President Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney will meet at the University of Denver on Wednesday night for their first of three presidential debates.
This first debate will be of particular interest to job seekers, and those adversely affected by the ongoing recession. The topic is domestic policy, with the first three rounds of the six-round debate covering the economy and an additional round covering healthcare.
Romney has the most to lose in this debate, as he has been trailing in several recent polls, the election is only five weeks away, and some states have already started early voting. Republicans contend that the polls are biased, but this is still Romney's last, best chance to make his case to the American people. The first debate will likely have the largest audience of any political event between now and the election.
Romney also has the most to gain, as this will be the first time the American public has seen him side-by-side with the president, on equal footing-potentially a worthy challenger.
Romney will likely be more aggressive. Obama, for his part, needs only to keep from losing the debate. If he maintains his lead as it stands now, he'll win the election in November fairly easily. But he'll be trying to trip up Romney, to bait him into making an embarrassing gaffe.
This might be easy if Romney spends too much time on offense-President Obama is known for staying cool under pressure, and Romney isn't good once he gets off his scripted lines.
Adding to Romney's woes, polls show that voters side with the president on almost every issue except the deficit. It will be up to Romney to attack Obama there, and widen that gap to include healthcare-Americans as a whole are still unsure about Obamacare, though they're getting more comfortable with it.
While Obama will attack Romney's tax plan, which the president says will benefit millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the middle class, Romney will try to paint Obama as an enemy of the "job creators," a cadre of employers and wealthy investors Republicans claim drive the growth of the economy.
A bit more bad news for Romney this week, as a new study says his healthcare plan will leave 72 million Americans without insurance by the year 2022.
The debate will play on all the major networks and cable news channels, as well as PBS and Univision. It will be hosted by Jim Lehrer, acclaimed and well-respected journalist at PBS and host of eleven previous presidential debates.
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