President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney debated in the final presidential debate of 2012 on Monday night. (AP)

“Both candidates showed themselves to be presidential,” Ben Voth, chair of SMU Communications Studies, said.

According to Voth, Monday’s third and final presidential debate proved both candidates to have “strong argumentation skills that were more focused and substantiated than typical.”

President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney faced off before moderator Bob Schieffer at Lynn University during the final session of the debate series.

“This series of four debates will likely stand as the largest ongoing audience of televised debates in 50 years,” Voth said.
With “more than 50 million viewers [watching] each of the debates,” Voth said that Monday’s debate was a prime opportunity for either candidate to make their final strides in gaining voter support.

“Both men seem to retain prospects for winning and it is unclear if Obama has sufficiently dented the momentum gained by Gov. Romney in [the first] debate,” Voth said.

Monday night opened with questions regarding the Libyan embassy attacks – which was also a heated topic during the previous debate.

Accusing Obama of not actively preventing terrorist attacks such as the one in Libya, Romney made clear that he wants “to make sure that we’re seeing progress throughout the Middle East.”

“My strategy’s pretty straightforward: go after the bad guys,” Romney said.

 The president did not hold back in his rebuttal when calling out Romney on what he viewed as the Romney campaign vacillating significantly between assertions and solutions.

“I know you haven’t been in a position to actually execute foreign policy, but every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong,” Obama said.

Schieffer extended the time for discussion of this facet of foreign policy, and both candidates submitted volleys and pointed responses to their opponent.

 While there were moments of heated volley and argument between both candidates, Romney seemed to take a less-assertive approach throughout most of the foreign policy-focused session.

“Romney appeared to offer a strategic loss in this debate designed to confirm the discretion of the commander in chief on foreign policy,” Voth said. “[He] allowed the president to have the upper hand in the debate [while] retaining the persona of a competent challenger.”

But Romney did not back down when justifying the U.S. as an essential world leader.

“It appears that this was a strategy and may have been designed to further consolidate [Romney’s] gains among independent voters who would be offended by [foreign policy] attacks on a sitting president,” Voth said.

Romney said that for America to fulfill its role in the world, “America must lead.”

“I absolutely believe that America has a responsibility and the privilege of helping defend freedom and promote principles that make the world more peaceful,” Romney said.

Obama echoed such sentiments, saying that his presidency had, in fact, established America as such leader. When the focus shifted to the Syrian conflict, Obama justified his cabinet’s success strategies.

“We are making sure that those we help are those who will be friends of our in the long term,” he said.

As the session continued and the candidates furthered their articulation of policies and future plans, Obama singled out Romney’s policies as “wrong and reckless,” accusing him of never having definite, proposed solutions.

“Governor Romney has taken a different approach throughout this campaign,” Obama said.

Romney brushed the accusations off, reassuring his audiences that he did, in fact, have strategies in place to move the country forward.

“I’ve got a policy for the future and agenda for the future,” he said.

Voth said that while many hot buttons regarding foreign policy were hit Monday night, it is still the one topic many Americans “may not find so important just two weeks before the election.”

“Neither candidate scored a knockout punch to disqualify their adversary,” Voth said.

 And in regards to Romney’s “relatively mild strategy” of sidelining aggressive rebuttals regarding foreign policy, Voth said only “time will tell” if it was effective.

“It appears candidate Romney may have lost the war on foreign policy to win the battleground states,” Voth said.