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(Continued from page 42)
• "He gave them no confidence whatsoever that he has any plan to make America's economy start to create the jobs it ought to be creating," Romney said Friday, critiquing Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
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Americans safer now than 4 years ago; terrorism worries take back seat in campaigns
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- As Americans debate whether they are better off now than they were four years ago, there is another question with a somewhat easier answer: Are you safer now than you were when President Barack Obama took office?
• By most measures, the answer is yes.
• More than a decade after terrorists slammed planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside, Americans have stopped fretting daily about a possible attack or stockpiling duct tape and water, and the slogs through airport security have become a routine irritation, not a grim foreboding.
• While the threat of a terror attack has not disappeared, the combined military, intelligence, diplomatic and financial efforts to hobble al-Qaida and its affiliates have escalated over the past four years and have paid off. Top terror leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are dead and their networks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia disrupted.
• In some cases, the Obama White House simply continued or escalated programs and policies begun by the Republican administration of George W. Bush. But Obama implemented a more aggressive drone campaign to target top terror leaders, broadening efforts to help at-risk nations beef up their own defenses, and implemented plans to end the war in Iraq and bring troops out of Afghanistan.
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Matchup of the fall political season: Obama vs. Romney in 3 debates, all in October
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Finally, the fall season offers the matchup sure to attract the biggest audience of the campaign: President Barack Obama goes one-on-one with Republican rival Mitt Romney in three prime-time debates.
• Typically the top political draw in the final sprint to Election Day, the debates assume outsized importance this year with the race a dead heat. The two polished candidates will have their sound bites and rhetoric down cold so any slip or inadver (Continued on page 44)
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