“With regards to Iraq, you and I agreed, I believe that there should have been a status of forces agreement and I concurred in that and said that we should have some number of troops that stayed on. That was something I concurred with. I believe as the president indicated and said at the time, that I supported his action there. I want to underscore the same point the president made. I couldn’t agree more about going forward but I certainly don’t want to go back to the policies of the last four years. “

 

Well, there was one of those agreements, particular about withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan that got our attention. Watch. 

 

“Well, we’re going to be finished by 2014, and when I’m president, we’ll make sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014.”

 

Keeping Them Honest, though, when Governor Romney was entering the presidential race in June of 2011, he was saying just the opposite, in fact, slamming President Obama’s timetable for leaving Afghanistan. Listen. 

 

“Announcing a withdrawal date, that was wrong. The Taliban may not have watches but they do have calendars.” 

 

President Obama called Romney out last night on this point, accusing him of shifting his foreign policy positions. Romney didn’t disagree with the president and that in it of itself might be most interesting part of all. As for President Obama, most post-debate polls including CNN showed he had a good night. The question is, will it give his campaign new momentum and we can’t say one way or the other for sure. Which made what the Obama campaign did this morning all the more curious. At about 10:00 am, they unveiled this 20-page glossy pamphlet that it says describes his plan to move the economy forward. It’s got a fancy title, “The New Economic Patriotism, A Plan for Jobs and Middle Class Security” the campaign says 3.5 million copies are being printed. But Keeping Them Honest, there are actually no new proposals in the pamphlet. It’s basically a repackaging of the proposals President Obama has previously announced on subjects from energy to education. And the campaign was clearly responding to criticism that the president hasn’t laid out a clearer second-term agenda. By putting out this pamphlet with no new idea or information he’s opened himself up to attacks by Republicans who say, well, it’s just more of the same. 

 

Joining me to break it all out is national political correspondent Jim Acosta, who’s traveling with the Romney campaign in Henderson, Nevada, chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin is with the president and Vice President Bide in Dayton, Ohio, and chief national correspondent John King who’s in the key battleground state of Virginia tonight. So, Jessica, by most accounts, I mean, most of the polls, the president came away from last night’s debate the winner but it’s not clear what kind of boost it’s actually going to give him out on the campaign trail. How is the campaign feeling about the performance last night and about things today? 

 

Well, if you want the campaign talking points, what they’re saying is that last night was about strength and the president showed it. But the bottom line was the president did not disqualify Mitt Romney in last night’s debate. He didn’t knock him out of the commander-in-chief ranks and so there was no game-changing moment. I hate that phrase but that’s really what that

 

was about. So the race continues today sort of where it was before the debate, and they’re grinding it out. The president beginning on a major battleground state tour, where he’s really pummeling his message, which is a twofold message. One, to turn out his base and get as many votes as he can possibly, because he needs that enthusiasm to be as high as possible, and two, to really drum up early voting turnout because the early vote is the vote the campaign thinks that they have more control over. So the campaign doing what it can to really grind this out, very different kind of campaign than four years ago. 

 

As we talked about it, Jessica, though, the president released this brochure laying pout proposals for a second term. Little new in it. Is the campaign trying to kind of sell it as something new?

 

Right. My Vanna White moment. No, here’s the brochure. They are not actually trying to sell it as something new, Anderson. What this is really about is offering something to undecided voters who are kind of tuning into the campaign for the first time, focusing right now, and who might be paying attention to newscasts like ours and hearing pundits say the president isn’t offering any details or any specifics. Well, you know, your write it down and it becomes specific, they can point to the fact that here he’s saying that he’s offering to create a million new jobs by 2016. A new, 100,000 new math and science teachers, cut, foreign oil imports in half by 2020. Now these are things he talked about at the Democratic convention but he’s committing to them in paper here. 

 

Jim, in talking with their team today, what if anything are they saying about kind of the agreeable tone the governor seemed to strike last night, agreeing with the president on a lot of stuff?