President Bill Clinton said such a confrontational approach would be a mistake. Mr. Clinton, who had appeared with Mr. Obama at a donor meeting in Los Angeles on Sunday, raised the issue when talking to a group of donors the next morning. He noted that the next debate has a town-hall format, with questions from voters.
“He said that his advice would be to directly engage the audience members and make it about their lives,” said one Obama donor in attendance. “He emphasized that if either of them really tries to take a question and use it to attack the other, that’s going to come across poorly.”…
Mr. Obama acknowledges his poor performance, aides say, but no one is hitting the panic button. “He understands that he needs to do better,” one senior aide said of Mr. Obama.
Obama campaign aides said the president needs to come up with snappier retorts in the next debate while bringing more energy to the occasion. They say they knew this was a challenge from the beginning, given Mr. Obama’s penchant for lengthy, nuanced answers.
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