The average shows Obama with 47.5 percent support, compared with Romney at 47.2 percent.

Romney had pulled ahead after the first debate, which gave him a bounce in the polls, and then maintained about a 1-point lead over the last few weeks.

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It's certainly true that bigotry is not automatically synonymous with criticism of the Obama record. For instance, many liberals (including me) who question the substantive gap between candidate Obama's policy promises and his policy record are not doing so out of any racial animus; they are doing so out of a sense of democratic citizenship. Similarly, many honest conservatives who oppose the Obama administration's civil liberties atrocities and Drug War are doing so on principle rather than because of prejudice.

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It really was that bad for Romney, who, by the end of the night looked a bit crumpled in spirit, a tad sweaty and hapless at the hands of a youthful but commanding opponent. And Obama successfully painted Romney as maybe a bit over the hill, comparing Romney’s worldview to policies from eras past, ranging from the 1770s to the 1980s, in quips that yielded the night’s social media memes, involving calvary, hair gel, and lots of gifs.

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“Is that Rocky Anderson?” asked a publicist for Free & Equal, the debate sponsor, pointing at a white-haired man in a baggy blue suit who looked sort of like the senator from The Godfather, Part II.

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For all their seeming consensus, the two candidates represent two distinct political and intellectual traditions that were carved out during our post-World War II past. Obama's foreign policy touchstone is the work of the Cold War liberal Reinhold Niebuhr.  In "The Irony of American History" (1952), Niebuhr presented a vision of America’s role in the world tempered by his doctrine of sin and his deep sense of tragedy.  Niebuhr’s central paradox, as his biographer Richard Fox points out, was that “human beings bore responsibility for their actions despite the inevitability of the sins they would commit.”  Holding an ironic disposition could force Americans to battle the spread of communism while rejecting naive optimism in favor of a sense of humility and circumspection. It probably comes as no surprise that Niebuhr became an early critic of America’s entry into Vietnam.  Overextension of American power was just as dangerous to Niebuhr as denying that we had enemies in the world.  Such was the lesson of Niebuhr’s Christian realism.

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Yes, 20 miles. One of the odd things about Virginia Beach is its vast size. Located in the southeast corner of Virginia and part of the larger metropolitan region called Hampton Roads, it touches the ship-building city of Norfolk and the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and reaches down to the North Carolina border; along its eastern edge runs the Atlantic coast with endless beaches defined by a redneck surfer vibe—pickup trucks with Confederate flags, carrying surfboards instead of gun racks.

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But I'm having a hard time watching television coverage of Romney's debate performance the morning after. The conventional wisdom seems to be that while President Obama won the debate, Romney's "prevent defense" at least kept him in the race – and it was the politically wise course. Of course, Obama's "prevent defense" two weeks ago in Denver was a debacle that changed everything. I'm not sure why Romney's turn at it is supposed to be smarter politics.

Beyond scoring the debate on style points, though, why aren't more people horrified by Romney's capacity to disavow virtually everything he's said on foreign policy and cuddle up with Obama, in order to seem less frightening to voters? On Afghanistan, on Iran, on abandoning Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, on killing Osama bin Laden, on Syria, on drones, Romney mostly said "me too" to Obama's policies. And it's not as though the debate merely gave Romney the space to explain foreign policy positions that may have been misinterpreted. After a year spent attacking Obama's "weakness" globally and promising to be hawkish, he was, at times, the dove, insisting more than once "We can't kill our way out of this." And when he wasn't echoing Obama, he sounded like a schoolboy reciting what he just learned in world geography class.

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There are two major reasons for this.  The first is that foreign policy tends to be driven by particular threats, like the Soviet Union or al Qaeda, or by particular opportunities, like the chance to open up foreign markets for U.S. producers or investors after World War II and the Cold War.  At any given time, it is clear what the major threats or opportunities are.  Nobody during the Cold War suggested that the U.S. should worry about Brazil rather than the USSR, and nobody after 9/11 claimed that the Irish Republican Army was a greater threat to America than al Qaeda.

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Romney seemed out of his depth. His arguments were more a series of bromides than positions – “we have to make sure arms don’t get into the wrong hands,” “we want a peaceful planet,” “we need to stand by our principles,” “we need strong allies,” “we need a comprehensive strategy to move the world away from terrorism,” and other banalities.

This has been Romney’s problem all along, of course, but in the first debate he managed to disguise his vacuousness with a surprisingly combative, well-rehearsed performance. By the second debate, the disguise was wearing thin.

In tonight’s debate, Romney seemed to wither — and wander. He often had difficulty distinguishing his approach from the President’s, except to say, repeatedly, “America needs strong leadership.”

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“I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have ships that go underwater; nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of ‘Battleship’ where we’re counting ships. It’s: What are our capabilities?”

The comment delivered. Within minutes, Obama's zinger spawned a website, hashtag and, of course, a meme:

[slide_show id=13049204]

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It seems like only three weeks ago we were idly watching the first presidential debate when a seemingly out-of-left-field remark from Mitt Romney turned into a collective WTF. And no sooner had the candidate uttered the words, "I'm sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I'm not going to keep spending money on things, borrowing money from China to pay for it," than "Sesame Street's" beloved yellow Muppet became a bona fide Internet sensation. Soon after, the phrase "binders full of women" became a brilliant Tumblr — and entered the lexicon just in time to provide Halloween costume inspiration for everyone not yet locked down with Honey Boo Boo or Potato Jesus. And in between, there was every single gif-worthy, laughtastic moment of Joe Biden during the vice-presidential debate. Malarkey!

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I’m not so sure.

It’s not that Romney performed poorly—he was mediocre from beginning to end—as much as it is that he already passed that plausibility test. It seems that in the excitement of the debate, pundits have forgotten that Romney’s image as a plausible alternative to the president was the whole reason he won the Republican presidential primary. Indeed, it’s the basis of his political persona: Mitt Romney might not have a position on the issues; he might not have core convictions; but he does project “leadership” and a sense of general competence. His political pitch, from his first race in 1994 to the present, has been a variation on this: “I can fix things, and when you hire me, you’ll find out!”

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“I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916,” Obama said. “Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have ships that go underwater; nuclear submarines."

Obama added: "And so the question is not a game of 'Battleship' where we're counting ships. It's: What are our capabilities?"

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The sample size for the poll was 521.

As a point of comparison, after the second debate the same snap poll found a much smaller edge for Obama, with 37 percent of uncommitted voters saying he won. 30 percent said  Romney won and 33 percent said it was a tie.

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"Gov. Romney, I'm glad you recognize al-Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what is the biggest geopolitical group facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaida," Obama said. "You said Russia. And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. Because the Cold War has been over for 20 years. But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policy of the 1950s, and the economic policies of the 1920s."

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11:00: Romney's afghanistan policy -- Romney tonight clarified his Afghanistan policy tonight, saying he wants to pull troops out of the country in 2014 and hand over full security control fo the Afghans. That means he has the same Afghanistan policy as Obama's.

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Unfortunately, they are likely to continue to ignore the most important question posed by the Sept. 11 murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American officials by an Islamic militia that may be connected to an Al Qaeda affiliate, namely: “How is it that one year after the US provided essential military and diplomatic support to the NATO operation that enabled Libyan rebels overthrow dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Libya finds itself at the mercy of hundreds of lawless militias and without a functioning state?”

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