In the end, Obama wins: the "hot" polls are in his favor (48 percent against 40 for CNN, even 58 to 23 for CBS, which has a slightly more left-leaning audience). But it's a victory on points: no knockout blows, no dangerous "gaffe". Already last week Obama had won, and even more clearly, but it was not enough to stop the wave of Romney's recovery. He might not even have made it last night. Above all, the Republican candidate aimed not to make mistakes, not to compromise the "presidential" image that he built up in the previous two confrontations.
There was no shortage of skirmishes, such as the one over Iraq, with Romney rejecting Obama's accusation as a lie (“you wanted to leave 30 American soldiers in Baghdad, that would have been a huge mistake”). But the Republican candidate, effective in contesting Obama's uncertain management of the Syrian crisis, was, as mentioned, very careful not to overstep the mark. So he avoided raising the tone of the controversy over the mistakes made by the US administration in Libya. And on several other issues, while criticizing the way in which Obama has exercised his "leadership", he has shown that he shares the basic choices made by the White House: this applies to Afghanistan (withdrawal by 2014), to the ok to the massive use of "drones" and to the need to remain alongside Pakistan despite its ambiguous behavior, given that an ally that has a hundred atomic bombs cannot be left to its own devices. But also for the support to the groups that fueled the "Arab spring" and, after all, also for the highly contested issues of IRA and Syria: in the end, even Romney wants sanctions for Tehran's nuclear power avoiding the military attack, while in Syria wants to help the rebels, but without sending US soldiers or weapons (at least not directly).
