to discuss this are two foreign affairs columnists, david ignatius of the "washington post" and trudy rubin of the philadelphia inquirer. trudy, let me start with you. are you surprised first that foreign policy seems to be getting more attention now even before tonight's debate? >> well, i think the republicans and mitt romney have done a good job politically of revving up interest in this benghazi affair and making it look like a mini-scandal. unfortunately the whole way it has been handled blows it up entirely out of proportion. i do think politicizes it and avoids dealing with what might be real issues underlying benghazi. this was a mid-level bureaucratic issue in the state department, providing embassy security. it's not something that rises to the level of the white house. and the question of who knew what when is rather weird given that all our personnel were pulled out of benghazi. so there was no one to give information on the ground. it took several days for the intelligence agencies to really figure out the whole picture. so the focus has been totally distorted but i think that

h >> brown: trudy rubin, come back to the issue that david ignatius brought up. the larger question about america's role in the world which will be on the table tonight. the kind of questions, yout. kn, the idea of american exceptionalis wit what is our strength and weakness? what shouldwhe be projecting? we heard romney talking about shaping history, leading from behind. all of that. what do you want to hear on these issues? what's the way to frame them tonight? >> i think when one is looking at what romney has said ande alking aboutal shaping history one has to look at a middle east that basically is no longer simply marching to an american tune. romney has portrayed the region in terms of the forces of good against the forces of darkness, specifically islamists. but it's much more complex than that. the question is can we shape entirely? is there more we can do? both candidates say they support democracy but democrcy has ledas to elections in egypt and tunisia that produced islamists. i think romney hasn't squared that circle. if you go for democracy and you g