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He was by accident. What Romney and Obama were talking about during the debate was an interview Mitt had given prior.

In that interview he was talking about going all Reagan like with being antagonistic to Russia and Iran. His view on foreign policy was Obama should be gearing up for war. Building more boats, tanks, bombs to out spend enemies like Ronnie did. Negotiating with Iran was a waste of time. Let's just bomb people kinda stuff.

Which was stupid. It was usual tough guy GOP foreign policy junk. When at the time soft power was working just fine. And even the EU felt Medvedev was being a reasonable partner. Romney was even specifically trying to twist Obama's hot mic comments to Medvedev about negotiating after the election as selling out America.

In 2012 soft power and talking out differences was getting somewhere. Which is why Romney was roundly lambasted for acting like the US should preemptively go back to Cold War style of dealing with adversaries. That approach would have guaranteed the kind of response that has happened for different reasons.

Additional tl;dr summary thought. Obama was already in the war time President role. Romney attempting to look tougher, staked out a ludicrous position. Including claiming the US should be spending 4% of GDP on the military.