Or, as Bill Clinton would say, it is better to be wrong and strong than right and weak.

Obama isn't going to come out angry per se, he can't be seen as the Angry Black Guy.  He can be the reasonable, realistic black guy, which I think he has been at his strongest in political situations (think debt ceiling negotiation press conferences).  I don't think you have to come off as angry to poke holes in what Romney is saying, anyway.  He doesn't have to take it personally, he just has to flummox Romney and make Romney look like the snide person he has presented himself to be for most of the campaign.  IMO anyway.

Biden can probably be a lot angrier, if that is needed.  Overall I would assume the Obama team is meticulously polling in swing states and nationally to determine what people are looking for from the President.  What they find is what we're going to get.

I just felt he was hamstrung by too much 'debate-itis'.

That said, it was a damned shame that he and several thousand of his fellow soldiers were sent on a fool's errand to the Ia Drang Valley by Gen. William Westmoreland back in Nov. 1965. The Battle of Ia Drang was a bloody but inconclusive five-day engagement which marked the formal commencement of active and large-scale U.S. ground combat operations in the Vietnam War, and cost Americans a lot of casualties -- 236 dead, 258 wounded and 4 missing.

Because Ia Drang ultimately proved to be one of the very few set-piece battles of the Vietnam War, one could argue both plausibly and in painfully obvious retrospect that our own U.S. high command took away the wrong lessons entirely from that first sharp encounter with a determined North Vietnamese Army, which ultimately cost this country very dearly over the long term.

In large part because American forces had inflicted thousands of causualties on the NVA there, including well over 1,000 dead, Gen. Westmoreland wasted the better part of the next three years with repeated but fruitless attempts to re-create the conditions that brought about that particular engagement in the first place, seeking the type of battle where the U.S. superiority in firepower and equipment could be decisive.

More ominously, the Battle of Ia Drang caused Westmoreland to both measure and quantify U.S. battlefield success in terms of NVA / VC body counts.

This was an enormously consequential error on Westmoreland's part, especially in the face of a resolute enemy who was perfectly willing to sustain enormous losses in manpower in order to accomplish his long-term goal of wearing the American people down and compelling our own eventual military withdrawal from Vietnam.

Meanwhile, for their part, the North Vietnamese command in Hanoi learned from their own bitter experience at Ia Drang that it was generally wise to avoid giving battle to American forces at the dates, times and places of the U.S. command's own choosing, where the overwhelming superiority of U.S. firepower could be brought so readily to bear.

Further, that battle taught the NVA command that said U.S. firepower could be greatly offset by the willingness of NVA regulars to move directly upon the enemy lines of battle, and actively engage American troops in close-quarter combat.

By adopting such tactics and accepting the prospect of suffering huge casualties if necessary, NVA soldiers and Viet Cong guerrillas could and did significantly neutralize the U.S. preponderance in air power and mobility, armor and artillery.

Their hit-and-run tactics of infiltration and enfilation, followed by a prompt withdrawal once the pre-determined objective was attained, tended to focus primarily on U.S. lines of supply and communication, and tried to avoid specific American troop concentrations whenever and wherever possible.

In so doing, NVA and VC forces were able to lure American troops time and again out of their heavily fortified compounds and into the jungles and mountains, where the U.S. superiority in air power and armor was greatly mitigated if not altogether compromised by the Americans' likelihood of engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy in delta wetlands and mountainous terrain under dense canopies of trees, tall grasses and thick brush.

Bill is better in a mud fight because he cut his teeth in a red state and had to run against GOP nuts for governor. This is a DISTINCT advantage Romney has over Obama having run for Governor in MA where he had to convince a lot of left leaning people to vote for him.

Obama has been skilled at getting opponents to drop out or getting them off the ballot but of course that is not going to work this time. He's never Had to run against a serous GOP candidate.

...it is easy to win debates if you lie a lot.