Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The third and final presidential
debate did little to change the race between President Barack
Obama and Mitt Romney, who are tied with just two weeks to go.
Even so, this week’s inconsequential contest provides a key of
sorts to understanding the election.
In the first debate -- which was consequential and then
some -- Romney abruptly changed from the severely conservative
Republican he’d presented to voters during the primaries to the
reassuringly pragmatic moderate he’d seemed as governor of
Massachusetts. It was an audacious move, and one that strains
credulity, in two respects: for the sheer distance in ideology
he had to walk back, and for the timing, because he left this
second outrageous pivot so late in the campaign.
