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Signs are seen inside the media center as preparations continue for the second presidential debate in New York/AFP

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In second debate, can Obama bounce back?

National Review columnist Charles Krauthammer said Romney had engineered the “biggest rout since Agincourt” and asked “Can this be the hip, cool, in-control guy his acolytes and the media have been telling us about?”

Critics said Obama was exposed as unused to cross examination after four years in the White House bubble and was disdainful of others and his Rocky Mountain low in Denver wrought swift political damage.

Romney overtook the president in national polls and undermined him in battleground states that will decide the election.

The Obama who showed up in Denver, a sometimes detached figure who chafes at the trivialities of day-to-day politics, was familiar to people who have seen him at close quarters, but television viewers met him for the first time in Denver.

Aides say the president hates artifice and he appeared to bristle at the fake gladitorial nature of a debate against a foe he disdains.

During a mostly charmed political life, Obama has sometimes stumbled into similar trouble, only to rescue himself with a grand political gesture.

In December 2007, he seemed to be meandering to defeat to Hillary Clinton in Democratic primaries.

During a mostly charmed political life, Obama has sometimes stumbled into similar trouble, only to rescue himself with a grand political gesture.

But with an electrifying speech at an Iowa Democratic party dinner, the president revived his campaign.

When racially charged rhetoric of his pastor Jeremiah Wright, threatened to derail his White House hopes: Obama produced a seminal speech on race.

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As president, Obama dragged health reform through Congress after a passionate rallying call to Democratic lawmakers, then bounced back from a Republican rout in 2010 mid-term elections and seemed poised for re-election.

But on Tuesday he will not been in his rhetorical comfort zone making a speech, but in the treacherous high wire act of a televised debate.

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