President Obama needed to step up and dig in at Tuesday night's second presidential debate, and that’s exactly what he did, I write over at CNN.  Insistent jockeying for time, his fumble of the Benghazi question, and furious Etch-a-Sketch moments on everything from Pell Grants to the Dream Act may have hurt Romney with swing voters – exactly the ones he needs to hone in on in the coming weeks.

And he just came across as a bully:

“Mitt Romney followed a great debate with a fail. His constant interruption of Candy Crowley and the president – his peevish, ‘Hall Monitor Mitt’ persona – was not just a loss in terms of style points. It was revealing in terms of character. The CNN focus group found that the intense awkward interjections alienated swing voters and women in particular. Tweets to me used words like ‘entitled’ and ‘bully.’ Bottom line, it wasn’t presidential. It was small and self-important rather than big and magnanimous. And it will cost him momentum.

“The president started the debate hot rather than warm; he seemed almost too amped up. Romney did a better job relating to the audience as individuals at first. And then the insistent jockeying for time came, and the wheels started to come off his initially steady performance.”

Watch our live debate coverage on The Daily Beast with John Avlon, David Frum, Michelle Cottle, and special guests.

1. “Rules for Craftsmen,” in The New York Times

What would it take for a politician to really break through the Washington gridlock? So asks David Brooks in this insightful and timely column. Some of the suggestions seem simple (Read Robert Caro on LBJ in the Senate if you want to know why “the ability to count” lends power) but they could add up to a leader who can deliver on what he promises.

Read it at The New York Times.

The human rights abuses in Sudan continue—and a harrowing new video captures the attack on a Nuba Mountain village in real time.

The Satellite Sentinel Project, working with the Sudanese journalist group Nuba Reports, brought the video to an international audience this morning, providing indelible evidence of the kind that rarely exists when villages are burnt and looted. This time, though, the camera phone of one of the attackers—members of the Sudanese Central Reserve Police—captured the bloodlust. The 18-year old high school student named Niam who is captured and then tortured was subsequently interviewed on camera about his ordeal, after a $30 ransom was paid.

This is a video that cuts through all the abstractions and obfuscations. In the United States, news organizations are focused on the second presidential debate tonight—but that event should not keep this documentation of an attack in real time from reaching a wider audience. In the past, the absence of cameras meant this violence could be ignored. Now, we have evidence that demands attention and accountability. 

It’s a conundrum for conservatives—Mitt Romney couldn’t get traction while he was playing to the base with his vice-presidential selection or his convention speech.  But once he broke out the big Etch A Sketch in his first debate against President Obama, Mitt started soaring in the polls.

Of course, the reaction is not really a mystery—it’s a tried-and-true lesson of American politics: a more centrist candidate moves swing voters into his column, while a more extreme candidate alienates them. Mitt’s gains among moderates, the middle class, and women voters since the first debate are a direct result of this self-conscious re-centering of his presidential campaign.

The problem is that it goes against conservative chapter and verse, which says that a centrist Republican candidate all but guarantees a general election loss for the GOP.

Independent Nation gives you the 6 must-reads for independents and centrists for Monday, October 15.

1. “True Progressivism,” in The Economist

It’s time for a  “radical centrist politics” (Amen) that seeks to reinvigorate America like the Progressive movement did in the late 19th century. The right and left alike are stuck in default settings that produce our current “failure of ideas.” In tough times but with our values intact, Americans deserve better.

Read it at The Economist.

It is time for the presidential candidates to say what they see as America’s place in the world. Few aspects of the president’s job have as large an impact on as many people as his role as commander-in-chief, and while voters can look to President Obama’s record on the foreign stage, the Romney-Ryan ticket needs to make a clear, coherent statement of its own positions in the next debate.

In my latest column for The Sunday Telegraph, I write on how so far both campaigns have danced around some of the most important international issues that will determine America’s course over the next four years:

“Like Senator Obama four years ago, Governor Romney has little foreign policy experience. At least we knew then that Obama opposed the Iraq war and wanted to ramp up drone strikes against al-Qaeda instead – and now, in regard to killing bin Laden, the phrase ‘mission accomplished’ actually applies.

“To date we haven’t been told whether Mitt Romney supports the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive unilateral intervention – a sticky subject even for conservatives these days. In 2008, Obama tried to compensate for his lack of foreign policy experience by tapping the Senate foreign relations committee chairman, Hillary Clinton, to be his VP. Romney picked the House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan, a Tea Party policy wonk with no foreign policy expertise.”

Joe Biden didn’t just meet expectations Thursday night, he completely surpassed them.

“Before the vice presidential debate, I’d thought that Paul Ryan would have the upper hand – a young smart policy wonk and great communicator paired off against an out-of-practice, aging politico with a recurring case of foot-in-mouth disease,” I write in my latest column for CNN.

“I was wrong.”

Read more of what I (along with a host of other good folks including Daily Beast contributor Paul Begala and my wife Margaret Hoover) have to say about Thursday night’s debate at CNN.

This election will be decided by swing voters in swing districts of swing states.  The second installment of OutFront's election series The Final Factors took me to the key swing district of Virgina - Loudoun County. This is the heart of the new northern Virginia - fast growing, increasingly diverse and wealthy after a decade of defense spending.  It voted for President Obama by 11,500 votes in 2008 - making him the first Democrat to win the Old Dominion State since LBJ.  Unemployment is now 4% - half the national average.  But the swing voters here are feeling the heat from the looming automatic defense cuts set to kick in next year.  

"This is going to be as serious a problem to our north Virginia region as the fallout of the car industry was to Detroit," Hammler says. "It will be small businesses like ours that are going to be hit the most. Two million jobs will be lost, half of which will be from small companies. We'll be hit earliest and hardest."

Hammler blames sequestration on congressional division and dysfunction: "It's as if there are certain factions within the parties who are setting things up where because of the pressure of the next primary, because of the pressure of the election, there's no incentive for compromise and collaboration to find meaningful solutions to complex problems."  

Margaret and I weigh in at CNN on what Ryan and Biden need to accomplish in tonight’s vice-presidential debate.

With Pew showing “slippage” among voters under this year, Margaret advises Biden to aim his pitch directly at them:

In the wake of Mitt Romney’s deft first debate there’s been a lot of belated questions about whether his promises make sense in terms of, you know, math.

After all, a core claim of the Romney campaign is this: “Getting our fiscal house in order has become more than just an economic issue; it’s a moral imperative.” As a Bowles-Simpson-style deficit hawk, I appreciate the sentiment about reducing the generational theft of deficits and debt. It’s the policy hypocrisy I can’t stand.

So for the moment, let’s put aside the very reasonable question about whether Mitt can simultaneously cut taxes 20 percent, and keep the cuts revenue-neutral by closing unspecified loopholes, all while progressivity in place. Let’s assume he’s a wizard, as Jon Stewart suggests and move to something even more contradictory and concrete—military spending.

As you nervously pour over swing-state presidential polls, don’t forget to factor in one crucial variable—the rest of the statewide ticket. 

Call it down-ticket coattails. Because President Obama and Mitt Romney are not running in a vacuum. They are going to fly with or against prevailing winds in each swing state. And if a statewide senatorial or gubernatorial candidate is riding high, it makes the hurdle the presidential candidate has to clear in a tight race that much steeper or easier, depending on the down-ticket dynamic. 

Take a closer look at the three biggest swing states at stake this year: Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. All three have Senate races in play. And while the presidential polls are tightening, the Senate races are not nearly as close. 

Mitt Romney’s debate debut of his new, centrist political persona may be no deeper than an Etch-a-Sketch drawing, but it might prove effective. After all, elections in America are won by the candidate who connects best with centrists and independents, the quintessential swing voters.

But in an important and little-noticed new trend, centrists and independents this year have changed from nearly identical to become two very different groups.

For months, the once and apparently future Massachusetts Moderate has been getting crushed by President Obama among self-identified centrist voters—trailing by about 20 points, 36 percent to 58 percent, according to the mid-September Pew Survey and and 39 percent to 57 percent according to a late September poll by ABC News and The Washington Post. 

Brand new data on super-PAC spending is out courtesy of the Wesleyan Media Project, and conservative groups are still considerably outspending liberal organizations, despite an overall ad-buy advantage from the Obama campaign over the Romney campaign as the Tsunami of Sleaze rolls through our airwaves on to Election Day 2012.

TV ads by nondisclosing dark-money 501(c)(4)s are keeping up with super-PAC spending in these final weeks, with the combined totals almost matching Team Mitt’s overall ad spending.

And in several key swing-state Senate races, independent groups account for more than 50 percent of all the advertising money spent. 

For example, in September the Karl Rove–backed super PAC American Crossroads and its 501(c)(4) arm Crossroads GPS spent almost $15 million in ads, compared with $19 million spent by the Romney campaign and dwarfing the $2 million spent by the Romney-affiliated super PAC Restore Our Future, which had previously raised more money than any other group this cycle. 

October Surprise. It’s defined by Safire’s Political Dictionary as a “last minute disruption before a November election; unexpected political stunt or revelation that could affect an election’s outcome.” 

America was treated to a lame attempt to manufacture just such a stunt last night with the live re-release on Hannity of a speech the president gave in 2007, promoted all day with banners at the Drudge Report and housed on the Daily Caller website.

The speech—originally broadcast on Fox on June 5, 2007—caused a minor stir at the time, commemorated in this column by Roland Martin, but it had largely been forgotten in the wake of two presidential campaigns and almost four years of actions in the White House.

Let’s be honest: It is a naked attempt to reinsert race into the election, trying to stoke the fires too many folks on the far right have been fanning since Obama first ran for president—arguing that he is not a “metrosexual black Abe Lincoln” (in the immortal words of Fred Davis’s emotionally aligned super-PAC pitch to Joe Ricketts) but a Black Panther radical in disguise who secretly hates white people and America (which is why he’s always apologizing for it). The alternative is to “let America be America again”—by any means necessary.   

President Obama can be, if anything, overrated as an orator. Some of his heavily hyped speeches—such as his Charlotte convention address—fall flat or fall short.

That was not the case with his U.N. address Tuesday.

Certainly, the stakes were high—two weeks after the murder of the first American ambassador since 1979, his killers still at large, and the hope of the Arab Spring given to shadows and fog.

Against this backdrop, while world leaders met yesterday at the General Assembly, the president seemed in campaign mode—making time for the ladies of The View but not for Prime Minister Netanyahu or Egypt’s newly elected leader Mohammad Morsi. Moreover, his administration’s statements in the wake of ambassador Chris Stevens’s death have been confused and at times contradictory.