Yes, this year's presidential election may have featured a fair amount of talk about America's defense spending, China's trade practices, Iran's nuclear program, and the Obama administration's response to the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. But when you crunch the numbers, the truth is that foreign policy didn't matter much in ushering Barack Obama to reelection in 2012.

When George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in the first U.S. presidential election since 9/11, exit polls showed that terrorism, moral values, and the economy were the most decisive issues in the campaign, with roughly one-fifth of voters citing each as their top concern in the race (the war in Iraq was not far behind). It's particularly difficult to defeat an incumbent "when the country's perceived to be in some level of a war," a Kerry strategist mused after Election Day.

In retrospect, the 2004 election was an outlier in recent political history -- a contest that revolved around foreign rather than domestic policy. This year's race, by contrast, was no such exception. A CNN exit poll on Tuesday found that 60 percent of voters cited the economy as the most important issue on their minds, compared with 4 percent who mentioned foreign policy. A Fox News exit poll arrived at a similar finding, with 59 percent of respondents selecting the economy, 18 percent choosing health care, 15 percent referencing the federal budget deficit, and just 5 percent citing foreign policy.

Sure, we vote on intangibles and personal qualities, not just issues. And sure, those who mentioned foreign policy as their top issue in the Fox poll voted for Obama by a 56-33 margin -- suggesting that the Democrats ultimately retained their rare foreign-policy advantage even though Mitt Romney managed to chip away at Obama's edge on international affairs in the campaign's final weeks. But as a pivotal campaign issue, foreign policy barely registered.

We've known for a long time that America's sluggish economic recovery would dominate the election. In January, the Pew Research Center reported that the American public was more concerned about domestic policy than at any point in the past 15 years. For months now, the percentage of voters citing foreign-policy topics as the most important issues in the campaign has hovered in the single digits. Voters in swing states like Ohio and Florida have expressed far more concern about the economy than about foreign policy and national security, as have all-important independent and undecided voters. 

Two factors could have catapulted international affairs to greater prominence: the Libya attack and the foreign-policy debate. But polling suggests that Obama's strong performance in the foreign-policy debate did little to alter the tight race that materialized after the president's lackluster performance in the first, domestic policy-focused debate. And the Romney campaign adopted a hot-and-cold approach to Libya, criticizing the administration's handling of the violence and overall Mideast strategy one minute and clamming up on the subject the next.

In fact, as the dust settles after Romney's defeat, conservatives may criticize the campaign for not talking about Libya enough. During an appearance on Fox News last week, the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol urged the Republican candidate to raise Libya on the trail during the final days of the race. "I think if he doesn't talk about it, voters will say it's so complicated, it was a screw-up but everyone screws up," he noted. 

"It's Libya where [Romney] went weak," the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer told Bill O'Reilly on Fox News earlier this week. "He could have hit Obama on Libya in the third debate. He could have hit him after. He never touched him. And the media, therefore, had an excuse to stay away from it. That, I think, would have been devastation for Obama and destruction for Obama."

"And that, I think, would have sealed it," Krauthammer added. "But Romney played it safe."

For all the Jeeps in China

In the last full week of campaigning before the election, son of Michigan Mitt Romney drew the wrath of an unlikely constituency: car company CEOs. On the campaign trail last week, Romney told an Ohio audience, "Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China." The claim appeared to be based on a misreading of a Bloomberg story which reported that Chrysler would begin producing Jeeps in China for the local market to escape tariffs, but was not shifting production from the United States. Nonetheless, the Romney campaign doubled down on the attack with a new commercial claiming that, "[Barack] Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China."

A Chrysler spokesman described the claim as "a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats" and the company's CEO Sergio Marchionne, one of the Italians in question, denied in a letter to employees that any production would be moved to China.  General Motors also denied the ad's claims that it plans to cut jobs in the United States.

Marchionne wasn't the only Italian fed up with Romney's rhetoric this week. The La Repubblica newspaper ran an irritated editorial on Thursday after the Republican candidate mentioned the country along with Greece and Spain as a cautionary tale for the U.S. economy. 

Global warming back on the agenda

The issue of climate change has been conspicuously absent in this election. It was not mentioned once in any of the three presidential debates, even as both candidates touted their support for the coal industry. But the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy this week has put the issue back on the agenda, with political leaders including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo suggesting a link between the storm and human-caused global warming.

New York City's independent mayor, Michael Bloomberg, made a surprise endorsement of Obama this week, citing the president's steps on reducing carbon emissions as the main reason. His endorsement, published on Bloomberg.com, also blasted Romney for abandoning the emissions-cutting policies he supported as governor of Massachusetts.

Nonetheless, while both campaigns have been scrambling to respond to the storm, which dominated headlines for most of the week, neither candidate has gone as far as to put the damage in the context of climate change.

The Benghazi drip continues

The Central Intelligence Agency this week took steps to defend its response to Sept. 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. According to an account provided to the media by senior intelligence officials, CIA operatives rushed to the compound within 25 minutes of the attack and helped organize the evacuation of the survivors. The officials insisted they had encountered no resistance from Washington, though the information doesn't address the shifting accounts provided by the administration in the wake of the attack.

A story published on Foreign Policy this week also reported that documents recently found at the Benghazi site show that the team at the consulate was concerned that they were under surveillance on the day of the attack and weren't satisfied with the level of security provided by the Libyan government.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and National Security Subcommittee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) have written a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding an explanation for the documents.

Playing the Castro card

The two candidates are running neck-and-neck in Florida heading into the last week of the campaign, and the Romney campaign has evidently decided to make a last-minute effort to lock down Cuban-American voters in the state with a Spanish-language ad noting the "endorsements" Obama has received from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, noting also that the Environmental Protection Agency sent out an Hispanic Heritage Month email containing a picture with a mural of Che Guevara. The ad failed to note that Fidel Castro would prefer a robot to either candidate.

The latest from FP:

Frank Januzzi wonders why Chinese human rights were never discussed in the campaign.

Rosa Brooks says the Republican military voter is a myth.

Nick Schifrin on why both campaigns are afraid to talk about the eurocrisis.

David Rothkopf on why Sandy could be a political gamechanger.

Plus, stay tuned for the latest on election eve from The Cable and Passport. 

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he'd vote for Barack Obama if he could, you knew it was only a matter of time until the president's opponents used the unwelcome endorsement against him. First there was the ad released by Gary Bauer's Campaign for American Values PAC on the "dictator vote" that Obama had secured from Chavez, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Now, as the Miami Herald reports, the Romney campaign itself has released a Spanish-language ad on Spanish-language TV in Florida that shows Chavez and Raul Castro's niece Mariela expressing support for Obama, and even tries to tie the president to Che Guevara by noting that the Environmental Protection Agency sent out an Hispanic Heritage Month email containing a picture with a mural of the Marxist revolutionary in the background. The Obama campaign has responded by emphasizing the administration's efforts to expand trade with Latin America and criticizing Romney for "giving Chavez the attention he thrives on and that he doesn't deserve."

Romney approved the message, but he isn't promoting the ad on his YouTube channel and the Miami Herald says the campaign has refused repeated requests to furnish the ad to the paper. Why? Perhaps because the spot stoops pretty low in sending out subliminal messages about Obama being a closet socialist. Poor email judgment on the part of the EPA does not make Obama a Marxist revolutionary, and superimposing Obama's face on a famous Che poster -- and then showing the poster again, this time with Che's face -- probably won't convince voters otherwise.

The ad also doesn't mention that Fidel Castro has said a robot would be a better president than Obama, or that Chavez once called the president a "clown" after Obama criticized Venezuela's ties to Cuba and Iran. During the 2008 election, Obama's aides had to tamp down controversy after a flag with an image of Che Guevara was spotted at a volunteer office unaffiliated with the campaign. Are we really doing this again?

Mitt Romney's latest ad in Ohio, which alleges that the president "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" has been torn apart by fact-checkers. The claim appears to be based largely on a misreading of the lede a recent Bloomberg news story, which reported that Chrysler "plans to return Jeep output to China and may eventually make all of its models in that country". Yes, the wording is slightly confusing, but if you read the whole story by Craig Trudell, you will soon find out that this refers to building Jeeps locally for the Chinese market "rather than shifting output from North America to China."

Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has also denied that the company has any plans to move U.S. plants to China and has in fact added new jobs at the Jeep plant in Michigan. 

Behind the politics, Jeep in China is actually an interesting business case -- a brand with high name-recognition and popularity but little availability. Another Bloomberg story from last May explored the topic: 

Jeep gear is so popular in China that there are more than 1,500 licensed clothing outlets in the country, where only 120 auto dealers sell the brand. While Jeep has a strong image connected to an adventurous lifestyle, three decades of changing ownership have left it without local production and missing out on surging demand for SUVs in the world’s largest vehicle market.

“Our brand awareness and consideration is running way ahead of where our actual volumes are,” Mike Manley, head of the Jeep brand, said in an interview in Beijing last month. “That’s why I can’t say strongly or often enough just what an opportunity China offers for us.”

Thanks to steep import tarrifs and the lack of a local manufacturing plant, a Jeep Grand Cherokee costs about $91,064, compared to $26,995 in the U.S. -- the primary motivation behind Chrysler looking to ramp up production in China. 

Closing argument

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama met on Monday night for the final debate before the election. The showdown in Boca Raton, hosted by Bob Schieffer of CBS, was supposed to focus exclusively on foreign policy, though both candidates frequently took the opportunity to pivot to discussions of the U.S. economy.

In contrast to previous debates, Romney was relatively muted in his criticism of the president's record, declining to criticize his handling of the Benghazi consulate attack. Romney did repeat his claim that the president had gone on an "apology tour" of the Middle East following his election, argued that Iran is now "four years closer to a nuclear weapon," and described proposed cuts to the military budget as "devastating."

Obama accused Romney of changing his positions on intervention in Libya and withdrawal from Afghanistan, and joked that the Republican candidate wants to "import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s, and the economic policies of the 1920s."

CNN viewers gave a slight edge to the more aggressive Obama in post-debate polls.

The Powell doctrine

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Obama in an interview with CBS Thursday. "I signed on for a long patrol with President Obama," said the former general, who had attracted attention by crossing party lines to endorse the president in 2008. Expressing concern with Romney's shifting positions on foreign policy, Powell said, "Sometimes I don't sense that he has thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have."

Former New Hampshire governor Romney campaign surrogate John Sununu caused controversy on Thursday night by saying that Powell supports Obama because he is African-American. I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him," Sununu told CNN's Piers Morgan. Sununu later issued a statement saying that he doesn't doubt Powell's endorsed was "based on anything but his support of the president's policies."

Rice on Benghazi

The Obama campaign got an assist from both of George W. Bush's secretaries of state this week, with Condoleezza Rice downplaying Republican attacks on the Obama administration's handling of diplomatic security prior to the Benghazi attack. "It is not very easy in circumstances like this to know precisely what's going on as it's unfolding," she said in an interview with Fox's Greta Van Susteren. "There are protocols in place, I have no reason to believe they weren't followed, but it is not very easy in circumstances like this to know precisely what's going on as it's unfolding."

Reuters reported this week that the White House had received emails hours after the Benghazi attack saying that an Islamist militant group had claimed credit, though it now appears those emails may have been inaccurate. The Senate Intelligence committee has scheduled hearings into the attacks for several days after the election.

The third-party factor

Libertarian party candidate Gary Johnson launched his first television ad this week, touting his dovish foreign policy. The ads, which will run in several states in the mountain west, feature a menacing-looking drone and the former New Mexico governor describing himself as the "only candidate who does not want to bomb Iran." The ads follow Johnson's performance at a third-party candidates' debate on Tuesday in which he pledged to reduce military spending by 43 percent. Johnson, along with fellow third-party candidate Virgil Goode of the Constitution party, could be a factor in the battleground state of Nevada, where they have combined support of around 7 percent according to recent polls.

Who would the world vote for?

A BBC poll of 21,797 people in 21 countries shows 50 percent supporting Obama, with only 9 percent for Romney. France was the most pro-Obama country, with 72 percent support. The only country where voters preferred Romney was Pakistan, likely due to opposition to the Obama administration's drone attacks. Romney also enjoyed significant levels of support in Poland and in Obama's father's homeland, Kenya.

The latest from FP

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Rosa Brooks on why she's still supporting Obama.

Peter W. Singer on why the next president needs to figure out their policy on robots.

Can't we all just not get along, asks John A. Gans Jr.

Christian Caryl says apathetic Americans get a bad rap.

Micah Zenko lists the five lies we tell ourselves about U.S. foreign policy.

Joshua Keating on the five biggest issues that didn't come up in the debates.

Will Marshall wonders if Romney's rope-a-dope will actually work.

David Hoffman looks at Obama's nuke spending.

Five foreign policy experts weigh in on the real takeaways from Monday's debate.

Plus, get the latest updates on the campaign at The Cable and Passport.

As Election Day nears, the Romney campaign is busy publicizing the newspaper endorsements that the former governor is racking up. But the Republican candidate also received support from two unlikely figures on Thursday -- rock legend Meat Loaf and New York City icon the Naked Cowboy. And just like Clint Eastwood, who lectured Invisible Obama about counterterrorism and the war in Afghanistan, both cited foreign policy as a reason why they decided to endorse Mitt Romney.

During an appearance with Romney at a rally in Ohio last night, Meat Loaf, who rose to prominence during the Cold War, issued a full-throated defense of Romney's aggressive positions on Russia, adopting storm language that fit with the song he performed, "Stand in the Storm." (The song notes that "this world is tough as a splinter" and urges people to grow a "backbone" -- lyrics that fit nicely with Romney's pledge to show "more backbone" to Russian President Vladimir Putin.) Here's what Meat Loaf told the crowd, per the New York Times:

There has storm clouds come over the United States. There is thunderstorms over Europe. There are hailstorms, and I mean major hailstorms, in the Middle East. There are storms brewing through China, through Asia, through everywhere, and there's only one man that on the other night when President Barack Obama, God bless him, said to Mitt Romney, ‘The Cold War is over.' I have never heard such a thing in my life. The man needs to understand Putin and Russia, so I want you to know that there is one man who will stand tall in this country and fight the storm and bring the United States back to what it should be ... Gov. Mitt Romney!

Also on Thursday, the Naked Cowboy, a fixture in Times Square, told a CBS affiliate in New York that he had already voted for Romney by absentee ballot in the critical swing state of Ohio. And he explained why, echoing the pitch he made when considering a presidential run back in 2010 and backing Romney's bullish position on defense spending:

I believe in a small, decentralized, fiscally responsible federal government. I believe in an economy with free market principals, and I believe in the strongest national defense on earth. And those are the antithesis of all three things Obama is doing.

With endorsements like these, who needs Colin Powell?

There's an old line that the foreign-policy debate in Washington is like a football game played between the 40-yard-lines. You might think that last night's third-party debate, hosted by the Free and Equal Elections Foundation in Chicago, would feature more disagreement, pitting left-wing candidates Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party against Virgil Goode of the right-wing Constitution party, and Libertarian Gary Johnson.

But the four candidates did find quite a bit of common ground in the Larry King-hosted debate, over limiting the ability of the president to authorize the use of force, cutting back on U.S. military commitments -- particularly an early end to the war in Afghanistan -- and expressing concern over the use of drones. Watching it after Monday night's debate between Obama and Romney was a bit like watching a parallel football game being played between the 10- and 30-yard lines.  

Here's Stein on drones: 

A foreign policy based on militarism and brute military force and wars for oil is making us less secure, not more secure. We need to cut the budget and bring the troops home, and we need to end the drone wars, not bring the drones home, because they're already coming home. We need to end the use of drones and not lead the development of a new arms race, but lead the development of a new treaty -- a convention to permanently ban the use of drones as a weapon of war and as a means of spying on the American public. 

Here's Goode on use of force:

I would not be in Syria unless congress makes a declartion of war. We will not stay in Afghanistan if I am elected president unless Congress makes a declaration of war. Only by going through that constitutional process can we ensure that the will of the American people is addressed when we have issues like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran.

Here's Johnson on military spending:

The biggest threat to our national security is the fact that we're bankrupt -- that we're borrowing and we're printing money to the tune of 43 cents out of every dollar that we spend. So I'm promising to submit a balanced budget to Congress in the year 2013, that would include a 43 percent reduction in military spending. How does that go down? Well a 43 percent reduction in military spending takes us back to 2003 spending levels. It's getting ourselves out of all the military engagements that we're currently involved in. Stop with the military interventions.

Here's Anderson:

During the Bush and the Obama years, our Constitution has been shredded while the imperial presidency has expanded, with presidents who think they can unilaterally take us to war, often on a pack of lies, with presidents who think the federal government should have the authority to round anyone up, including U.S. citizens, and imprison them up to the rest of their lives without charges, without trial, without legal representation, and without the right of habeas corpus. And our elected officials are sound asleep while the Pentagon is warning the climate change is a greater long-term security risk to the United States than terrorism.

As Slate's Will Oremus notes, that last claim might not pass muster with fact-checkers. But it should still be noted that a number of important issues that were notable by the absence from the Obama-Romney debates -- including civil liberties, the war on drugs, and climate change -- were prominently featured. 

Johnson, the former New Mexico governor who has been campaigning since the GOP primary, probably had the most polished performance and his closing pitch, asking the audience to "waste your vote on me," was probably the night's most memorable moment. Johnson also discussed his past marijuana use and suggested that Obama and Romney should have to wear “NASCAR-like jackets” showing their corporate sponsors.

There will be another third-party debate hosted by the Free and Equal Elections Foundation next week, featuring the two candidates who win an online poll. (Johnson and Stein, with the biggest national followings, are probably the favorites.)

Whether or not you agree their overall limited-government, small-footprint take on foreign policy, it's certainly a perspective that's missing in the general election. Just as Ron Paul was often the only one actually arguing with anyone during the foreign-policy sections of the GOP debates, dropping at least one of these candidates into a matchup with Obama and Romney might have made the discussion more interesting. 

On Friday, FP reached out to readers, contributors, and outside experts to brainstorm questions for Bob Schieffer as he prepared to moderate the foreign-policy debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. We came up with 55 -- just enough for Schieffer to ask in the fastest and most substantive lightning round in debate history. So how many of our questions -- broadly defined -- did Schieffer end up asking last night?

By my count, seven out of 55:

• Newt Gingrich's question about how the candidates would respond to an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities (Romney said he didn't want to "go into hypotheticals" but added that his relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu was so strong that the Israeli prime minister would keep him in the loop about a bombing raid before it was underway)

• Karl Eikenberry's question about what the greatest threat facing the United States is (Obama said "terrorist networks" while Romney said a "nuclear Iran")

• C. Christine Fair's question about how Obama and Romney would assess the Pakistani threat (or, as Schieffer put it, "Is it time for us to divorce Pakistan?") 

• Daniel Drezner's question about what explained the administration's shifting position on Libya (Schieffer focused more on the attack itself but also asked whether there was an "attempt to mislead people about what really happened," and Romney surprisingly decided not to attack Obama on the issue like he has in the past)

• Kenneth Roth's question about drones (Roth asked whether Obama would be comfortable bequeathing the power to order drone strikes to Romney, while Schieffer asked about Romney's position on drones)

• Daniel Drezner and Jamie Fly's questions about the goals surrounding the Afghan withdrawal (Schieffer asked what would happen if the withdrawal deadline arrives and the Afghans are unable to handle their own security)

Not bad! Sadly, however, Schieffer decided to pass on Joseph Nye's question about how Romney could champion American soft power while attacking Big Bird. Too bad there are no more debates. 

Answer: Iran.

For evidence that the United States is still disproportionately focused on the Middle East despite all the talk about the pivot (or should I say "strategic rebalancing?") toward the Asia-Pacific region, look no further than the country mentions at tonight's foreign-policy debate:

• Iran: 47
• China: 35
• Israel: 34
• Afghanistan: 29 
• Syria: 28
• Pakistan: 25 
• Iraq: 22
• Libya: 12
• Egypt: 11
• Russia: 10
• Mali: 4
• Turkey: 3
• Great Britain/United Kingdom: 2 
• Greece: 2 
• Lebanon: 2
• Saudi Arabia: 2
• Cuba: 1  
• France: 1 
• North Korea: 1 
• Qatar: 1
• Somalia: 1
• Yemen: 1

The surprise of the night? Romney's four references to Mali (in the context of al Qaeda's resurgence), a country he hasn't mentioned in his major foreign-policy addresses or even in his campaign website's Africa section. The Republican candidate clearly studied up on al Qaeda's new franchises. 

Update: Thanks to our readers for spotting a few other country mentions. The candidates and moderator also referenced Japan, Poland, and Tunisia -- one time each. 

Round 2, fight!

There was only one foreign-policy question at the second presidential debate, held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. on Tuesday, but it provided one of the most memorable exchanges of the night. Audience member Kerry Ladka asked President Barack Obama why the State Department had "refused extra security for our embassy in Benghazi, Libya." (The request was actually for the embassy in Tripoli, not the Benghazi consulate.)

Obama didn't address the question directly, instead vowing again to "investigate exactly what happened, regardless of where the facts lead us, to make sure that folks are held accountable and it doesn't happen again." The president also said that on the day after the attack that killed U.S. Amb. Christopher Stevens, he had "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.'"

Sensing an opening, Mitt Romney countered that it "took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror." After Obama asked Romney to "get the transcript" and moderator Candy Crowley interjected, "He did call it an ‘act of terror.'"

In fact, Obama had said, "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for." Some conservative commentators countered that the president was not actually referring to the Benghazi attack, but Obama had also used the description more specifically the following day.

Overall, the debate was generally scored as a win for Obama -- in stark contrast to the first debate two weeks ago -- with liberal commentators pointing in particular to the Benghazi exchange as a pivotal error by Romney. The voters, of course, may have another view.

Not optimal

The fallout from Benghazi continued to dominate media coverage of the election this week. On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made headlines by saying, "I take responsibility" for the security arrangements at U.S. facilities abroad. Some interpreted the remark as an attempt to shift blame away from the president, though Obama later said at the debate, "I'm the president. And I'm always responsible."

The Drudge Report also highlighted a comment Obama made on the Daily Show on Friday -- "If four Americans get killed, it's not optimal" -- though the president was actually responding to a question from host Jon Stewart that used the word "optimal."

The New York Times reported on Friday that one of the prime suspects in the attack, Ahmed Abu Khatalla, had spent several hours sipping frappés and chatting with reporters at a hotel in Benghazi despite U.S. and Libyan pledges to bring the perpetrators to justice. Khatalla accused U.S. leaders of "using the consulate attack just to gather votes for their elections."

Polls keep narrowing

A Pew Research poll this week shows the two candidates running about even on foreign-policy issues. Overall, voters favor Obama 47 percent to 43 percent on handling foreign policy, but that's down from a 15 point spread in September.

The poll also found voters favoring stability over democracy in the Middle East, supporting "taking a firm stand" against Iran's nuclear program over avoiding military conflict, and "getting tougher" with China. Respondents supported Romney's policies on China by a 49-40 percent margin, but gave Obama a narrow edge on handling Iran and political instability in Egypt and Libya.

The final debate

The narrowing polls have raised the stakes for the third and final debate on Monday night, which will focus entirely on foreign policy. The debate will be held at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. CBS's Bob Schieffer will moderate. Although the two campaigns have sparred repeatedly on Iran's nuclear program, instability in the Arab world, and trade with China, a number of issues have yet to be discussed, including the fallout of the European financial crisis, the effects of climate change, and U.S. policy in Latin America and Africa.

You can follow FP's coverage on Monday night on the site and on Twitter using the hashtag #FPDebate.

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Shen Dingli on why China might prefer a Romney presidency.

Former candidate Jon Hunstman gives FP his take on how the race is shaping up.

Joshua E. Keating explains what would actually happen if Romney labeled China a currency manipulator.

David Roberts lays out what the two candidates aren't telling voters about the future of coal.

Christopher Stephen reports from Benghazi on a situation that looks very different from how the U.S. political spin cycle is portraying it.

Douglas Feith and Seth Cropsey argue that the Russian "reset" exemplifies the flaws of Obama's foreign policy.

Mark Bowden on the six biggest myths around the Osama bin Laden raid.

BuzzFeed has called it the "moment where Barack Obama won the debate." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow dubbed it a "political disaster" for Mitt Romney. National Review's Jim Geraghty described it as "one of the most egregious misjudgments of any moderator in the history of presidential debates."

During Tuesday night's presidential debate, moderator Candy Crowley corrected Romney when he pounced on Obama for claiming that he'd cdescribed the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi as an act of terror. "He did call it an act of terror," Crowley noted to applause and Obama's delight. Romney retorted that it had taken a long time for the administration to describe the assault as a terrorist attack rather than a spontaneous reaction to an inflammatory film.

Within hours, political observers were characterizing the exchange as a pivotal moment in the campaign -- a gaffe for the history books. Romney "was even held accountable by Candy Crowley for not telling the truth about the president acknowledging an act of terror," Senator John Kerry (D-MA) noted. "I think tonight Mitt Romney's campaign fell away."

Political Wire's Taegan Goddard, meanwhile, compared Romney's misstep to Gerald Ford's famous declaration during a 1976 debate with Jimmy Carter that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration." Here's Goddard:

[Romney] scored many points. But he lost most of them by not knowing his facts on what President Obama said the morning after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya. Obama acted like a president in the exchange while Romney was much less. It was Romney's Gerald Ford moment.

Over at the New York Times, Andrew Rosenthal went a step further, likening Romney not just to Ford but to George H.W. Bush: 

When George H.W. Bush looked at his watch in a 1992 debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot and absolutely bungled a question about how the national debt had affected him personally, he cemented the impression that he was out of touch with real Americans' lives.

When Gerald Ford denied in 1976 that there was any "Soviet domination" of Eastern Europe, he cemented the impression that he was out of touch with pretty much everything....

Tonight, Mitt Romney may have had a similar moment, during a back-and-forth about the attack on the Benghazi Consulate.

There's ample reason to be skeptical of these damning assessments, however. For starters, the controversy surrounding the candidate's remarks involves semantics -- act of terror or terrorist attack? -- and won't deter Republicans from continuing to criticize the administration's response to the assault and overall Mideast policy.

What's more, Americans were deeply concerned about the Soviet Union at the time of Gerald Ford's gaffe -- something that can't be said for the public's attitude toward Libya at the moment. In a national survey conducted by the Foreign Policy Initiative in mid-September, just over 2 percent of respondents cited Libya in response to an open-ended question about the country that presents the most danger to American national security interests.

Rosenthal concedes that Romney's Libya remarks "likely won't have the same impact as Mr. Ford's Soviet domination gaffe or Mr. Bush's watch episode, which "may have cost them their elections." But even here, there's not much evidence that the Ford and Bush blunders had any such effect.

A 2008 Gallup study, for example, found that the 1992 presidential debates didn't affect the standing of Bush or challenger Bill Clinton, though they may have boosted support for third-party candidate Ross Perot. The polling firm concluded that the 1976 presidential debates may have made the race "more competitive" but did not change the contest's "fundamentals," since Carter was leading before the debates. "After Ford's statement about the lack of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe -- widely perceived as a gaffe - Carter's lead expanded slightly to 6 points and remained at about that level after the third and final debate," Gallup noted.

The emerging Romney-equals-Ford narrative, in other words, doesn't really work. Still, Ford's experience does offer some cautionary tales for Romney. Ford campaign staffer Doug Bailey once recalled that while the Eastern Europe gaffe didn't sway the election, it did halt the steady gains Ford had been making against Carter in the polls:

Our own polling data would suggest that really in the end we did not lose any people because of the Eastern European statement. That, by and large, people were shocked by it; dumbfounded by it, and some people close to that issue were offended by it.... But over time, almost all of those people came back to us. What it did cost us was momentum because we were just caught dead in our tracks for a week to ten days. And the progress of closing those gaps with about a half point per day stopped, at the same rate, after that ten day gap where everything just stood still.

And news outlets may have played a significant role in creating that dynamic that Bailey described. As the political scientist John Sides recently noted, debate viewers didn't mention the Eastern Europe remarks in a poll conducted on the night of the Ford-Carter matchup. "Only for viewers interviewed the next day did this gaffe become more salient -- evidence that the public needed the news media to point out that Ford had made a mistake," Sides observes. Indeed, the president was subsequently assailed by headlines such as "The Blooper Heard Round the World" and "Jerry Ford Drops a Brick." 

These days, the media's judgment is near-instantaneous. If the press hype over the Libya exchange keeps building, it could be bad news for Mitt-mentum.

In one of the most interesting exchanges of Tuesday night's presidential debate, a town hall participant asked Mitt Romney what distinguished him from George W. Bush. The GOP candidate returned to his five-point plan for the economy, noting that, unlike the previous Republican president, he would balance the budget, champion small business, expand trade with Latin America, crack down aggressively on Chinese trade practices, and secure energy independence for North America:

We can now, by virtue of new technology actually get all the energy we need in North America without having to go to the the Arabs or the Venezuelans or anyone else. That wasn't true in [Bush's] time, that's why my policy starts with a very robust policy to get all that energy in North America -- become energy secure.

Never mind that, as Gregg Carlstom pointed out, the criticisms of Bush didn't really revolve around his failure to strike Latin American free trade agreements or get tough on Beijing. When it came to energy policy, Romney expanded on his plan elsewhere in the debate, promising to increase manufacturing jobs and achieve energy independence "within eight years" by approving the Keystone XL Pipeline, increasing offshore drilling, granting more licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands and in federals waters, and embracing a mix of energy sources including oil, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and renewables.

The issue is, Bush echoed Romney's overarching theme -- reducing America's dependence on OPEC by a date certain through technology and a variety of promising energy sources -- in his 2006 State of the Union address, which came two years before Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore oil drilling:

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology. Since 2001, we have spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources. And we are on the threshold of incredible advances.

So tonight I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative-a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research at the Department of Energy-to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy.

We must also change how we power our automobiles. We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. We'll also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switchgrass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within 6 years.

Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.

Romney's plan, which promises North American energy independence in less than a decade and builds on research such as Citi's Energy 2020 report, is certainly more ambitious than Bush's. But is the Republican candidate really advocating a clean break with Bush on energy policy? Or did he simply dodge a tough question by pivoting back to his five-point plan?

With the U.S. presidential election now closer than ever, the press is brimming with speculation about whether Barack Obama, after turning in a lackluster performance in the first debate, can reverse Mitt Romney's momentum  during his second outing tonight. And not just the U.S. media. News outlets from India to Israel are busy dissecting Obama's setback, Romney's comeback, and what the new state of play in the race means for their countries. Here's a snapshot of some of the most colorful coverage in recent days:

Britain

The British press has at times been rather brutal in assessing the shifting dynamics in the presidential race (sample Daily Mail headline this week: "Preparing for a new job already? Obama delivers pizzas to campaign workers as he gets ready for make-or-break TV debate at golf resort"). But commentators have also speculated about what a Romney win would mean for Britain. Over at the Telegraph, Tim Stanley argues that David Cameron and his Conservative Party have expressed their preference for Obama too openly. "By airing these views in public the Tories have gambled too much on Obama winning the election," he maintains. "And if he doesn't, then they'll have a President on their hands who they have routinely insulted. That can't be good for the Atlantic alliance." (Stanley, for the record, thinks tonight's debate will end in a draw or Romney win.)

Meanwhile, Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to the United States, writes in the London Evening Standard that an Obama victory would be best for Britain:

Romney could turn out to be an excellent foreign policy president, yet right now, his foreign policy team is split between neo-con hawks and those of a more pragmatic, "realist" world view, similar to our own. We don't know which faction will come out on top. In the circumstances, we're better off with the devil we know - and that's Obama.

China

The state-run news agency Xinhua has a warning today for the presidential candidates: "[I]t would be both politically shortsighted and detrimental to China-US relations if they turned the town-hall-style meeting into a China-bashing competition" (the news outlet appears to be confusing tonight's debate with the third and final debate on foreign policy, which will touch on topics such as "the rise of China and tomorrow's world"). Sure, both candidates' tough talk on China may be nothing more than campaign bluster, Xinhua observes. But "these chameleonic politicians should not always expect that the wounds they have inflicted to the China-US ties would heal automatically" once they assume office.

India

In an article on the possibility that India could be dealing with several new world leaders in a matter of months, the Times of India marvels that "from being a candidate who could barely control his own Republican Party, Mitt Romney has surged forward to be a surprisingly competent debater and a more than credible opponent." Still, the paper adds, the outcome of the U.S. election may not have a major impact on bilateral relations. "The Indo-US relationship has now become institutionalized and isn't actually dependent on a president," the article notes.

In a debate preview at the Hindustan Times, the U.S.-based journalist Rashmee Roshan Lall argues that Romney is unlikely to endear himself to India or the world during Tuesday night's event.  True, she notes, the "New Delhi punditocracy has always thought Republican presidents suit India much better than Democratic ones." But Romney doesn't mention India on the campaign trail and wants to "reinstate the US as globocop, albeit with a makeover that borrows heavily from some of the darker manifestations of Lord Voldemort." She concludes with a question: "Is it better to be steamrollered or simply ignored or might the best option for India and everyone else be four more years of Obama?"

Israel

As the U.S. race has tightened -- "The presidential race has begun anew," one Israel Hayom headline proclaims -- the editorial boards at Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post have published explanations for why they'll be remaining neutral during the election. Haaretz notes, in rather vivid language, that "Romney would stick with Israel's prime minister and they would become flesh of one flesh" but adds that the substantive differences between the candidates are minor. Haaretz columnist Chemi Shalev, meanwhile, muses about the various leadership permutations that could result from elections in Israel and the United States. 

As for the upcoming debate, Israel Hayom's Abraham Ben-Avi thinks it is "Obama's last window of opportunity to rehabilitate his status as a leader" while Haaretz's Adar Primor argues that the world will still favor Obama over Romney even if the candidates sharpen the distinctions between them on foreign policy tonight. "Those [around the world] who have shaken off their Obama fixation have done so largely because in certain areas of policy he is seen as having adopted the Republican agenda," Primor writes.

Russia

Russia's RT didn't buy the widespread verdict that Romney trounced Obama in the first debate, noting that the "tepid" forum had shown the candidates to be "two sides of the same coin." But Romney's post-debate bounce has spurred the Russian press to give the GOP candidate a closer look. News outlets covered Romney's Russia comments during his recent foreign-policy address in Virginia but cautioned against reading too much into the aggressive rhetoric (the state-run Voice of Russia did note that "a serious politician should avoid making that kind of remarks with respect to another leading country"). One Russian lawmaker, meanwhile, accused Romney of embracing George W. Bush's failed policies and presiding over the "last convulsion of the American-style world."

In the most creative commentary, the Voice of Russia compares the debates to chess matches and quotes the chess player Vladislav Tkachev:

"Very often the real moves, such as the candidate's plan of actions and package of reforms, remain in the background and the psychological factor comes to the fore. Suffice it to look at the footage of the confrontation between Karpov and Kasparov to see that the duel of the eyes, a springy step and an overall aggressive look were of paramount importance. It is common knowledge how difficult it is to give the right answer when exposed to the rival's glare. The response of the audience can also either pep one up or completely demoralize. Barack Obama with downcast eyes did not look his best this time, side by side with his opponent who radiated confidence."

However, there are more debates ahead and the results could change. After all, Obama is leading in public opinion polls. The main thing for him now is to get rid of the image of a serious, thoughtful and humane but not very determined leader because this is the wrong style for the time of change. However, chess practice shows that the style of playing games cannot change overnight.

Germany

The German press has adopted the Mitt-mentum narrative -- as U.S.-based journalist Gregor Peter Schmitz wrote in Der Spiegel, Joe Biden's vice presidential debate performance "almost single-handedly revived the Obama campaign, which was in danger of being put on life support after the president's disastrous debate performance in Denver." But news outlets have also pointed out that the race would look very different if it were held in Germany (or many other European countries, for that matter), where more than eight in ten people would support the Democrats. "Obama has assured victory -- among Germans," a headline in Die Welt declares (an article in Berliner Morgenpost suggests that Obama's overwhelming popularity in the country helps explain why Romney didn't visit Germany during his overseas trip this summer).    

Pakistan

The Pakistani press has covered the narrowing race. "Even the New York Times, which favours Mr Obama, concedes that Mr Romney has continued to surge since the debate," an article in Dawn observes. But in an op-ed for the same newspaper, Muhammad Ali Siddiqi argues that the weeks since the first debate have shown Obama to be the true victor. "Mr Obama was consistent, without flamboyance, and stood his ground" while "Mr Romney played to the gallery," Siddiqi notes. He adds that "Mr Romney would like to conduct his foreign policy in Cold War fashion" but admits that, contrary to the impression in Pakistan, foreign policy has "taken a back seat in the campaign."

Here's the latest testament to the time warp that is today's political news cycle: the Obama and Romney campaigns are reportedly complaining about Candy Crowley's aggressive moderating style -- a day before she moderates the second presidential debate. The criticism centers on comments the CNN anchor has made about asking follow-ups during the town hall-style debate. But there's another flashpoint to watch tomorrow night: What balance will Crowley and debate organizers strike between domestic and foreign policy?

The question is particularly relevant since Martha Raddatz, a senior foreign affairs correspondent for ABC News, has been catching a lot of flak from the right over the past few days for focusing too much on international affairs while moderating the vice presidential debate last week. The critiques come -- interestingly enough -- as a new Public Opinion Strategies/Hart Research Associates poll shows that 47 percent of voters think the candidates aren't talking enough about foreign policy, and particularly about issues such as the endgame in Afghanistan, the state of U.S.-Israeli relations, and the best approach to Iran's nuclear program. 

On Friday, for example, New York Times columnist David Brooks, argued that the prominence of foreign policy at the vice presidential debate did not square with voters' priorities (in poll after poll, jobs and the economy are listed as the top issues in the campaign):

This debate was excessive in its attention to foreign policy -- an arena that is a voting issue for very few. [Paul] Ryan demonstrated amazing fluency, given how little time he has spent working in these areas. 

At Forbes, John Tamny made a similar point:

The shame about the debate was that Martha Raddatz perhaps focused too much on foreign policy. Sorry, but a country full of the war weary, not to mention the economically scared, seemingly wanted a more substantive debate that covered the economic issues more in depth.

In an interview with CNN, Red State's Erick Erickson got more personal, arguing that Raddatz bungled the debate by falling back on her professional expertise:

Her wheelhouse is foreign policy and she devoted probably two-thirds of the debate to foreign policy. When you're debating foreign policy in a vice presidential debate, I guess that's all well and good. But we have this unemployment number, we've gotten the jobs decline, and I just think moderators shouldn't make the focus of the debate their wheelhouse. 

Over at The Transom, Ben Domenech asserted that Raddatz had not only marginalized key issues such as the economy and entitlements but also zeroed in on the Arab world while ignoring other regions and international issues:

[H]er apparent ignorance of domestic policy (she's a foreign correspondent for ABC) led to a remarkable tilt toward international topics. The irony was that this ended up being a surprisingly parochial in focus, confined to the Middle East - she asked no questions about the EU, no questions about China, no questions about trade. For his part, Dan Drezner apologized on behalf of the five percent. http://vlt.tc/icp 

By my tabulation, Raddatz asked more questions about foreign policy, national security, and the Defense budget than all other subjects combined. She asked one question about Medicare but mushed it together with Social Security, the upshot being that most of the answers were focused on Social Security reforms neither candidate has endorsed or even brought up on the trail. She asked, effectively, just one question about the economy - one! - while asking separate questions on Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Koran burning, DOD and the sequester.

The Heartland Institute's Jim Lakely, meanwhile, saw outright favoritism in Raddatz's mix of questions:

Perhaps Raddatz focused more on foreign policy than in a typical VP debate because recent events warranted that, but that's hardly what VPs need to deal with - and it's hard to not think she focused on that because it's supposedly Biden's strength. If Raddatz really wanted to challenge Ryan, she should have gone after him on his budget - which Mitt Romney has only partly embraced. Maybe Raddatz avoided drilling down on this subject because Ryan would have knocked such questions out of the park.

At least one conservative pundit had an entirely different reaction to the vice presidential debate, however. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol observed that while the campaign sparring over the economy increasingly looks like a "draw," foreign policy could prove to be the "election tie-breaker," particularly in light of the Obama administration's response to the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. (Indeed, Barack Obama's advantages on foreign policy and national security have taken major hits in recent weeks.)

And voters on the right may agree with Kristol. Forty-seven percent of respondents in that Public Opinion Strategies/Hart Research Associates survey may have said the candidates aren't talking enough about foreign policy, but the partisan split wasn't even. Fifty-three percent of Republicans (and 49 percent of independents) felt they weren't hearing enough about international affairs, compared with 40 percent of Democrats. More discussion of foreign policy on Tuesday night might not be so bad for the GOP after all.