for the day to do another virginia rally tonight. on the democratic side, vice president joe biden did an early afternoon rally in greeley, colorado, today. he

mr. romney was there with his wife, ann romney, but the president was there without the first lady. michelle obama was not in the room. i think that is what made mr. romney's joke more awkward than it otherwise might have been. >> campaigns can be grueling, exhausting. president obama and i each very lucky to have one person who's always in our corner, someone who we can lean on and someone who's a comforting presence without whom we wouldn't be able to go another day. i have my beautiful wife, ann, he has bill clinton. >> which is a funny joke, but he's also a little bit mean to the first lady, right? mr. romney did go on at the end of his remarks to say very nice things, very nice and serious things about the whole obama family. that sort of softened the blow there a little bit. michelle obama was also the subject of a self-deprecating joke from president obama, himself. >> tomorrow it's back to campaigning. i've been to cities and towns across our great country, and i hear the same everywhere i go. honestly, we were hoping to see michelle. >> that was not president obama's funnie

mr. romney and mr. obama have both concluded their remarks. now, those were live, just a couple blocks from here, in new york city. i'm here with w. bell from "totally biased" with w. bell on fx. is this the sort of thing you score and say who was better? or is there something more important about their competing performances here? >> you know, it's like any talent competition, you have to judge several different categories. >> okay. >> both of them are funny, both of them can deliver a line. barack obama knows how to do this. i feel like barack obama is like a swiss army knife. he's got several different settings. funny barack is a very easy setting for him. >> okay. >> whereas rocmney has awkward romney and mean romney which is why funny romney is not a setting for him which is why he looked awkward when he was funny. >> he was funny. opening joke where he was talking about wardrobe changes on the campaign, sports coat, suit and tie for an evening event, ann and i can relax with what we wear around the house. looked very stern while deliveri

they have to make it sound like mr. romney has not taken extreme positions on these issues. but mr. romney really has taken very, very, very, very conservative positions owen on these issues including contraception. that is why at the second debate this week mr. romney went out of his way to make himself sound like he hasn't taken the position that he really has actually taken. >> i don't believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not. every woman in america should have access to contraceptives. >> actually when you say "i don't believe that," you totally do believe that. you do. you do. >> listen, i got to ask you here about -- there's a -- "washington post" has got a blog out here saying jim heath, a reporter for a tv station in ohio, just tweeted a remarkable piece of news. mitt romney told him he does not support the blunt amendment that would empower employers and insurers to deny health coverage they find morally objectionable. what happened here? >> i didn't understand his question. of course i support the blunt amendment. i thought he

mr. romney worked both those strategies last night and mr. romney, of course, won the debate, on style, on presentation, he won on demeanor. now day two is the attempted cleanup for things he actually said. today has been a day of mr. romney's campaign saying he did not mean what he said about people with pre-existing conditions being able to get health insurance. his campaign said today he does not have a plan for that even though he said he did. the romney campaign today said he did not mean what he said about half the energy companies supported by the obama administration going bankrupt. he didn't actually mean that. sort of rolled over from democratic and liberal bewilderment last night that mr. romney was abandoning his main economic plan that he was running on, his $5 trillion tax cut plan, his big trickle-down plan, to be rolled over from democrats being bewildered about that to the beltway press and mainstream pundits i think now having a hard time deciding whether they are supposed to call that a lie or whether they're supposed to ju

mr. romney is not wising up. he made the same mistake when he tried to say that president obama had not said the word terror when he talked about the benghazi attack in the rose garden until the day after the attack. he did use the word. if you read the conservative blogs, that never happened. and that apparently was enough of a fact check for mitt romney. that's what he tried to use and turned out to be a humiliating gotcha attempt that failed before the largest possible audience. between 50-something million people watching him fail in a presidential debate. >> i'm the president. and i'm always responsible. and that's why nobody is more interested in finding out exactly what happened than i do. the day after the attack, governor, i stood in the rose garden and i told the american people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. that this was an act of terror. >> it's interesting the president just said something that in the day after the attack, he went to the rose garden and said this

romney made them feel more negative than positive toward mr. romney by a 22-point margin. those results match other polling that shows those comments alienated undecided voters. regardless of what you think of the substance of that it statement from mr. romney, it did turn the whole republican pundit class against him, called every candidate in a contested race to distance themselves from the presidential nominee of their party to start campaigning against mitt romney, telling voters, listen, i don't like that guy on that issue either, but vote for me any way even though i'm a republican. whether or not you think the remarks were scandalous, the polling impact of them is now showing up directly at a time when mr. romney's egregiously bad polling numbers seem to be calcifying and when most voters are now starting to vote. an incredibly negative impact for romney and his campaign at a difficult time for them. now on the eve of the first presidential debate, if they were hoping to put that behind them, any hope of getting away from the issue has now been expunged because "the

here's how mr. romney's remarks were quoted in the press report that day. the idea was put all your energy and passion at the job all the hand. i heard from secretary jim baker just a couple weeks ago. he said in the first hundred days of the reagan presidency, we had a national security meeting one day where we talked about developments in latin america that were of concern. and after that meeting president reagan called me in and said, i want no more national security meetings over the next 100 days -- all of our time has to be focused on getting our economy going. mitt romney told this to a bunch of donors in montana in july. this is the thing he was praising ab the ronald reagan presidency. it turned out this never happened. he never stopped his briefings because he said he needed to focus on the economy instead. after mr. romney told that story and it was reported in "the wall street journal". the editor said he went through the notes on reagan's presidency to check the story by mr. romney. he said he could find no evidence this happened. jim baker him

they kept the event at the same time as the romney. mr. romney appeared with the same celebrity endorsers scheduled for rally and led with the vote for mitt romney biographical video that they play to start their campaign rallies. because they wanted credit for canceling their rallies out of sensitivity to the people suffering from this storm, they went ahead with this one mostly as planned but said they did not want it to be described as a rally. instead they wanted people to call it a storm relief event. they did ask people attending the rally to bring canned goods as storm relief, and mr. romney did a big ornate show of being seen to be handling canned goods which the campaign made a big show of saying would be donated to the red cross so they got the photo op they wanted. as a presidential candidate mr. romney's photo op today also models for the nation what mr. romney believes to be the appropriate way to help if you're concerned about this giant disaster. and that's the problem, because however well mr. romney's piles of cans work fo

he's harshly critical of mitt romney and how mr. romney is running his campaign. he says he was annoyed by mr. romney's references to his father as inspiration and influence on him. "i just don't see it." where is it? is it on issues? no. george would never have been seen with the likes of sheldon adelson or donald trump. regardless of the spit take it causes from your father's old friends as you try to wrap yourself in the mantle of your father's integrity, the fact is funds must be raised and the romney campaign announced that just last month in september they raised $170 million, which is a lot but is $10 million less than the obama campaign raised. the campaigns are closely matched with what they are raising. where the president and democrats are getting swamped is by the money spent by outside groups. the dark money. money spent outside the campaign. since labor day the spending on the presidential election by outside groups, the proportion of that spending that's been pro-romney and anti-obama is almost three quarters a huge majority of the dark money spendi