President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney debated domestic policy almost as much as they did foreign policy during the third and final presidential debate Monday night in Lynn University, Boca Raton.

Obama's barbs and policy clashes define the final debate

Obama delivered some of the harshest lines of the night, inspiring "horses and bayonets" memes across the Internet after he mocked Romney's criticism that "our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917":

"Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater — nuclear submarines":

Here's a selection of the reaction from NBC News analysts and others:

Brian Williams, anchor of 'NBC Nightly News'
"We always try to look for the phrase or expression that will live forever out of these. Tonight's has to be 'horses and bayonets.' It was during an exchange where, clearly, the president's effort was to paint Governor Romney, paint the debate as kind of a past-versus-future framing. It was specifically about the military — the governor's assertion we had fewer ships as a Navy than at any time since (1917) — a very sharp comeback from the president."

Tom Brokaw, NBC News
"What we saw tonight was Governor Romney trying to move to a less hawkish position, talking much more about winning hearts and minds than he has in the past.

"If you could have said to one of the two candidates, 'Nice tie,' he would have said, 'Yes, let me talk to you about the economy.' They got back to that subject as quickly as possible, because they know that's where the big interests of the country are.

"When it comes to foreign policy, these are very complex issues, and there are no shake-and-bake kinds of answers to them. No one has talked, for example, about the European economy and the impact it's having on our domestic economy."

David Gregory, moderator, 'Meet the Press'
"Our colleague Tom Brokaw likes to talk about voters' watching an event like this and imagining either the president or his challenger as commander-in-chief, in the Oval Office. Obviously, a sitting president has already passed that threshold test, and I think you saw President Obama trying to make it very clear that Mitt Romney, in his judgment, was not up to the test. talking about his positions' being all over the map, talking about the fact that you've never had to execute on foreign policy decisions, talking about what I've learned as commander-in-chief.

"You also saw the president determined to pick a fight ... with Governor Romney and Romney surprisingly determined to avoid a fight, playing almost as if he was ahead, determined to sound more moderate, to disagree less with the president on foreign policy.

"Where were the bright shining distinctions between these two men tonight?"

Savannah Guthrie, NBC News
"This was absolutely the Romney strategy going into this debate — to majorly tone down the rhetoric, and at times, as David observed, it seemed the president was spoiling for a fight. He wanted to draw the contrast.

"Romney, it was clear from the very first answer, wasn't going to be the Romney we've seen on the campaign trail, known for those stinging criticisms of the president on a whole host of areas of foreign policy. He was asked about Benghazi, Libya — something we've heard Romney go hard after the president on the campaign trail — but he didn't take the bait from the very first answer. Instead, Romney advisers said they wanted him to come across as measured, as moderate, as somebody who has an understanding of the foreign policy issues with some depth.

Vote: Did the final debate influence whom you'll support?

"There were times during this debate where it seemed Romney was almost delivering a book report on the hot spots of the world. (He was) clearly trying to show that he will not be caricatured as a warmonger, somebody who engages in cowboy rhetoric. But the president, by the same token, (was) determined to remind him of his past statements."

Truth Squad: The third and final presidential debate

Richard Haass, president, Council on Foreign Relations
"I found all of this somewhat odd. But again, to me, the larger bottom line of the night was that on foreign policy issues, there was actually much more agreement than disagreement.

"I found it striking how both gentlemen were talking about things domestic. Here it was a foreign policy debate, and they both kept coming back to what were the real bases of American strength: 'Enough nation building overseas; now we need to start nation building at home.' That to me was a consistent theme, and I think they're both reflecting what they're hearing and seeing out around the country."

George Pataki, former governor of New York
"When the president stands up there and says we need to put some distance between ourselves and Israel, I think you're making a very clear statement. As Governor Romney effectively pointed out tonight, on that first trip he visits Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, he goes to Iraq, but skips our closest ally. That sends a message not just to the Middle East but to the globe about Israel's standing in this administration.

"Talk about changing policies — it was President Obama's administration that fought tooth and nail to delay the sanctions that he's bragging about tonight. It was Congress that said to the president, because of the support of the American people, we're going to make sure we have these things.

"Governor Romney today pointed out differences on Iran where he would be far more aggressive on sanctions, and the president again — revisionist history — it was President Obama who, when the Green Revolution was happening in Iran, when Iranian students were holding up signs saying, 'America, help us,' this president was the one who sat on the sideline and did nothing.

"This is a president who forever in his speech was talking about how al-Qaida is on the run. Well, he's dropped that. ...

"I'm proud of Governor Romney tonight. I think he did an excellent job."

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Obama's practice debate opponent
"If you're a leader in the world, you're scratching your head tonight saying, 'How could the American people possibly elect a guy who has changed his position every few months and doesn't know what he's going to do in foreign policy?'

"I thought I was listening to the Wikipedia candidate tonight. (Romney) would say, 'Oh, there are Taliban in Pakistan. They have nuclear weapons.' But what's the policy, Governor? What are you going to do that is different? How are you going to — nothing. Absolutely nothing. Which is why I tweeted that they sunk the battleship.

"Take the ships. As a Navy guy, when I was in the Navy, we had 680-something ships. There's not anybody that questions today that our Navy is the most powerful on the seas, that we don't have the most powerful military in the world. We spent more, as the president said tonight, than the next 10 nations in the world — China, Russia, Great Britain, France all put together — we spend more. ...

"I have to tell you: I was stunned. Mitt Romney scares — he really scared me tonight. I mean, this is a guy, if people think he's ready to be president, this country's going to go back to the Bush policies that took us to Iraq."

Slideshow: Twin sons of different parties

From tramping through cornfields to munching ice cream cones to holding babies – the time-honored traditions of the campaign trail leave President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney looking surprisingly alike.

Launch slideshow

ST. CHARLES, Mo. – One day after Rep. Todd Akin vowed to stay in the race for US Senate, dismissing calls from across the Republican party to step aside, Sen. Claire McCaskill welcomed Akin back to the campaign by bashing him for abandoning veterans during his years in Congress.

 Visiting two VFW halls near St. Louis on Wednesday, McCaskill, the Democrat Akin is hoping to unseat here in Missouri, went through a list of Akin votes that took more than two minutes to recite.

 Audiences were mostly male and senior citizen.  Survivors of combat in Vietnam – and at least one World War II veteran – looked on beneath baseball caps decorated with military insignia as she accused Akin of blocking bonuses for troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan and voting against health care benefits for reservists and national guard members.

 “So that’s kind of the list,” McCaskill said of Akin’s voting record.  “Now, I don’t have a list like that."

 The attack did not include any mention of the recent controversy embroiling Akin.

 Sunday, Akin told a television interviewer that women could biologically prevent pregnancies resulting from what he called “legitimate rape.” 

 The remarks set off a firestorm, but Wednesday McCaskill only alluded to them broadly.

 During a press conference outside a VFW home in nearby Overland, McCaskill brushed aside questions about Akin’s future.

 “The voters have spoken, and he’s the nominee,” McCaskill said.

 “We’re going to draw the contrasts that I think are necessary so that voters know that he’s outside the mainstream, he’s very extreme,” she added later.

 Tuesday, Akin let a deadline for withdrawing from the Senate race pass.

 He told NBC’s Matt Lauer during a Wednesday interview on the TODAY show that his nomination was a “decision made by the citizens of our state, not the party bosses.”

 McCaskill’s VFW visits were part of a so-called “Vets for Claire” listening tour that the campaign says was arranged prior to the Akin controversy.

 A VFW official in Overland asked reporters to hold McCaskill’s press conference outside the building, in order to keep the organization compliant with rules prohibiting political activity by 501(c)(3) charity groups.

Mitt Romney promised Monday to offer more specifics about how he would turn around the economy, offering detail on at least one policy plank by calling on Congress to halt automatic defense cuts set to take place next year.

"I'll describe in some depth my economic plans as we continue through the campaign," Romney said in response to CNBC's Larry Kudlow, who echoed criticism to Romney that his plans lacked specificity.

The presumptive GOP nominee has previously drawn criticism for generally avoiding specifying how his tax and spending plans would add up. In an interview last month on CBS, Romney refused to say, for instance, which tax breaks he would eliminate to finance his overall package of tax reforms.

Frederic J. Brown / AFP - Getty Images

Mitt Romney speaks at a small-business roundtable discussion at Endural, a manufacturer of plastic containers, on July 23 in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Nonetheless, Romney did offer new details about how he would prefer to handle the looming so-called "fiscal cliff," the cocktail of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts -- particularly to the defense budget -- set to snap into place on Jan. 1 barring action by Congress.

Romney, who's criticized President Obama for making cuts to defense spending, said in particular that Congress must delay the onset of the automatic defense cuts, which were included as part of last August's agreement to approve an increase in the debt ceiling. The defense cuts were inserted as an incentive for lawmakers to reach an overarching deal on fiscal reform, since the cuts were viewed as so distasteful of an alternative.

"This sequestration related to defense spending, in particular, has to be put off," Romney said.

The presidential campaign resumed more traditional form on Monday after taking a break for most of the weekend in mourning of victims in last Friday's mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater. Romney argued that it would be wrong to invoke politics, as they relate to gun control, so soon after the massacre. But he did defend the assault weapons ban he signed as governor, calling it a bipartisan compromise that expanded some gun rights, too.

"Well, actually the law that we signed in Massachusetts was a combination of efforts both on the part of those that were for additional gun rights and those that opposed gun rights, and they came together and made some changes that provided, I think, a better environment for both, and that's why both sides came to celebrate the signing of the bill," he said. "Where there are opportunities for people of reasonable minds to come together and find common ground, that's the kind of legislation I like."

Kudlow's full interview with Romney airs at 7 p.m. ET on CNBC.

A lot of rhetoric is being thrown about in discussing the Pentagon budget. Reporter R. Jeffrey Smith from the Center for Public Integrity takes a look at what's actually been proposed by President Obama, in his explainer, "Puncturing the hot air balloons on defense spending: A reader's guide to the debate in 2012." The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative reporting group in Washington.

Smith's takeaway summary:

Obama’s national security spending plan does not cut the defense budget. Even if his proposal is enacted, U.S. defense spending will continue to dwarf the rest of the world’s. The new U.S. military strategy was concocted to accommodate the proposed budget trims, not vice versa. Sequestration is a threat, not a promise. And no matter what politicians say or do this year, U.S. defense spending will remain vulnerable to real cuts. The important question in the years ahead is, which military programs will survive and which will go away.

Read the full story here from the Center for Public Integrity.

The House passed a massive $662 billion defense bill Wednesday night after last-minute changes placated the White House and ensured President Barack Obama's ability to prosecute terrorist suspects in the civilian justice system.

The vote was 283-136 and reflected the strong support for annual legislation that authorizes money for the men and women of the military as well as weapons systems and the millions of jobs they generate in lawmakers' districts.

It was a rare instance of bipartisanship in a bitterly divided Congress. The Senate is expected to pass the measure on Thursday and send it to Obama.

The House vote came just hours after the administration abandoned a veto threat over provisions dealing with the handling of terrorism suspects.

Applying pressure on House and Senate negotiators working on the bill last week, Obama and senior members of his national security team, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, had pressed for modifications in the provisions.

Negotiators announced the changes late Monday, clearing the way for White House acceptance.

In a statement, press secretary Jay Carney said the new bill "does not challenge the president's ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists and protect the American people."

Specifically, the bill would require that the military take custody of a suspect deemed to be a member of al-Qaida or its affiliates and who is involved in plotting or committing attacks on the United States. There is an exemption for U.S. citizens.

House and Senate negotiators added language that says nothing in the bill will affect "existing criminal enforcement and national security authorities of the FBI or any other domestic law enforcement agency" with regard to a captured suspect "regardless of whether such ... person is held in military custody."

The bill also says the president can waive the provision based on national security.

"While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will create for our counterterrorism professionals, the most recent changes give the president additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law, which are at the heart of our country's strength," Carney said.

Uncertainty was a major concern of FBI Director Robert Mueller, who expressed serious reservations about the detainee provisions.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mueller said a coordinated effort by the military, intelligence agencies and law enforcement has weakened al-Qaida and captured or killed many of its leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born radical Islamic cleric. He suggested that the divisive provision in the bipartisan defense bill would deny that flexibility and prove impractical.

"The statute lacks clarity with regard to what happens at the time of arrest. It lacks clarity with regard to what happens if we had a case in Lackawanna, N.Y., and an arrest has to be made there and there's no military within several hundred miles," Mueller said. "What happens if we have ... a case that we're investigating on three individuals, two of whom are American citizens and would not go to military custody and the third is not an American citizen and could go to military custody?"

The legislation also would deny suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens seized within the nation's borders, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention.

The escalating fight over whether to treat suspects as prisoners of war or criminals has divided Democrats and Republicans, the Pentagon and Congress.

The administration insists that the military, law enforcement and intelligence officials need flexibility in the campaign against terrorism. Obama points to his administration's successes in killing bin Laden and al-Awlaki. Republicans counter that their efforts are necessary to respond to an evolving, post-Sept. 11 threat, and that Obama has failed to produce a consistent policy on handling terror suspects.

In a reflection of the uncertainty, House members offered differing interpretations of the military custody and indefinite detention provisions and what would happen if the bill became law.

"The provisions do not extend new authority to detain U.S. citizens," House Armed Services Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., said during debate.

But Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the bill would turn "the military into a domestic police force."

Highlighting a period of austerity and a winding down of decade-old conflicts, the bill is $27 billion less than Obama requested and $43 billion less than Congress gave the Pentagon. The bill also authorizes money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and national security programs in the Energy Department.

Frustrated with delays and cost overruns with the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft program, lawmakers planned to require the contractor, Lockheed Martin, to cover the expense of any extra costs on the next batch and future purchases of the aircraft. The Pentagon envisions buying 2,443 planes for the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy, but the price could make it the most expensive program in military history — $1 trillion.

The legislation freezes $700 million for Pakistan until the defense secretary provides Congress a report on how Islamabad is countering the threat of improvised explosive devices.

It would impose tough new penalties on Iran, targeting foreign financial institutions that do business with the country's central bank. The president could waive those penalties if he notifies Congress that it's in the interest of national security.

The bill begins a reduction in defense spending, a reality the Pentagon hasn't faced in the decade since the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon spending has nearly doubled in that period, but the deficit-reduction plan that Obama and congressional Republicans backed this summer sets the Defense Department on a budget-cutting course.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and several other GOP defense hawks pledged to return to Washington next month with a plan to avoid automatic across-the-board cuts to defense required in 2013. The failure of Congress' deficit supercommittee last month means $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years, with half from defense.

Defense hawks said the 10 percent cut would hollow out the Pentagon and devastate U.S. military readiness.

Associated Press writers Pete Yost and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.