Video: 'Obama vs. Romney: The third 2012 presidential debate'

(Monday, October 22, 2012, 9:00-10:30 p.m. EDT; during the 2012 United States presidential election campaign) — President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney wrapped up a series of three presidential debates tonight with a bristling exchange over America’s place in the world as each sought to portray the other as an unreliable commander in chief in a dangerous era.

Picking up where he left off in last week’s debate, Obama went on offense from the start, lacerating his challenger for articulating a set of “wrong and reckless” policies that he called incoherent. While less aggressive, Romney pressed back, accusing the president of failing to assert American interests and values in the world to deal with a “rising tide of chaos.”

“Governor, the problem is that on a whole range of issues, whether it’s the Middle East, whether it’s Afghanistan, whether it’s Iraq, whether it’s now Iran, you’ve been all over the map,” Obama charged.

“I don’t see our influence growing around the world,” Romney countered. “I see our influence receding, in part because of the failure of the president to deal with our economic challenges at home.”

The debate at Lynn University in Boca Rotan, Florida, moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS News, was dedicated to foreign policy even though it veered occasionally into domestic issues, and it presented the last opportunity for the candidates to face each other before the Nov. 6 election.

While international relations have often taken a back seat to the economy during the marathon campaign, whoever wins will inherit a world with increasingly complicated challenges, from the turmoil in the Middle East to a resurgent Russia to an emerging China, and tonight’s debate highlighted the vexing issues ahead.

For all its fireworks, the debate broke little new ground and underscored that the differences between the two men on foreign policy rest more on tone, style, and their sense of leadership than on particular policies. Obama and Romney seemed to align on matters like withdrawal from Afghanistan, the perils of intervening in Syria, and the use of drones to battle terrorists.

While they varied in degree, the heart of their clash rested on who would pursue the same national goals more effectively and ensure America’s enduring economic and security role overseas.

Chopping the air with his hand, Obama came armed with a host of zingers. He accused his opponent, sitting at a table next to him, of “trying to airbrush history” and of seeking to “do the same things we do but say them louder.” At times, Obama lectured and even mocked Romney on the details of certain policies, hoping to expose him as an uninformed pretender at the risk of coming across as condescending.

Romney at times sat stiffly, his hands before him, back ramrod straight.

At one point, when Romney complained that the Navy “is smaller now than any time since 1917,” Obama pounced and noted that the comparison works only if aircraft carriers are equated with gunboats. “We also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed,” the President said.

Slowing his words, he added sarcastically: “We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we are counting ships.”