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Way, just sort of more amped, more assertive. and that manifests in a way that the debate format was just dismantled. the format and i think the moderator, with all due respect to mr. lehrer dismantled. this is one of those debates, you could predict the score more by time of possession in terms of who was speaking more. then you could by any other individual plays. let me bring in steve schmidt who is a senior strategist. what's your overall assessment? >> i think it was a great night for mitt romney. i think the doom and gloom that's been hanging over the romney campaign, republicans in gene...

Country and where the president would here is ryan. >> he needs to give the american people the choice we are offering. that's what we are doing. we owe the country a very clear choice of a different future. we can either have a dynamic growing economy that produces opportunity or we can have a stagnant economy that fosters dependency. >> and this debate format is going to be different for the governor as well. out of 23 debates he has never, shep, had a one-on-one like he will on wednesday. >> shepard: while they are trying to lower expectations here some surrogates and some aren't. >> exactl...

On the tax loophole question, that paul ryan stumbled and stammered through when on fox news yesterday, there are openings available but the problem, at least that we're hearing, chris, from the obama team, is they're worried his answers will be too long and not crisp and concise. >> well, you know, having watched the president both when he was a candidate for president and as a candidate in the primaries, he's -- he has a tendency to filibuster his answers and kind of -- they kind of meander. i think his debate team is advising correctly to keep things focused and tight if you have a debate f...

The romney from bain or the romney from nordquist or the neocons? >> the interesting thing about the debate format is each candidate is going to be given a lot of time to answer some of these basic questions. that may not be good for romney. you get the sense, particularly on health care, while governor romney of 2003 could give a good ten-minute answer on health care and what he thought about it, what he wanted to do about it, what he had accomplished in massachusetts, how can mitt romney talk for five minutes on health care, even like 90 seconds without saying something that contradicts some...

The ways in which we think of barack obama as being eloquent is usually in large set piece orations that go on for 20 or 30 minutes which is different from the sharp comeback that he sometimes has been able to master but sometimes it takes him longer to get the answer out than you want in a debate format. but in this setting, that could work better for him than it did four years ago. >> james, thank you very much for being here. >> thank you. up next, the good, the bad and the ugly. our teasing finally comes to an end. we're finally going to talk clint eastwood. stay tuned. two years ago, th...