Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama laugh as Romney gets up to address the 67th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a charity gala organized by the Archdiocese of New York, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
A night of humor _ after day of campaign criticism
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama laugh as Romney gets up to address the 67th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a charity gala organized by the Archdiocese of New York, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
By JIM KUHNHENN
Associated Press /
October 18, 2012
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‘‘I don’t think they were just sketchy,’’ Biden said at a rally in Las Vegas. ‘‘I think they were Etch-a-Sketchy.’’
Obama and Biden are to campaign together next Tuesday in Ohio after Monday night’s debate.
On Libya, Obama has faced scrutiny for shifting explanations of what happened. He pushed back on ‘‘The Daily Show.’’
‘‘We weren’t confused about the fact that four Americans had been killed,’’ Obama said.
‘‘I wasn’t confused about the fact that we needed to ramp up diplomatic security. ... I wasn’t confused about the fact that we had to investigate exactly happened so it gets fixed. And I wasn’t confused about the fact that we’re going to hunt down whoever did it and bring them to justice,’’ the president said.
On another national security issue, Obama said he still wants to close the prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a big unmet promise of his 2008 campaign. The effort was blocked by Congress, which passed a law prohibiting the government from moving prisoners to the U.S. for detention or trial.
On the celebrity front, Obama picked up the endorsement of rock star Bruce Springsteen, who also backed the Democrat in 2008 and Thursday campaigned for him in Ohio with former President Bill Clinton.
‘‘For 30 years I've been writing about the distance between the American dream and American reality,’’ Springsteen said, reading from a statement on his music stand. ‘‘Our vote is the one principal way we get to determine that distance.’’
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Associated Press writers Nedra Pickler and Ken Thomas in Washington, Thomas Beaumont in Norfolk, Va., and Tamara Lush in Ocala, Fla., contributed to this report.
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