"This year’s General Debate will be among our busiest ever. This reflects the tumultuous time in which we live — a time of turmoil and transition,” he said.

The General Debate is part of the UN General Assembly, a series of annual meetings where the countries who comprise the UN hammer out major decisions on some of the world's most tangled problems.

What is the UNGA?

The United Nations General Assembly is a forum of all of the members of the United Nations that takes place for several months each year. Held in New York, the annual convening of member states allows the UN to address the most pressing global issues of the moment.

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It began with the Republican presidential candidate's ill-timed comments follwoing protests in Cairo and an attack on a US consultate that killed four Americans in Libya, criticizing the president's administration for a statement it did not, technically, issue.

Most recently, the campaign has stumbled after the explosive release of secret videos showing Romney "not elegantly" dismissing the political importance of nearly half of the American populace.

Now, a poll confirms what we already suspected: these verbal missteps are costing Romney among potential voters.

A Tuesday Reuters/Ipsos online poll of 792 registered voters found that 40 percent of those surveyed felt "less favorably" toward the Republican presidential hopeful after he criticized President Barack Obama's handling of the attacks in Libya. That compared with 26 percent of those surveyed who felt worse about Obama after hearing his comments about the violence, Reuters said.

"Romney probably did not do anything to shore up his foreign policy cred on this particular issue," Reuters quoted Ipsos pollster Julia Clark as saying.

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