Ross & Burbank: Obama clearly won foreign policy debate

Both KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross and Luke Burbank agree President Obama won the third and final debate. But as Luke says, anyone debating a sitting president has a disadvantage.

“(Obama has) been the president for the last four years. For Romney, it’s ‘what Romney would do.'”

Dave compares Romney to Obama in the first debate because the president was able to turn things around quite quickly. Both Luke and Dave noticed Romney kept trying to turn foreign policy back to the health of the American economy.

“About a quarter of it was re-hashing stuff we’ve heard before,” says Dave. He wonders how the debate stacked up against Monday Night Football with the Bears beating the Lions, 13-7.

“It felt like a couple of heavyweight boxers that are in the late, late rounds of the fight who are just clutching each other,” says Luke. “Every time Romney would say ‘I agree with what the president did there’ I just felt like ‘man, this guy is tired.'”

Despite the possible weariness of the rivals, Dave says it was clear Obama wasn’t going to let Romney get away with anything, even to the point that he would repeatedly interrupt the governor if he “felt that history was being airbrushed.”

Perhaps Obama’s most memorable quip will be:

“I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, 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 these ships that go underwater. They’re nuclear submarines.”

Luke says he bets Obama wishes the foreign policy debate was the first.

“This is a president, who you have to admit, whether you like him or not, has a pretty good track record catching terrorists, disabling al-Qaeda, and he’s extricating us from two wars he inherited.”

In the end, Luke says it’s important to him that it seems America is less loathed than it was four years ago.

The final debate behind them, both men are embarking on a home-stretch whirlwind of campaigning. The president is slated to speak in six states during a two-day trip that begins Wednesday and includes a night aboard Air force One as it flies from Las Vegas to Tampa. Romney intends to visit two or three states a day.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.