of senator mcgovern and his friends and family in south dakota, a ledge bed i legend in. >> check out the bret baier special. fox news alert, everybody. former u.s. senator and three time presidential candidate george mcgovern has died. his family releasing a statement saying he did die peacefully this morning at a hospice in sioux falls, south dakota. he's best known for his landslide defeat against richard nixon in the neant 7 1972 presil election. he is also remembered as a tireless advocate for the poor and all of those in need. also a progressive voice that helped shape the democratic party and inspire a generation of democrats. mcgovern was a world war ii b-24 bomber pilot and served in the internet as wel senate fromr 18 years. george mcgovern was 90 years

old. but first, here we are. it is the final countdown and the final presidential debate upcoming. it may be the most critical night of the entire 2012 election. looming over it, of course, is the new fallout from the deadly terrorist attack in libya. good morning to all of you. i'm jamie colby. >> i'm eric shawn. welcome to america's election headquarters for this sunday morning. the obama administration's response to the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi is a major flash point of the presidential campaign. of course, it's expected to be front and center in the foreign policy debate that will occur in florida tomorrow night as accusations continue over the administration's response, what it did, and what it did not do and how the president and his aides reacted. that attack killed u.s. ambassador chris stephens and three other americans. there are other reports this morning that a drov drone arrivd

near the end of the o onslaught, videoing it in real-time as officials in washington watched. how will this tragedy define tomorrow's faceoff? john bolton is the former ambassador to the united nations and a fox news contributor that joins us on sunday mornings at this time. good morning, ambassador. >> good morning, eric. >> governor romney who you have advised, what should he say to president obama tomorrow night? >> the tragedy that occurred in benghazi is a debacle for not only the administration's foreign policy before the attack and after the attack, it's also emblematic of the failed world view, its inability to understand what's going on in the middle east and the threats that the united states, israel, and our arab friends face and inindicative of a larger problem globally. i think for governor romney to articulate a peace through strength through foreign policy

will be a substantial contrast with what the obama administration has failed to achieve. >> everyone's focusing on benghazi at the moment. before we get to this, talk about the world view. look at egypt turning his back on must b mu.you've got russia,e islamists. tell me more about your view of that world view and how you think mr. romney could define it tomorrow. >> well, i think this goes to the basic issue of america's place in the world. do you think as president obama does that america's too strong, that we've had too much influence, that we're kansa disproportionately successful around the world and an america that withdraws, that's less assertive will make other nations more favorably inclined to us and make the world more peaceful. that's like looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. i think the notion of the world

of peace through strength is an approach that allows the united states to advance its interests but also minimizes the possibility of conflict because other nations are dissuaded by our evident strength. i think president obama and his budget choices through the sequestration mechanism and a whole host of other areas has pursued a course of weakness, and i think that endangers america. it doesn't make us more secure. it does the exact opposite. >> the president obama will dispute that, citing bin laden, winding down the war in afghanistan and iraq and cite some foreign policy successes. >> well, winding down the war in afghanistan and withdrawing from iraq are two excellent examples of weakness leaving us more exposed and making the sacrifice that we with made i we made in y questionable as eye ira iran ins its influence, leaving the real possibility in afghanistan that al-qaeda and the taliban will

take control again, endangering the fragile governo government n pakistan where its arsenal of nuclear weapons could come into the hands of radicals and terrorists and giving the signal all around the middle east that the united states cannot stand up for its successes. >> what about what happened in benghazi? the consulate was attacked twice, it was bombed. they wanted to assassinate the british ambassador. the cia knew within 24 hours it was a terrorist attack, and now we find out there was a drone apparently videoing it. we see the attack in real-time in washington. >> the people in the consulate knew this was not a demonstration that had gotten out of control. there wasn't any demonstration. there was an attack. when did they know it? as they came under attack. i think the real marker here is the administration's failure before the attack to respond to multiple requests from the ambassador and from his security officers to enhance their

ability to protect themselves in libya. we say well, why didn't the state department grant that enhanced security and some people say well, of course, you can't blame secretary clinton or president obama for that. i don't agree with that, either. the security -- the policy from which security decisions flow comes from the top, and if the policy, if the world view is that everything's fine in libya, you know, it's sort of like iceland, of course you're not going to grant questions for more security down in the bowels of the bureaucracy. i think that's what was at work here, a delusional view of conditions on the ground in libya and tragically, our ambassador and three of his colleagues paid the price for it. >> wit well, it will certainly e front and center, the secretary of state's decision to not fulfill the request for more security, and the whole issue. ambassador bolton, always good to see you on sunday morning. >> thank you, eric. meanwhile, a huge celebration is going on in

libya. it's marking one year since the capture and killing of former dictator more andictatordictato. there are conflicting reports that it has captured his former spokesman. keep in mind, there have been false reports of his capture in the past. we're awaiting official reports of the capture. there's continued unrest in babaybabeirut in lebanon. look at the standoff. there are reports of gunfire in the streets in the capital of neighboring lebanon. protesters attempting to storm the office of the prime minister. they've toppled over some material. they're demanding the resignation over the assassination of a top intelligence official on friday. the demonstrators are outraged over the car bomb attack that killed two senior officers, two others, and woundin wounding mon

120 people in the car bomb attack. the organizers are calling the event a, quote, day of rage. this is continuing right now, this protest in beirut. we'll bring more of this live if sadly this gets out of hand. a deadly bombing in the capital of syrias a the united nations pushes for a cease fire. tha government official says a taxi carried explosives that blew up in damascus a few hours ago. ten people were killed. meanwhile, that un peace envoy meeting with president assad today trying to negotiate a sies fire associated with a muslim holiday that begins on friday. here we go. just two weeks ago before the election, and we have some new polls out of two key battleground states. florida and ohio combined have 47 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency,

and they're very important. the last president to winter white house without -- to win the white house without winning ohio was john f. kennedy in 1960. in ohio right now president obama is losing ground. he now leads governor romney by just three points among likely voters, down from seven points last month. and in florida, governor romney is leading within the margin of error, 48 to 45%. just last month the president was leading by five points. big shifts. the critics are saying president obama needs to be more specific about what he would actually plan to do in a second term. charlie herd joins me now. he's a columnist for the washington times. great to have you here. happy sunday morning. >> great to be with you, jamie. >> they must really be prepping. the question is when they step on the stage for this debate, will the president be more specific about what a second term would actually mean? >> well, you know, it's really sort of a catch-22 for president obama in that regard because i think that much of what he's going to -- if he were to be

honest about what he's going to do in a second term, he's done in the first term. in recent weeks mitt romney and paul ryan have both been very effective at attacking president obama on that count. they're just saying look, you know, we've seen what you're going to do, and if you didn't like the last four years, you're not going to like the next four years, and it sort of has president obama sort of, you know, struggling to explain what it is that he is selling that's different. another problem for him is the fact that he made so many promises running in 2008 in that very hopeful optimistic campaign that he ran, and so many of those promises haven't really sort of either come to pass or they haven't turned out to be nearly as great as we were led to believe they would be. he sort of burned out o in the promise department a little bit. >> you know, credibility is really key. the american people are certainly not foolish. there are a lot of promises that president obama made on the

campaign trail initially in 2008 that he fulfilled and then changed his mind. i'm thinking of guantanamo bay and some other items. how believable would the specifics be if he were to promise to do certain things in a second term? >> jamie, i think that's exactly what presidential elections are all about. americans all across the country are busy, they've got jobs, hopefully they have a job. >> not enough. >> yeah. exactly. >> they have kids. they have, you know, things in their life, commitments that they've got to deal with. they're not paying attention to this stuff as closely as you and i are. this is not their job to watch this stuff, but they do sense when somebody is sort of -- has lost their credibility. they sense when somebody is feeding them a line when they make a bunch of promises and in the back of their minds they know that well, the promises i heard four years ago didn't come to pass, so that's exactly the point. correct is whacredibility is whn

will turn on. coming to grips with the fact that mitt romney is not the most likeable guy in the world. he's not this sort of witty, funny guy that you want t to go have a beer with, but he's serious about what he wants to do. he's sort of run as a technician who will sort of attack the economy and fix the economy. i think it's very effective. >> let me jump in here because the economy is for so many people definitely not a laughing matter. look at these two polls. one is from florida and one is from ohio. voters were asked how they feel about who will handle the economy better, and first in florida, big shift for president obama. in september, 49% felt that he would handle it better. down to 43 and half the voters believe that governor romney can handle it, and they would trust him to handle it. when we shift to ohio, same question to voters, president obama's down three points, and

governor romney is up two points. the economy even with all the discussion at this debate on foreign policy tomorrow, do you think it still rings true, 23 million people out of work as the most important and critical issue in this campaign. >> without a doubt. no question about it. if we were talking about 4% unemployment today, we would not be talking about mitt romney, you know, being anywhere in the ballpark. this is a completely -- this election is entirely about the economy, and it's very much, you know, to president obama's disadvantage right now. what's important about things that libya and foreign policy is all that does feed into well is this guy feeding me a line. right now, especially with the last couple of weeks as ambassador bolton very clearly pointed out, you know, a lot of questions about president obama's credibility, his maturity as a leader, and his leadership are sort of coming into question. that does feed into it, but it

all is, you know, viewed through the prism of who is going to fix the economy and what is he going to do about it. >> you know what? in two weeks they'll decide. charlie hurt, great to see you. have a great day. thank you. jamie, as you've been reporting this morning. former united states senator and 1972 democratic presidential nominee george mcgovern has decide. a family spokesman announced he was surrounded by family members and loved ones when he passed away. he was 90 years old and known as a liberal fire brand known for his opposition to the vietnam war. he also knew battle firsthand. he served in world war ii as a b-24 bomber pilot. bret baier has a look back at senator mcgovernogovern's caree. >> i love the united states, but i love it enough so i want to see some changes made. the american people want to believe in their government.

they want to believe in their country, and i'd like to be one of those that provides the kind of leadership that would help restore that kind of faith. >> george mcgovern will long be remembered as an orator for peace and the 1972 democratic nominee for president who lost in a disastrous landslide to richard nixon. his 22-year career in washington was marked by massive improvements for rural americans in farming and an increased awareness in the devastations of world hunger. >> if you grow up out in the great plains, you have to live with the idea that next year is going to be better. you can't survive any other way. >> haling from the plain state of south dakota, mcgovern was a quiet kid who found his voice in the high school debate team. his skills served him well as a united states representative. after a failed bid for the internet in 1960, he became a special assistant to president john f. kennedy. he focused intensely on

kennedy's high priority food for peace program which would operate in more than a dozen countries by the time mcgovern left to run for the internet in 1962. he won this time, an as a senator, mcgovernor became known for his growing contempt for the vietnam war. >> the first time i spoke against vietnam, my son was then 9 years old. he's now 19 and faced with the draft, and it never occurred to me when i started speaking out against that war that it would some day catch my own son 10 years later. >> mcgovern voted in favor of the 1964 resolution which essentially authorized military action in vietnam and would regret it bitterly. as the years dragged on, he would become more and more adamant that the solution for vietnam was political and not military. in fact, by 1972 as mcgovern accepted the democratic nomination for president at 3 a.m., his platform resolved around an appeal -- revolved around an a appeal of withdrawal

from vietnam. >> come home, america. come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. come only to th home to the con. >> i knew we had 75 or 8 mill 8l people watching the conviction. i was probably lucky if i had 2 million people watching at 2:30 in the morning. we did very well out in guam, as i recall. we were in prime time there. that's the only place where it was well timed. >> after nixon brutally defeated him in the general election, mcgovern lost his senate reelection bid and left congress in 1981. a failed run for the democratic nomination in '84 saw him return to private life for good. he remained politically relevant as he moved in and out of different think tanks and served as an ambassador to the u.n. food program. mcgovern said politics was an act of faith and while he joked his political timing was off, he strove to deepen that spiritual relationship with a country he

loved until the day he died. in washington, bret baier, fox news. >> and of course, bill clinton, hillary clinton, gary hart among the prominent democrats who servanteserved in that campaign. we'll have more reaction to the death of the senator in our next hour. >> our condolences to the family. we'll talk about the continuing fallout over the consulate attack in benghazi. chris wallace sat down with two powerful ?eertpowerful senatorss sunday". their latest reaction as we look ahead to the time presidential debate. a young father dies trying to protect his children after a gunman opens fire inside their home. look at the aftermath. what police think may have set the man off ... coming up. [ male announcer ] this is anna, her long day teaching the perfect swing begins with back pain and a choice. take advil, and maybe have to take up to four in a day.

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>> well, the search for a masked gunman who attacked a california family has ended with a gruesome discovery. he's suspected of setting fire to his bungalow in which he lived on that family's property. they say he broke into his host's home and started opening fire. a father and a 4-year-old son were killed in the attack. the mother and two other children were wounded but are

expected to recover. investigators haling the parents as heroes, saying they scrambled to shield the kids from the gunfire. no word yet on the exact most of. >> jamie: well, continuing fallout over the u.s. consulate attack in libya. four americans killed. all of this as we look ahead to the final presidential debate and the focus of that will be foreign policy. two powerful senators sat down with our chris wallace on "fox news sunday", south carolina republican senator lindsey graham and illinois democratic senator dick durbin weighing in. listen. >> we should have closed that conflict long before september 11th or heavily reinforced that. i put that on the president of the united states. this is a national security breakdown before, during, and after the attack. >> we lost over 230 marines in the bar rackracks in beirut, le, under president ronald reagan.

these attacks are part of living in a dangerous world. >> jamie: joining me now is the ageanchor of "fox news sunday" s chris wallace. does senator dur whip wan durbie american people to accept the deaths of four americans slaughtered at the consulate as part of the living in a dangerous world? >> no. i was struck by that comment. he goes on and one of the things he says is that there's going to be an investigation, and we shouldn't rush to judgment, and we should wait to see what the investigation shows. i, then, say well, you know, a sinic or a skeptic might suggest that that investigation will end two weeks -- we'll get the results of it twho week two it r the election. there are some politics at play. we're in the final 16 days of a campaign. what do you expect? >> it's interesting that senator

graham said the consulate should have been closed before, during, and after. that scene is completely contaminated for any t to go and do any legitimate investigation. it's basically impossible. before, is he referring to the fact that the administration likely had a enough notice that the ambassador was feeling unsafe, that he should have pulled everybody out? >> yeah. that's exactly what he's referring to, and it's one of the things we talk about. we do talk about the shifting story line after the fact, but our main focus when we talk about libya is what happened before hand because that's the only thing that could have saved these guys' lives, and look. we knew from the congressional hearing a week and a half ago that a number of security people on the ground were complaining to state about how dangerous the situation was across libya, both in tripoli, in the western part of the country, and benghazi and the eastern part of the country,

but also specifically about that, and we now know from the release of information on friday that ambassador stephens himself wrote repeated memos saying he wanted more security, he wanted bodyguards, he wanted the security detail there not pulled out. he wrote a memo on the day he was killed, on september 11th. we talked about that and lindsey graham said exactly that, jamie. there was plenty of notice. he pointed out that a lot of western countries pulled out of the threats in benghazi and the u.s. did not. >> jamie: how incredible too have the exclusive interview on the eve of the debate on foreign policy. thanks for bringing us a preview. we'll definitely watch. >> this debate between graham and durbin. i hope the debate between obama and romney is this good. it was very interesting and very pointed. >> jamie: it's a fiery topic. i'm sure they both have continues that will give a preview or prediction of what we can expect tomorrow night. i'll know you be covering it as

well. great to see you, have a great day. >> thanks, jamie. >> jamie: i highly recommend watching this before the debates tomorrow. the illinois senator and the south carolina senator, it's an exclusive. it's airing today at 2 and 6 p.m. >> eric: sounds like the debate before the debate. a new study shows that more americans are winning the battle against high cholesterol. we hope so. coming up, the doctors are here for "sunday house call" to tell us what it takes, how we can do it, and what youe got to do. >> jamie: women and patients out there, did you know the makeup you or your child may be using may contain some dangerous chemicals. if you have concerns, go to fox news.com/sunday house call. you can join our live chat with the doctors who will be here shortly. we'll take one of your questions and have them answer it right here on the air. we'll be right back. [ female announcer ] e-trade technology

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