U.S. President Obama, Cardinal Timothy Dolan center, Archbishop of New York, and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney attend the 67th annual Al Smith dinner at the Waldorf Astoria hotel Thursday in New York.(Photo: Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK -- Switching from jabs to
jokes, President Obama and Mitt Romney set aside an evening between
debates to make fun of themselves and each other during one of the few
other campaign rituals that brings the candidates together on stage.
Each
appeared back-to-back at an annual fundraiser run by the Roman Catholic
Archdiocese of New York, the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation
Dinner, which has hosted presidential candidates since Dwight Eisenhower
in 1952. Though they dress formally, the candidates go for laughs.
Romney
cracked that the white-tie-and-tails event made him feel right at home
because "I can finally relax and wear what Ann and I wear around the
house." Obama, he said, would look at the well-heeled crowd and think
"So little time, so much to redistribute."
In
another pointed joke at his opponent, Romney said that with the most
recent drop in the unemployment rate, Obama's new slogan is "You're
better off now than you were four weeks ago" and that Obama's speech is
"brought to you by the letter O and 16 trillion."
Obama took on
Romney's wealth: "I went shopping today at some stores in Midtown. Mitt
Romney went shopping for some stores in Midtown."
The president
mocked his own anemic performance in the first debate: "There are worst
things that can happen to you on your anniversary than forgetting to buy
a gift." And he previewed the upcoming foreign policy debate on Monday:
"Spoiler alert: We got bin Laden."
Cardinal Dolan,
archbishop of New York, who hosted the event, was criticized by some
Catholics for inviting Obama because of the church's opposition to the
administration's requirement that employer health insurance cover
contraception.
After the tense exchanges of this week's debate -
likely to be repeated in the final debate - the campaigns turned
Thursday to a softer sell: Ann Romney appeared on a daytime talk show,
Bruce Springsteen performed at an Obama rally with former president Bill
Clinton, and Obama talked to political satirist Jon Stewart on The
Daily Show. Michelle Obama appears today on Live with Kelly and Michael.
With
Stewart, Obama joked that he had to issue a presidential directive to
stop Vice President Biden from attending meetings clad only in a wet
bathing suit, but he turned serious in defense of his administration's
handling of the attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador.
"What happens, during the course of a presidency, is that the
government is a big operation, and any given time something screws up.
And you make sure that you find out what's broken and you fix it," Obama
said.
The administration's explanation of what happened has
shifted, but Obama said, "Every piece of information that we get - as we
got it - we laid it out to the American people." He acknowledged flaws
in communication and security. "When four Americans get killed, it's not
optimal." he said. "We're going to fix it. All of it."
Romney
canceled plans to appear with his wife on The View, but son Josh went
along and told viewers his brother Tagg "didn't mean it" when he said he
wanted to take a swing at Obama during Tuesday's debate. Besides, he
added, Tagg "has slugged me a couple times - I assure you President
Obama has nothing to worry about."
Today, Obama campaigns in Virginia, and Romney in Florida.
USA Today