President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speak during the second presidential debate. Credit: Associated Press

In the debate between President Barack Obama and President Barack Obama - President Barack Obama won on Tuesday night.

The Obama of Debate 1 looked as if he didn't want to be there, raising questions about whether he really wanted to remain president. He was foggy and slow; he looked like he had taken a double dose of Benadryl.

But the Obama who showed up Tuesday night at Hofstra University was fully caffeinated. He was feisty, quick on his feet. He challenged Gov. Mitt Romney's assertions from the beginning. He scored points. The liberal base was thrilled.

How much does this matter? Quite a lot. If Obama hadn't done well, the story line that had played in the media for 13 agonizing days for the liberals would have continued. Poll after poll showed that Romney's well-received performance in the first debate helped him. But on Tuesday, Obama may have blunted Romney's rise by rising to the occasion in a way that clearly he did not on Oct. 3 in Denver.

Even so, Obama has yet to lay out a clear agenda for a second term. What does he want to do? What are his goals for the country? We wish we knew.

And yet Romney did himself no favors by fumbling a key GOP attack line - on the administration's handling of the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya - which may blunt future efforts to raise the issue.

Here was the moment: Romney thought he had caught Obama in a fib when the president said, "I stood in the Rose Garden, and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror."

Said Romney: "I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror."

Moderator Candy Crowley of CNN corrected the governor. The president did, in fact, use those words, she said.

Obama said that morning: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for."

But it's also true that the administration continued to indicate for days that the attack was spurred by a video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad. And whatever Obama did or didn't say, his administration still hasn't explained how the consulate came to be so poorly protected, a tragic lapse that left four Americans dead, including one of this nation's finest diplomats.

Unfortunately for Romney, he muffed his chance and didn't pursue those lines of argument.

Earlier in the same exchange, Obama, with a look of utter contempt for Romney, looked the governor in the eye and said this:

"And the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the secretary of state, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we've lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. That's not what we do. That's not what I do as president. That's not what I do as commander in chief."

If debates are about moments, that was the moment when the challenger lost his edge.

While Romney has no foreign policy experience, and at times has showed it, he has staked out positions in certain key theaters around the world that are tougher and more cognizant of real politick than has Obama.

Overall, we think Obama has successfully "reset" U.S. relations with the nation's friends around the world. But when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian question and U.S. policy toward Syria, a firmer hand is needed.

There will be another debate on Monday at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. The topic: foreign policy. Romney will get another chance to make a stronger case. But he may never get a better chance than was handed to him Tuesday night.