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Michelle Obama (L) and Ann Romney (R) embrace prior to their husbands' debate in Denver, Colorado/AFP

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Romney, Obama clash on tax, economy in first debate

“Two wars that were paid for on a credit card. Two tax cuts that were not paid for. And a whole bunch of programs not paid for and then a massive economic crisis.”

After hundreds of campaign stops, $500 million in mostly negative ads and countless tit-for-tat attacks, Obama and Romney were going head to head in their debut debate.

Minutes before Jim Lehrer of PBS NewsHour asked the first question, First Lady Michelle Obama, in a blue-violet jacket, and would-be first lady Ann Romney exchanged a polite kiss in the packed University of Denver auditorium.

Both candidates had completed walkthroughs of the venue hours before the first of three televised showdowns just 33 days before American voters decide their fates.

Obama clings to a narrow lead in his bid to defy the omens sown by a stubbornly sluggish economic recovery and to become only the second Democrat since World War II to win a second term.

Romney, down in almost all the key battleground states that will decide who wins the 270 electoral votes needed to win on November 6, seeks a sharp change of momentum in a race that seems to be slipping away from him.

The debate was set to focus on economic issues but veteran anchor Lehrer, who was steering the debate for tens of millions of viewers at home, had leeway to bring up other subjects.

That means Obama, 51, could face a grilling on his administration’s shifting account of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11.

Romney, a multi-millionaire former venture capitalist, could come under scrutiny over his complex offshore tax arrangements, which Democrats have highlighted to press the case that he is indifferent to middle-class struggles.

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