Denver: President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney at last stand face-to-face Wednesday to duel for the White House in the first of a trio of debates just 33 days before American voters decide their fates.
Obama heads into the showdown in Denver with a narrow lead in his bid to defy historic omens sown by a stubbornly sluggish economic recovery, and to become only the second Democrat since World War II to win a second term.
Republican nominee Romney, down in almost all the key battleground states that will decide who wins the 270 electoral votes needed to win on November 6, seeks a sharp change of momentum in a race that seems to be slipping away from him.
The rivals will step up to podiums at the University of Denver in the Rocky Mountain state of Colorado, at 7:00 pm local time (0100 GMT) to clash over the economy and other domestic issues.
But veteran anchor Jim Lehrer, who will steer the debate for tens of millions of viewers at home, has leeway to bring up other burning issues.
That means Obama, 51, could face a grilling on his administration’s shifting account of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11.
Romney, 65, a multi-millionaire former venture capitalist, could come under scrutiny over his complex offshore tax arrangements, which Democrats have highlighted to press the case that he is indifferent to middle class struggles.
Romney badly needs to reset the election narrative, after a secretly filmed video emerged of him branding 47 percent of Americans as people who pay no taxes, depending on government for handouts and see themselves as “victims.”
Obama and Romney, who have rarely met or spoken, have spent days in seclusion honing debate techniques, offensive parries and comebacks.
After indulging in the usual game of expectations setting, both campaigns engaged in last-minute spin early Wednesday.
“President Obama is a gifted speaker and won every debate in 2008. He will surely offer an impressively polished performance once again, but as we’ve learned the last four years eloquence alone will not solve our nation’s problems,” Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus wrote in the Denver Post.
With a record of high unemployment and massive debt, “President Obama will make excuses (and) spend the debate dishonestly attacking governor Romney — exactly what he’s been doing at campaign rallies and on the airwaves for months now.”
The Obama camp countered with accusations that Romney has no specific plans to create jobs or move the country forward, “only tired repeats that will take us back,” deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter wrote in a broadside against Romney’s platform.
“Romney can use tonight’s debate to fill in those details… or he can spend 90 minutes doing what he does best: attacking the president, distorting his own record, and avoiding any and all details on his plans for this country.”
Several national polls released before the debate showed a tight race, with Obama ahead by a few points.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll gave Obama a lead among likely voters of 49-46 percent, consistent with a RealClearPolitics poll average showing the graying US leader up by 3.5 percentage points.
A National Public Radio poll Wednesday shows Obama leading 51-44 among likely voters nationwide and 50-44 in battleground states, while a Washington Post-ABC News poll gave Obama a larger 52-41 lead in swing states.
On the eve of the debate, the campaigns pounced on perceived liabilities of the other side in a battle to win news cycles.
Several conservative media websites published stories and footage of a speech in 2007, in which a sermonizing Obama — then a senator — praised his controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright.
The speech, which had been extensively reported before, shows Obama in a more hard-edged mood than he is usually seen, decrying slow federal responses to riots in Los Angeles and Hurricane Katrina, which harmed the black community.
Democratic aides dismissed the tape as a “lame” attempt to dig up old stories, and it appeared unlikely that the fiery Wright, whom Obama repudiated in 2008, would emerge as a campaign issue.
Republicans, meanwhile, were delighted by a verbal slip by Vice President Joe Biden, who said the middle class had been “buried” for the last four years.
Democrats said Biden was talking about how president George W. Bush’s policies continued to hurt the middle class deep into Obama’s term.
Romney’s campaign released a web video Wednesday showing Biden’s comments, followed by the simple line: “We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.”
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