From the final Morning Jolt of the week:

That Darn Son-to-Job Ratio

Both candidates were surprisingly good at last night’s Al Smith Dinner, an annual Catholic charity event that traditionally hosts both major party candidates for a night of laughter. (Video can be found here.) But the single biggest metaphorical crotch-kick of the night came from great-grandson Al Smith IV, who told President Obama, “We recognize that you have some challenges this year. It’s never good when your opponent has produced more sons than you have jobs.”

Politico’s Roger Simon — in some circles, “the other Roger Simon” — summarizes most of the jokes from the candidates:

Smith also pointed out that all the men on the multi-tiered dais in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel ballroom were dressed in white tie and tails, “Or, as Gov. Romney calls it, business casual.”

Romney rose and noted that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was at the dinner and is known as a man with presidential ambitions. “Gov. Cuomo may be getting ahead of himself,” Romney pointed out. “He has put in one term as governor, he has a father who was governor and he thinks that is enough to run for president!”

All his comments were met with laughter, and I will let you insert that response after each of these:

“Usually when I get invited to gatherings like this, it’s to be the designated driver.”

“My tip for debate prep is, first, refrain from alcohol for 65 years.”

“It’s good to have someone you can depend on at the end of the day. I have my wife, Ann. President Obama has Bill Clinton.”

Romney also said the media would probably be unfair to him: “The headlines will be: ‘Obama embraced by Catholics, Romney dines with rich people.’ ”

He then ended on a serious and gracious note, by saying of Obama, “We don’t carry the burden of disliking each other. He has many fine gifts and a wonderful family that would make any man proud. There’s more to life than politics.”

Obama then approached the lectern to speak and got a standing ovation. “Everyone please take your seats,” he said, “otherwise Clint Eastwood will yell at them.”

Speaking a little longer than Romney, Obama followed with:

“I had a lot more energy in the second debate. I was well rested after the nice long nap I had during the first debate.”

“Four years ago, I gave Chris Matthews a thrill up his leg. At the first debate, I gave him a stroke.”

“Earlier, I went shopping at stores in Midtown. I understand Gov. Romney went shopping FOR stores in midtown.”

“Unemployment is at the lowest since I took office. I don’t have a joke here. I just wanted to remind people.”

Obama also added a serious note, pointing out that “family man and loving father are two titles that matter more than any political ones.”

He left out some of Romney’s best: “Speaking of Sesame Street, tonight’s dinner was brought to you by the letter ‘O’ and the number 16 trillion.”

“But the press and I have different jobs. My job is to tell the American people my plans for the country, the press’ job is to make sure no one hears about it.”

Then-senator Obama, back in January 2008, when asked at a debate about his greatest weakness:

Obama: My greatest weakness, I think, is when it comes to — I’ll give you a very good example. I ask my staff member to hand me paper until two seconds before I need it because I will lose it. You know, the —- you know . . . (LAUGHTER)

And my desk and my office doesn’t look good. I’ve got to have somebody around me who is keeping track of that stuff.And that’s not trivial; I need to have good people in place who can make sure that systems run. That’s what I’ve always done, and that’s why we run not only a good campaign, but a good U.S. Senate office.

You know what’s good for that, Mr. President? Binders.

When campaign strategists and political analysts go out on camping trips — they do, you know — they end the night by gathering around the campfire and telling stories of a terrifying, unstoppable, voracious and mysterious force that preys on vulnerable political campaigns: the Preference Cascade.

“The Preference Cascade only stalks totalitarian regimes,” the skeptics say. “I’ve read Glenn Reynolds’ field reports and eyewitness accounts, about how the Preference Cascade needs a lot of unexpressed emotion to feed upon. ‘A totalitarian regime spends a lot of effort making sure that citizens don’t realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99 percent of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it — but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.’ You just don’t have that same group dynamic in American society.”

“Ah, but how many early-favorite candidates have tried to run on inevitability?” says the old timer, tossing a stick onto the campfire. “Everybody you know is voting for somebody, because everybody they know is voting for that guy. Nobody’s really giving the other candidates a serious thought, until something unexpected happens — and then the favorite finds out his support was a mile wide and an inch deep.”

Another consultant pipes up.

“An old-timer I know said he had the Preference Cascade gobble up one of his candidates once,” he said quietly. “He said it was like a nightmare. You think you’re doing fine, you have enough folks whose default setting is to vote for your guy, and then . . . BOOM. Suddenly, day by day, things get worse. The undecideds start jumping onto the bandwagon of the other guy, and they just won’t stop. They tune out your guy and just about everything he says. Attack ads that normally would be called ‘tough’ or ‘hard-hitting’ start getting mocked as ‘desperate’ or ‘flailing.’ Volunteers stop showing up. Your early voters taper off. It used to be nobody mocked your guy, and suddenly he’s the butt of the jokes of the comics.”

A shiver ran down the spines of the younger campaign strategists. “Does the Preference Cascade give any warnings?”

The old timer piped up again. “It sniffs out weakness and vulnerability in a well-known candidate’s job approval numbers,” he said, pointing his finger. “Sometimes voters avert their eyes from an incumbent’s flaws — he’s in there, they hope he does well. Sometimes they won’t like what he’s doing, but they’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. They’ll come up with all kinds of excuses. But the Preference Cascade’s catalyst triggers this change, and suddenly all of that repressed disapproval comes tumbling out. It’s not that the candidate has suddenly irked these voters so much; it’s that they’ve been irked for a while and they suddenly feel okay expressing it. And once they see more people expressing it, they express it louder themselves — swaying the people around them. It’s like a feedback group that gets louder and more intense and faster as time goes on.”

By now the young campaign consultants around the campfire were wide-eyed.

The youngest found his voice, just loud enough to whisper, “Once the Preference Cascade starts hunting your candidate, how do you stop it?”

The old timer looked the young consultant in the eye with a grim, haunted look.

“Nobody knows.”

. . .

. . . In other news, Gallup’s tracking poll has shifted from a tie on October 9 to a 52 percent to 45 percent lead for Romney today.

A reader points out that several of Minnesota’s radio and television markets extend into the western edge of Wisconsin — so Jill Biden’s campaign stops in Minnesota this weekend may be part of an Obama campaign effort to shore up Wisconsin, rather than reflecting any internal concern about Minnesota.

This map of radio markets from Arbitron indicates that Duluth’s radio market extends into Douglas County, and Minneapolis–St. Paul’s radio market extends into St. Croix and Pierce Counties.

Jill Biden’s tentative schedule:

Minnesota may not be considered a swing state when it comes to the presidential race, but Duluth and Minneapolis will get a touch of national politics this weekend.

Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, will make a campaign swing through Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, with a stop in Duluth on Saturday afternoon.

She will thank Obama campaign volunteers, said Kristin Sosanie, the state communications director for the Obama campaign.

“There a good organization up there,” Sosanie said.

The second lady is expected to arrive at the Duluth Labor Temple, 2002 London Road, at 2 p.m. Saturday to also encourage people to keep canvassing voters for the Nov. 6 election. She has a similar morning event in Minneapolis.

“We’re trying to make sure turnout is high,” Sosanie said.

Biden will begin her trip Friday in northern Iowa. She will go to a fundraiser in Minneapolis on Friday night and then a campaign office Saturday morning. Plans for Wisconsin stops Sunday and Monday are pending.

In this morning’s New York Post, I have an op-ed on the ubiquitous “I take responsibility” pledge among politicians, and how rarely it is followed up by any real change or action.

We see this facsimile of responsibility throughout the administration: the only person who has been fired over the “Fast and Furious” gun-running operation was one of the whistleblowers. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was found to have violated the Hatch Act, but she suffered no real consequence and is back on the campaign trail at Democratic events.

Time and again, the public is given declarations of “responsibility” without actual consequences for bad judgment.

It seems that, when responsibility is “taken” in this administration, it’s in the sense of those Liam Neeson movies: Responsibility has suddenly, mysteriously disappeared — and we’re never going to hear from it again.

The Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt begins with a look at rumors of the Obama campaign triaging states, noting that for all the talk of ad spending, there is one truly finite resource the campaigns must manage:

Both campaigns will have piles of cash; the one truly limited resource is the candidate’s time. Obama spent Wednesday in Iowa and Ohio. Today he’s scheduled to campaign in New Hampshire and deliver remarks at the 67th Annual Alfred. E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City. The President will return to Washington, DC in the evening. On Friday, the President will travel to Camp David, where he will remain overnight. Monday’s final debate is in Florida.

Obama’s base in northern Virginia makes it easy for him to drop in while traveling in or out of Washington. If you see Obama making fewer and fewer stops, or no stops, in North Carolina, post-debate Florida, or Colorado, then it’s a strong hint that the campaign strategy has indeed shifted.

Allahpundit:

It’s not that Romney has insurmountable leads in FL, VA, and NC, it’s that Team O has to decide how to allocate what’s left of its campaign treasury down the stretch and there are better bets for them than those three states. Triage, in other words. Mitt’s up 4.7 points on average in North Carolina, which would be tough for O to make up, and 2.5 points in Florida, which might be doable but would be hugely expensive in terms of reserving enough ad time to make a dent. I’m a little surprised to see Virginia included — O actually leads there by eight-tenths of a point, although Romney’s (narrowly) won the last three polls, so maybe Obama’s campaign figures it’s not worth resisting that momentum in a state they don’t really need. They do kind of need Colorado, though, and that actually looks tougher than Virginia for them at the moment: Romney leads by seven-tenths of a point and has won six of the nine polls taken since the first debate. If I had to guess, I’d bet they’re looking at Virginia and Colorado now as an either/or situation; if Romney’s lead opens a bit in one rather than the other, that one will be written off and an investment made in the closer state.

But wait, there’s one more “what the heck?” bit of news Wednesday night, from Chuck Todd: “Yesterday, Obama campaign added Minnesota to their national radio buy. Today, campaign announces Jill Biden will campaign there this week.”

Minnesota? Minnesota? I have never, for a moment, thought Minnesota would be in play this cycle – literally, as Joe Biden would say.

The polls have Obama up by less than I expected — a GOP poll has Obama up 4, PPP has Obama up 10 — but . . . really? Really?

Keep in mind, Jill Biden is the no bigger than the fourth-biggest asset the Obama campaign has, behind the president, first lady, and the vice president. But still . . . Minnesota?

One other Jolt thought to keep in mind:

The End of Obama’s Negative Campaign Ads?

Jim Hoft provides a quick look at two fascinating bits of analysis from Karl Rove.

“The Obama campaign has pulled down all of its negative advertising. And is now running virtually all positive ads in the battleground states heralding all the success of the last four years. This is very unusual because they have been constantly beating up on Romney. In recent weeks the president’s negatives have risen and Romney particularly after this debate has moved into a lead. You saw it in the Gallup poll you talked about. Six point lead, 51-45. Yesterday it was 50-46. This is the first time that Romney has hit 50 percent in the Gallup likely voter poll and the president has never hit 50 percent in the likely voter poll. And no candidate who has led in mid-October with 50 percent or more in the likely voter poll has ever gone on to lose.“

The disappearance of the negative ads offers two fascinating conclusions.

1.       Think about all of those negative ads run by the Obama campaign and Priorities USA all summer long — millions upon millions of dollars’ worth — and Romney undid them with one debate performance. One debate performance! Political consultants for years to come will study this, and the conventional wisdom that negative advertising works may get reexamined by the professionals.

2.       Can you run as brutal and bare-knuckle a campaign as Obama and his allies have, and suddenly go positive in the final three weeks? If Obama had any kind of a compelling, positive message, why hasn’t he been running on it from the beginning? (There are two million early votes cast already.)  What better way to reveal that the campaign has no faith in its overarching strategy than to make a sudden total shift in a crisis?

Major Garrett, writing in National Journal:

What also became clear after the dust began to settle from the rumble on Long Island was the electoral map has narrowed and Obama’s team, while conceding nothing publicly, is circling the wagons around Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Plouffe said that Obama remains strong in all four states, but he would not discuss the specifics of internal polling or voter-contact analytics, saying only that Obama has “significant leads” in all four places.

It is uncharacteristic of Team Obama to concede any terrain, but Plouffe offered no such assurances about Obama’s position in North Carolina, Virginia, or Florida. Romney advisers have seen big gains in all three states and now consider wins likely, although not guaranteed, in all three. They are similarly upbeat about prospects in Colorado but not confident enough to predict victory. That Plouffe left Colorado off his list of states where Obama’s leading and can withstand a Romney surge might be telling.

Chalk one up for Suffolk University Political Research Center’s David Paleologos, which said they would stop polling North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida last week.

Fascinatingly, the description of Plouffe’s comments puts New Hampshire in the “firewall” pile, when the last three polls have Romney up by 4 (ARG) a tie (Suffolk) and Obama ahead by 1 (Rasmussen).

UPDATE: The Obama campaign is “absolutely not” giving up on those states, traveling press secretary Jen Psaki said today.

If you were on the Obama campaign, and you had to pick one moment to focus upon in last night’s debate, which one would you choose? If you had to pick one comment by Romney, one utterance by the Republican standard-bearer to spotlight, mock, deride, and make the centerpiece of your argument today, which one would you choose?

The exchange on Libya? Obama’s jab about pensions, “I don’t look at my pension, it’s not as big as yours”? Romney’s effort to distance himself from George W. Bush?

For some reason, the Obama campaign and their lefty allies have selected . . . “binders full of women.”

Here’s the comment in context. Decide for yourself if the anecdote makes Romney look bad. My sense is that just about every working mom welcomed a presidential candidate discussing the difficulty of juggling a career and family.

CROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women?

ROMNEY: Thank you. And important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.

And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, “How come all the people for these jobs are — are all men.” They said, “Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.” And I said, “Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?”

ROMNEY: And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.

I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women.

I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.

Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort. But number two, because I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school.

Sure, taken literally, the phrase “binders full of women” might make your mind come up with the awkward, funny image of women literally stuffed into binders, but . . . eh, really? This is where the Obama campaign, and most liberals online, want to focus their energies this morning?

How many women are going to hear the “binders full of women” anecdote and feel worse about Romney? How many will feel better and wish their boss had the same attitudes?

(Particularly if that boss ran a “hostile workplace,” as Obama’s former communications director, Anita Dunn, described the White House.)

Romney’s lucky. The only way the Democrats post-game focus could go better for him is if they try “Big Bird” again.

Well, Obama checked one of the boxes he needed to: He came across more energetic and pugnacious. I’m sure liberals will be ecstatic. For what it’s worth, the CNN instant reaction on the bottom of the screen indicated that undecided voters weren’t pleased with the attacks and back and forth; I’m not sure if the remaining undecided really are so negative-attack-averse, or whether they’ve been conditioned to tell others that they are.

Romney had some strong moments, taking one voter’s basic, “what have you done for me” question — as one person observed, the one undecided black voter on Long Island — and offering a litany of Obama’s grand promises and how little progress had been made. Probably Romney’s best early points came on the issue of gas prices; perhaps no line from Romney or Paul Ryan will do as much damage as the questioner who began his query by noting that Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said that lowering the cost of gasoline for American consumers isn’t one of his priorities.

Of course, Obama’s answer never mentioned Chu.

Undoubtedly, the post-debate discussion is likely to focus on one exchange over Libya.

The president showed glowering indignation over the accusation that his administration misled the public on what happened in Benghazi and why. It was a potential slam-dunk moment . . .

. . . and then Romney got caught up in what Obama said in the Rose Garden on September 12. Take a look at Obama’s Rose Garden comments here. Obama refers to the murder of Stevens and the other Americans as an “attack” — duh — but then he says:

Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None.

Those lines clearly imply that the events were a reaction to the YouTube tape. The word “terror” appears once, in the entirety of Obama’s remarks, in this context:

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. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America.

That’s not specifically referring to the Benghazi raid, although one could argue it’s implied.

However, by telling the audience — to applause! — that Obama did refer to the murders as a terror attack, Candy Crowley is responsible for one of the most egregious misjudgments of any moderator in the history of presidential debates.

Still, the American people may remember the administration spending a lot of time talking about a YouTube video in the days after the Benghazi attack, and Obama’s sudden insistence that his administration never really pushed that implausible-from-the-start alternative explanation may strike them as odd and implausible. Viewers may also notice that the president never responded to the audience member’s question about what the administration did in response to the reports indicating Benghazi was growing increasingly dangerous.

The Libya question may not be as damaging for Romney as the Obama team may hope; it came more than 70 minutes into this debate. Other than some early fireworks, much of this debate seemed to plod along, with each candidate insisting that what the other was saying was just flat not true. But considering how many conservatives thought Libya could be a huge issue in these campaign’s final weeks, Romney’s handling is deeply disappointing.

UPDATE:

Now she tells us: “[Romney] was right in the main, I just think he picked the wrong word.”

Among the conservative blogosphere and Twittersphere, there’s quite a bit of cynicism about tonight’s proceedings: Candy Crowley will clearly attack Mitt Romney and toss softballs at the president. Clearly the so-called “undecided” voters in attendance aren’t really undecided, and they’ll ask questions designed to make Romney look bad and Obama look good. They’ll ignore the rule on cheering or applause. No matter what happens, most folks in the mainstream media will enthusiastically declare Obama the winner, decree he’s the “comeback kid,” and return to their regularly-scheduled coverage of an impending Obama landslide.

That cynicism is well-founded, and yet somehow liberating. If any of these don’t come to pass, it will be a pleasant surprise to many on the Right. If they do come to pass, at least the conservative grassroots was expecting it. And undoubtedly Mitt Romney — finishing up another round of intense preparation sessions — has thought of these potential obstacles and practiced how to handle them.

Candy Crowley will probably at least want to appear even-handed. Some of the undecided voters may be ringers, or they may be genuinely uninformed low-information voters who will offer the traditional lament, “I really haven’t heard either candidate say anything all this time about the economy.” (Maybe you’ll get a hybrid, like Ponytail Guy.) The audience may indeed ignore the rules, and create the raucous atmosphere that Obama prefers at his rallies.

We do know, after watching Romney two weeks ago, that there’s very little chance he turns in a bad performance, and while the town-hall format may not be his most natural setting, we know he’s capable of an exceptionally good one. We now know he’s capable of thoroughly beating Obama, and doing so in a way that Obama doesn’t even notice; the president walked off the stage convinced he won last time.

So unless Romney really stumbles, we’ll have a good Romney performance against a good Obama performance — probably not enough to undo the momentum and preference cascade set off by the first debate. If the media are determined to declare Obama the winner, let them. The people watching at home know what they see. About 70 million watched the first debate, and only 51 million watched the vice-presidential debate.

In fact, the media’s desperation to see a solid Obama win might provide one more example of low expectations that hurt the president in the long run. A common theory after the first debate was that the media’s kid-gloves treatment, and Obama’s reluctance to do challenging interviews or frequent press conferences, left him unprepared for a tough challenger and resorting to his usual shallow talking points. If Obama turns in a merely okay performance, and the media hypes it as a colossal showcase of excellence, it may just reaffirm voters’ doubts about the president.

When you add up Hillary Clinton’s declaration that the Benghazi consulate security debacle is her responsibility, the fact that on most days the president only reads his daily intelligence briefings on his iPad instead of having an in-person briefing, and the de facto admission by David Axelrod that Obama did not meet with his security team before attending a campaign rally on September 12, a lot of folks are wondering if the president is more focused on celebrity fundraisers than on his duties in the realm of national security.

Of course, that’s an unfair criticism; it’s not like President Obama uses the White House Situation Room as a perk to entertain celebrity guests.

Okay, it’s not like President Obama often uses the White House Situation Room as a perk to entertain celebrity guests.

The magic number of this election cycle may be 47.

The number was already the focus of Mitt Romney’s much-derided “47 percent” comment at a closed-door fundraiser. But it’s also the percentage level that David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, deems to be doom for an incumbent.

As mentioned yesterday, Paleologos said on The O’Reilly Factor last week that when an incumbent is at 47 percent or less, “it’s very, very difficult when you have the known quantity, the incumbent, to claw your way up to 50 — a very poor place for him to be.”

While the “undecided rule” — the conventional wisdom that undecided voters break heavily against the incumbent — has its exceptions, most of the remaining undecideds are likely weighing two options: voting for Romney or staying home. A September survey of “persuadable” voters found that 68 percent are white, 57 percent are married, 53 percent are men, 70 percent think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and 60 percent disapprove of how Obama is doing his job.

In Colorado, Obama is at 47.3 percent in the RealClearPolitics average; the two most recent polls, WeAskAmerica and the Denver Post/SurveyUSA poll put Obama at 47 percent exactly.

Obama’s RCP average in other key swing states:

• Wisconsin: 50.0 percent.
• Pennsylvania: 49.7 percent.
• Iowa: 48.8 percent.
• Virginia: 48.4 percent.
• Ohio: 48.3 percent.
• Nevada: 48.2 percent.
• New Hampshire: 47.8 percent.
• Florida: 46.8 percent.
• North Carolina: 45.3 percent.

Obama’s national average on RealClearPolitics is 47.1 percent.

If indeed 47 percent is the threshold of doom, Obama doesn’t have much more ground to lose in these swing states before they start to look out of reach.

Does Mitt Romney strike you as the kind of candidate who would be an easy sell in rural America?

It turns out, he is — at least at this moment. NPR’s URL uses the term “near-landslide”:

The random cellphone and land line poll of 600 likely rural voters in nine battleground states Oct. 9-11 has Romney at 59 percent among the survey’s respondents. Obama’s support is now down to 37 percent among rural battleground voters, a plunge of 10 points from the actual rural vote in those states four years ago.

The nine battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin have a collective rural population of 13.6 million, according to the Census Bureau.

“It’s a boon to Romney,” says pollster Anna Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, the Democratic partner in the survey. “It will help him … because, of course, he will lose urban areas by a similar margin. And the suburban areas are still pretty competitive.”

Of course, a 59–37 split in favor of Romney perhaps ought to be less surprising when one sees the poll’s sample splits 37 percent Democrat or lean Democrat, 5 percent independent, 57 percent Republican or lean Republican. However, as noted above, Obama did much better in these counties four years ago, and “last month, a similar rural survey in the same battleground states had a smaller 54-to-40 percent margin for Romney.”

Forty-nine percent of the respondents indicated they attended religious services weekly or more often; 19 percent work in farming or agriculture, and 46 percent said they own guns (another 14 percent said they didn’t know or refused to answer the question).

Hillary Clinton, discussing the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, to CNN Monday in Lima, Peru: “I take responsibility. I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts.”

There’s a strange habit in politics of public figures declaring that they’re “taking responsibility” for something going wrong . . . but then not following up with any particular action, contrition, or consequence.

Back at the beginning of this administration, February 3, 2009:

Tom Daschle, the former Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate, withdrew earlier Tuesday as news that he failed to pay some taxes in the past continued to stir opposition on Capitol Hill.

“I think I screwed up,” Obama said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “And, I take responsibility for it and we’re going to make sure we fix it so it doesn’t happen again.”

Of course, earlier this year we learned that 36 Obama aides owe $833,000 in back taxes.

Obama said he “took responsibility” for the millions in bonuses paid to AIG executives as part of the bailout. Of course, the bonuses stayed in there.

Discussing the debt and the state of the economy at a fundraiser for state senator Creigh Deeds in Virginia on August 6, 2009, Obama said, “I don’t mind being responsible. I expect to be held responsible for these issues, because I’m the president.” Of course, we’ve added $4.4 trillion in new debt since he said those words.

After Obamacare passed, the president did admit that he didn’t keep his promises on how the legislation would be handled.

He was pressed by freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah to explain why Obama had not followed through on his pledge that negotiations over the healthcare bill would be broadcast on television. Obama argued that most of the debate had in fact been aired, except for some of the talks close to the Senate vote. “That was a messy process,” Obama said. “I take responsibility.”

But it was too late to change anything at that point, obviously.

On May 28, 2010, President Obama discussed the BP oil spill and declared, “I ultimately take responsibility for solving this crisis. I am the president and the buck stops with me.” The well was not capped until July 15, and it was not officially sealed until September 19, 2010.

President Obama said he “took responsibility” for the 2010 midterm results . . . but there was little or no sign that he changed his governing approach, philosophy, or policies in response to the lopsided results in favor of the Republicans that year.

Finally, it is easy to overlook that the president admitted that he misjudged the severity of the economic difficulties facing the country when he came into office.

In response to a question from a Twitter follower from New Hampshire, Mr. Obama said another mistake he made was not explaining to Americans how long the economic recovery would take, because he failed to grasp the severity of the recession quickly when he took office.

“Even I did not realize the magnitude, because most economists didn’t realize the magnitude of the recession until fairly far into it,” Mr. Obama said. “I think people may not have been prepared for how long this was going to take, and why we were going to have to make some very difficult decisions and choices. I take responsibility for that.”

He takes responsibility . . . and asks the country to trust that judgment for another four years.

The Tuesday edition of the Morning Jolt includes a debate preview, look at both the USA Today swing-state poll and new intriguing results in Pennsylvania from Quinnipiac, and then the busy night for news on Libya . . .

U.S. Military Strikes in Libya Coming Soon?

You’re going to hear a lot about “wag the dog” scenarios in light of this news…

The White House has put special operations strike forces on standby and moved drones into the skies above Africa, ready to strike militant targets from Libya to Mali — if investigators can find the al-Qaida-linked group responsible for the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya.

But officials say the administration, with weeks until the presidential election, is weighing whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on al-Qaida is worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group’s profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight it in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa.

Details on the administration’s position and on its search for a possible target were provided by three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst who was approached by the White House for help. All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly.

But if we have an opportunity to capture or kill the folks who had a hand on the attack on our consulate and the murder of our ambassador and three other Americans — and presuming the Libyan government is unable, unwilling, or untrustworthy enough to take action against the perpetrators — shouldn’t our government be doing this?

(By the way, with three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst talking to the Associated Press on this . . . I guess it’s not much of a sneak attack now, huh?)

As for the “untrustworthy enough” angle on the Libyan government . . .

U.S. State Department officials suspected that two Libyan guards hired by its own security contractor were behind an April incident in which a homemade bomb was hurled over the wall of the special mission in Benghazi, according to official e-mails obtained by Reuters.

But the men, who had been taken into custody the day of the attack, were released after questioning by Libyan officials because of a lack of “hard evidence” that could be used to prosecute them, the State Department emails show.

As for the “unable” angle . . .

The Pentagon and State Department are rushing to help the Libyan government create a new commando force to combat Islamic extremists like the ones who killed the American ambassador in Libya last month and to help counter the country’s fractious militias, according to internal government documents.

The Obama administration quietly won Congress’s approval last month to shift about $8 million from Pentagon operations and counterterrorism aid budgeted for Pakistan to begin building an elite Libyan force over the next year that could ultimately number about 500 troops. American Special Operations forces could conduct much of the training, as they have with counterterrorism forces in Pakistan and Yemen, American officials said.

The effort to establish the new unit was already under way before the assault that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans at the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya. But the plan has taken on new urgency since then as the new civilian government in Tripoli tries to assert control over the country’s militant factions. According to an internal State Department memo sent to Congress on Sept. 4, the plan’s goal is to enhance “Libya’s ability to combat and defend against threats from Al Qaeda and its affiliates.” A companion Pentagon document envisions that the Libyan commando force will “counter and defeat terrorist and violent extremist organizations.” Right now, Libya has no such capability, American officials said.

But is this going to be a real operation that disrupts al-Qaeda’s ability to pull off an attack like the one on September 11, or just a symbolic one to alleviate the sense that our ambassador’s murder is going unavenged? Some in Congress have their doubts:

Longtime Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra — the former chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee — tells Newsmax TV that the Obama administration probably lacks “the kind of intelligence that will enable us to attack” those responsible for killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other members of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. What he fears is an empty gesture with some staged attacks on loose targets designed to give the appearance the administration is on the case.

“You’re only acting decisively if you have the clearly identified target and you take the target out,” warned Hoekstra in an exclusive interview on Monday. “I’m concerned that what we may see with this administration is they may fire a few missiles from some drones at some suspected target and will either kill the wrong people or we won’t kill anybody at all.”

Needless to say, we live in a cynical age.

Jim Pethokoukis: Strikes “on whom, the guy who made the video?”

James Poulos: “Eeny meeny miney drone.”

John Podhoretz: “Is there an aspirin factory near Benghazi?”

Heck, we haven’t bombed Libya in, like, a year.

Meanwhile . . .

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted blame for the security lapses before the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

“I take responsibility,” Clinton told CNN Monday in Lima, Peru. “I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts.”

She added, “The president and the vice president wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals.”

Clinton also said that the U.S. has been aware that militants were regrouping in Libya and that there would be an effort to reestablish bases.

Is this Hillary Clinton falling on her sword to help the president to get the Benghazi debacle out of the headlines? Or is responsibility jujitsu, where she looks presidential by declaring the buck stops with her, and he looks cowardly for using her as a scapegoat?

Last night, Senators John McCain (R., Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.) released a statement on Clinton’s comments:

We have just learned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has claimed full responsibility for any failure to secure our people and our Consulate in Benghazi prior to the attack of September 11, 2012. This is a laudable gesture, especially when the White House is trying to avoid any responsibility whatsoever.

However, we must remember that the events of September 11 were preceded by an escalating pattern of attacks this year in Benghazi, including a bomb that was thrown into our Consulate in April, another explosive device that was detonated outside of our Consulate in June, and an assassination attempt on the British Ambassador. If the President was truly not aware of this rising threat level in Benghazi, then we have lost confidence in his national security team, whose responsibility it is to keep the President informed. But if the President was aware of these earlier attacks in Benghazi prior to the events of September 11, 2012, then he bears full responsibility for any security failures that occurred. The security of Americans serving our nation everywhere in the world is ultimately the job of the Commander-in-Chief. The buck stops there.

Furthermore, there is the separate issue of the insistence by members of the Administration, including the President himself, that the attack in Benghazi was the result of a spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful video, long after it had become clear that the real cause was a terrorist attack. The President also bears responsibility for this portrayal of the attack, and we continue to believe that the American people deserve to know why the Administration acted as it did.

Secure America Now is hitting the airwaves in Florida and Ohio with a pair of pretty brutal ads. Neither one endorses a candidate, but it’s pretty clearly a message slamming the administration for policies the group deems a giveaway to the Muslim Brotherhood, and an insufficiently supportive policy towards Israel.

The first contends that the administration wants to give $450 million in foreign aid to “an Egypt led by the Muslim Brotherhood” instead of your local schools.

Count the themes: wasteful foreign aid, soft on Islamist groups, neglecting our schools . . .

The second features Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem on September 11, warning the world to start drawing red lines against Iran’s nuclear weapons development.

Three guesses on which swing state where this ad will run.

Secure America Now says they’ll spend $1 million on airing these ads in the two states.

The big message for the week from the Romney campaign is the debt and deficit. This morning they pointed out in an e-mail:

On Friday, the Obama administration officially confirmed the FY2012 deficit exceeded $1 trillion for the fourth year in a row:

Trillion-Dollar Deficits On President Obama’s Watch. “The Treasury Department said Friday the deficit for the 2012 budget year totaled $1.1 trillion. . . . Barack Obama’s presidency has now coincided with four straight $1 trillion-plus annual budget deficits — the first in history and an issue in an election campaign that ends in Nov. 6.” (Martin Crutsinger, “US Deficit Tops $1 Trillion For Fourth Year,” The Associated Press, 10/12/12)

“The String Of $1 Trillion-Plus Deficits Has Driven The National Debt Above $16 Trillion.” “The string of $1 trillion-plus deficits has driven the national debt above $16 trillion. The magnitude of that figure has intensified debate in Congress over spending and taxes but little movement toward compromise.” (Martin Crutsinger, “US Deficit Tops $1 Trillion For Fourth Year,” The Associated Press, 10/12/12)

“The Government Borrowed About 31 Cents Of Every Dollar It Spent In 2012.” (Martin Crutsinger, “US Deficit Tops $1 Trillion For Fourth Year,” The Associated Press, 10/12/12)

NBC’s Tom Brokaw, On President Obama’s Deficit Record: “That Deficit Is $1.1 Trillion And It Happened On His Watch. He Is Going To Have To Answer For That.” BROKAW: “I looked at that debate we talked about a moment ago, it was playing last night on C-SPAN, and, now President Obama was saying, ‘Look, we’ve got a deficit of half a trillion dollars. I’m going to get that under control.’ Well, this week, that deficit is $1.1 trillion and it happened on his watch. He is going to have to answer for that.” (NBC’s “Meet The Press,” 10/14/12)

You can see some recent polls from various different pollsters on how highly the deficit and debt ranks on their list of priorities. For better or worse — mostly worse — it’s pretty far down the list of top priorities: 7 percent say it’s the “most important issue” in the NBC News/Washington Post poll, 14 percent in Bloomberg, 4 percent in the CBS News/New York Times poll.

While the economy remains preeminent, a campaign has to talk about more than one issue, and I suspect that to a lot of voters, four straight years of trillion-dollar deficits strike them as a cause of our economic doldrums as much as a result. Every dollar borrowed and spent by government is a dollar not used otherwise by other entities, and it points to an American economy increasingly dependent upon government spending. Depending upon who you ask, corporations are sitting on $1.7 trillion to $5 trillion in cash. Something is preventing those companies from hiring workers, investing in research and development or new facilities, developing new products, etc. At this point, these large corporations don’t see any profitable path for that money.

The argument from the left will be that “greed” spurs these corporations to sit on their cash, when in fact the corporations are being the opposite of reckless; they’re being cautious (some would argue too cautious). Romney has a much easier case to make, that the current policies from the Obama administration contribute to corporations’ skittishness about investment.

The Romney campaign reveals its internals in Ohio to Byron York: “Dead even.”

On NRO’s home page, I take a detailed look at the “how Romney can win without Ohio” scenarios. The good news is that with the current batch of polling, it’s pretty easy to get Romney to 261 electoral votes. The bad news is, without Ohio, getting those final nine is pretty challenging, at least for now: Win Wisconsin, or win both Iowa and Nevada.

In the third-from-the-bottom paragraph in the Washington Post’s article – the 17th paragraph — on its new poll out this morning, showing President Obama leading, 49 percent to 46 percent, among likely voters:

Partisan identification fluctuates from poll to poll as basic orientations shift and with the sampling variability that accompanies each randomly selected sample of voters. In the current poll, Democrats outnumber Republicans by nine percentage points among likely voters; the previous three Post-ABC polls had three-, six- and five-percentage-point edges for Democrats. The presidential contest would now be neck and neck nationally with any of these margins.

So Obama is up three, as long as the party ID is two percentage points more favorable than it was in 2008.

Also note one more data point for the argument that the headlines generated by the BLS numbers, good or bad, don’t really impact voters’ perceptions of the economy:

The slip in the unemployment rate had no meaningful effect on voters’ views of Obama’s stewardship of the economy: 47 percent of all voters continue to approve of the job he is doing on the issue, and 51 percent disapprove. Majorities have consistently given the president negative reviews on the economy, going back more than two years.

This is certain to be a busy week, and the week’s first Morning Jolt notices a poll result down in Florida…

Show Joe Biden This Poll Result, and He Might Just Stop Laughing

A reader sent me this poll result and asked, “who gets the last laugh?”

Proper caveats: The sample is only of the Tampa area, and only 13 percent of this sample of debate watchers changed their mind, which amounts to about 92 people.

1,000 Tampa area adults were interviewed by SurveyUSA about last night’s Vice Presidential debate. Of the adults, 704 watched the debate. Results of debate watchers:

* 38% say Joe Biden clearly won the debate.

* 42% say Paul Ryan clearly won the debate.

* 20% say there was no clear winner.

* 13% say they changed which candidate for President they support as a result of the debate.

Of those who tell SurveyUSA they changed their mind:

* 44% switched from the Obama ticket to the Romney ticket.

* 29% switched from undecided to the Romney ticket.

* A total of 73% switched to the Romney ticket.

* 18% switched from the Romney ticket to the Obama ticket.

* 6% switched from undecided to the Obama ticket.

* A total of 24% switched to the Obama ticket.

* 49% say Biden is ready to be President, if needed.

* 51% say Ryan is ready to be President, if needed.

Still, in any amount, if three folks shifted to Romney for every one who shifted to Obama, this is good news for Republicans (and suggests that the gut reaction that Biden came across as an insufferably snide blowhard isn’t just our partisan instincts).

As Ed Morrissey notices, “13% is around the level of undecided/soft voters nationally.”

Keep in mind the audience for the vice-presidential debate was significantly lower than the Romney-Obama debate: “Final Nielsen ratings data on Friday showed that the vice presidential match-up on issues ranging from the economy to foreign policy and abortion, was seen by 51.4 million Americans across 12 cable and broadcast networks.The October 3 debate between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney drew a TV audience of 67.2 million, putting it among the 10 most-watched debates of the past 30 years.”

Still, at the thought that Joe Biden’s constant cackling cost his ticket votes, I’m just left with this image of a recurring, recorded laugh, after we’ve witnessed an outlandish personality, once on top of the world, plummet to defeat . . .