FOXNews.com: Campaigns Push for Underdog Status

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Campaigns Push for Underdog Status Sep 29th 2012, 14:53 The upcoming presidential debates are a final milestone in the 2012 presidential race between Mitt Romney and President Obama, who after months of challenging each other from afar meet in the kind of face-to-face conversation that can swing an election. As proof of the debates' importance, both campaigns have worked furiously over the past several days to create the perfect framework for the first debate Wednesday. Each has billing their candidate as the underdog, should he under perform, and the other as the more-skilled debater, the perfect setup to pounce on a poor showing.  "I don't know how to raise or lower expectations," Romney told Fox News this week. "The president is a very eloquent, gifted speaker. He'll do just fine. I've never been in a presidential debate like this and it will be a new experience." Juleanna Glover, a founding partner of the Ashcroft Group and former Dick Cheney spokeswoman, said managing expectations for such a debate and "heralding the opponent" are really matters of common sense but failing to do so would be political "malpractice" on the part of either camp. This will be Romney's first presidential debate, after failing in 2008 to win the Republican nomination. But he arrives after having just debated nearly 50 hours over the course of 20 primary debates. He also arrives at the first debate, in Denver, on the topic of domestic policy, neck-and-neck with Obama in most nationwide polls, but trailing by double-digits in recent polls for battleground states -- crucial in both candidates' quest for the White House. Unlike the primary debates in which Romney entered as the frontrunner and relied on a strategy of steady performances as the deep field of challenges surged, then either fizzled or imploded, he will likely have to outperform the president to close the gaps – including as much as 10 points in Ohio, according to a Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll released Wednesday. "I think he'd going to have to perform solidly," Glover said. "He's going to have to provide some humor – as well as the knockout punch." Still, Glover argues that no matter how many well rehearsed lines Romney might have that could add to the "lexicon of American politics" and the perfect setup lines to precede them, some perfect opportunity might just come down to serendipity. "Whether such opportunities present themselves is a different story," she said. Both campaigns set out memorandums Friday touting the challenger. And he Obama campaign, in an attempt to minimize expectations, has said the president is an exceptional yet long-winded orator.    "Gov. Romney is a very skilled debater," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told The Wall Street Journal. "So clearly the governor has the advantage." Another Obama campaign strategy has been to point out that the president, with all of his official duties, has had less time to practice than Romney, who with Ohio Sen. Rob Portman playing the president has had several mock debates and his expected to spend much of the weekend in final preparation. Meanwhile, Obama has reportedly met just a few times in Washington with Romney stand-in Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry.

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