Angry Obama comes out fighting in second televised Presidential debate

Mr Obama blasted Mr Romney’s economic plans as damaging to the middle class and accused him of flip-flopping on issues like energy and gun control.

He appeared angry – a rare emotion seen in the famously cool Mr Obama – when Mr Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, criticised his response to the deadly attack that killed the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans at the US Consulate in Benghazi last month.

The stakes of the town hall-style debate at Hofstra University, just outside New York, could not have been higher. With just three weeks to go before Election Day, the race is locked in a dead heat and many Americans are already casting ballots in early voting.

Mr Romney said the middle class “has been crushed over the last four years”, and that 23 million Americans are struggling to find work.

And in one fiery exchange, he described the deadly Libya attack as part of an unravelling of the administration’s foreign policy.

He claimed it took Mr Obama a long time to admit the episode was a terrorist attack, but Mr Obama said he had said so the day after at the White House.

When moderator Candy Crowley of CNN confirmed the president had in fact done so, Mr Obama, prompted: “Say that a little louder, Candy.”

Mr Obama was aggressive from the start. He criticised Mr Romney’s opposition to the bailout of the car industry and rejected Mr Romney’s economic proposals as squeezing the middle class.

“Governor Romney says he’s got a five-point plan. Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan. He has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules,” Mr Obama said.

The debate was before an audience of 80 uncommitted voters selected by the Gallup Organisation who posed questions.