It's Time for Some Debatin'

Tonight, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will go head-to-head for the first time in a debate.  It's really a big moment in the campaign, and it may be the last time (with the biggest audience that will watch a debate) Mitt Romney has to turn his flailing campaign around.  For Obama, it's his chance to lay the smack down and begin to truly close the deal here.

I don't anticipate that we'll have a Gerald Ford moment here where someone will conveniently forget that during the Cold War that Poland was pretty much controlled by the Soviets (after all this debate covers domestic policy).  In this 24-hour news cycle, though, the smallest gaffe has the ability to explode into something bigger than what it was and ultimately harm the candidate.

Whatever happens tonight, moderator Jim Lehrer, the famous PBS NewsHour host, will have plenty of good and tough questions to ask the candidates in the debate.  It should be must watch TV for all of us.  In the end, each side will claim victory and the electorate will have to decide if this dog and pony show will move the needle one way or another.