He waited all of 45 seconds to make clear he came not just ready for a fight but ready to pick one.
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Mitt Romney and President Obama clashed frequently during the town hall-style debate at Hofstra University. Mr. Obama repeatedly accused his opponent of being untruthful. More Photos »
President Obama, who concluded that he was "too polite" in his first debate with Mitt Romney, made sure no one would say that after their second. He interrupted, he scolded, he filibustered, he shook his head.
He tried to talk right over Mr. Romney, who tried to talk over him back. The president who waited patiently for his turn last time around forced his way into Mr. Romney's time this time. At one point, he squared off with Mr. Romney face to face, almost chest to chest, in the middle of the stage, as if they were roosters in a ring.
"What Governor Romney said just isn't true."
"Not true, Governor Romney, not true."
"What you're saying is just not true."
For a president teetering on the edge of a single term, making a more forceful case at Hofstra University on Long Island on Tuesday night could hardly have been more imperative. Thirteen days after he took presidential decorum to a Xanax extreme, he tucked away a dinner of steak and potatoes and then went out on stage with plenty of red meat for anxious supporters.
Whether it will decisively reroute the course of the campaign remains to be seen, but the president emerged from the encounter having settled nerves within his panicky party and claiming a new chance to frame the race with just three weeks left.
Heading into the evening, the Obama camp said that he needed at least a draw to mute the commotion over the first debate and drain some of the potential drama from the final meeting next Monday. But the risk, of course, was that an acerbic confrontation could turn off the very swing voters he covets.
The strategy for Tuesday night was clear: undercut Mr. Romney's character and credibility by portraying him as lying about his true positions on issues like taxes and abortion. Time and again, Mr. Obama questioned whether the man on stage with him was the same "severely conservative" candidate who tacked right in the Republican primaries.
He painted Mr. Romney as a tool of big oil who is soft on China, hard on immigrants, politically crass on Libya and two-faced on guns and energy. He deployed many of the attack lines that went unused in Denver, going after Mr. Romney's business record, his personal income taxes and, in the debate's final minutes, his comments about the 47 percent of Americans he once deemed too dependent on government.
"Governor Romney doesn't have a five-point plan," Mr. Obama charged. "He has a one-point plan," which is to help the rich, he said.
He mocked Mr. Romney by noting that he once closed a coal plant as the governor of Massachusetts. "Now suddenly you're a big champion of coal," he said.
As for trade, he said, "Governor, you're the last person who's going to get tough on China."
And he pressed Mr. Romney for not disclosing how he would pay for his tax and deficit reduction goals. "We haven't heard from the governor any specifics beyond Big Bird and eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood," he said.
Mr. Romney held his own and gave as good as he got, presenting Mr. Obama as a failed president who has piled on trillions of dollars of debt, left millions of Americans without work, bungled security for American personnel in Libya, done nothing to reform entitlement programs and deserted a middle class "crushed under the policies of a president who has not understood what it takes to get the economy working again."
But it was Mr. Obama who was the central story line of the night, his performance coming across as a striking contrast to that of his first face-off with Mr. Romney. For days leading up to Tuesday night's encounter, Mr. Obama huddled in a Virginia resort with advisers to practice a more aggressive approach without appearing somehow inauthentic or crossing over a line of presidential dignity. It was a line he would stride up to repeatedly over the course of more than 90 minutes, and some will argue that he slipped over it at times.
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