dorky
potus_geeks already know this, but this is just a reminder that the second debate between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney will take place tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 16th, at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, 6:00 p.m. Pacific. The debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which persons selected as "undecided voters" will ask questions of the candidates on foreign and domestic issues. Candidates each will have two minutes to respond, and an additional minute for the moderator to facilitate a discussion. The town meeting participants will be undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization.
The debate will take place at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. It is sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The moderator will be Candy Crowley, Chief Political Correspondent for CNN.
Today President Obama spent a third day out of public view at a resort in Williamsburg, Virginia preparing for the debate. Senator and former Presidential Candidate John Kerry played the part of Governor Romney in practice sessions.
Governor Romney spent most of Sunday and today at a Marriott hotel in Burlington, Massachusetts, joined by his top advisers and Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who plays the part of President Obama in mock debates.
According to spokespersons in the Obama campaign, the President plans to be more aggressive than he was in the first debate in Denver.
Ms. Crowley's role took the spotlight even before the event, as both the Obama and Romney campaigns jointly wrote to the Commission on Presidential Debates, the bipartisan sponsor of the debates, to clarify her powers. The campaigns pointed to comments in which Ms. Crowley suggested she could expand on the audience questions in order to flesh out candidate answers. They said a memorandum of understanding between the campaigns said there wouldn't be follow-up questioning.
Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chairman of the debate commission, said that he passed the concerns on to Ms. Crowley. But he said neither the commission nor the moderator is party to the agreement between the campaigns. Under rules of the debate, each candidate has two minutes to respond to each question, after which there is a two-minute period in which "Candy can facilitate a discussion on the subject matter," Mr. Fahrenkopf said. The moderator can't use that period to move to a new topic, however. He added that "these campaigns are on pins and needles in the last couple of weeks."