Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to face off in Presidential debate

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will on Wednesday clash head-to-head for the first time, in a high-stakes live televised debate that could transform the US presidential election campaign.

From a stage in Colorado, the President and his Republican challenger will each tell tens of millions of viewers that he is the man who can revive the stagnant American economy. For Mr Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who trails in polls with just 34 days remaining until election day, the debate may mark the last opportunity to dramatically alter his prospects. For Mr Obama, amid a relentless jobs crisis and a Washington in gridlock, it offers a late chance to promise struggling voters that he still embodies hope and can deliver change. As the first public meeting of two men who are known to personally dislike one another, and who have each spent hundreds of millions of dollars to destroy the other's career, the debate is the most tensely-anticipated moment of the campaign for the White House so far. Arriving in Denver, Mr Romney said that at stake was the future of a country still reeling from the effects of a financial crisis that struck amid the last presidential campaign in 2008."In my view it's not so much winning and losing or even the people themselves, the president and myself," he told supporters. "It's about something bigger than that." With 23 million people jobless or seeking more work, Mr Romney attacked Mr Obama for prioritising health care reform, adding: "Jobs is job one under my administration." The Republican vice-presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, told a radio interview: "We're entering the phase where we get to frame the choice of this election." The debate, the first of three over the coming three weeks, centres on the economy – the issue to which Mr Romney had pledged to devote his entire campaign before his ailing ratings forced him to reach elsewhere. In an interview with Colorado's main regional newspaper yesterday, he announced that as president he would honour the temporary work permits granted to young illegal immigrants under a controversial action by Mr Obama earlier this year. The western state is one of 10 key battlegrounds in which Mr Romney is behind, according to RealClearPolitics. Its large Hispanic population sharply favours Mr Obama after Mr Romney took hard-line stances on immigration during his party primary contest. Moving to protect Mr Obama's 35-point lead among Latinos, the White House said he would make the home of the late labour leader Cesar Chavez a national monument next week. The president enjoys an average national lead of three points. Mr Romney is expected to stress in the debate that as president he would represent "100 per cent of Americans", in an effort to reduce the damage caused by secretly-recorded footage of him telling wealthy donors that 47 per cent of people were feckless "victims". While he was yesterday locked in a hotel outside Denver for last-minute coaching from top aides, Mr Obama was holed up in a resort in neighbouring Nevada making up the "debate prep" he claims to have skipped due to the middle-east crisis. Both camps have sought to lower expectations of their candidates' performances, in a ritual dance repeated every four years. Aides to Mr Obama have claimed he is "familiar with his own loquaciousness and his tendency to give long, substantive answers" and is working on seeming less professorial. "We expect Mitt Romney to be a prepared, disciplined and aggressive debater," said David Axelrod, the President's top strategist. Advisers to Mr Romney, meanwhile, stress that he is facing one of the "most talented political communicators in modern history" and that a draw would effectively be a win. Yet Chris Christie, the straight-talking Republican New Jersey governor, gave an unvarnished view of what he and other Romney allies are hoping for. "Mitt Romney is going to be standing on the same stage as the president of the United States," he told NBC. "Come Thursday morning, the entire narrative of this race is going to change". Polls show that only about 30 per cent of Americans expect a Romney win.