Bill O'Reilly sounds off on "stupefyingly dull" debate

(CBS News) Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly sat down with CBS This Morning's Charlie Rose on Monday to discuss how President Obama and Mitt Romney fared in the foreign policy debate, the last debate for the two candidates.

O'Reilly -- who recently squared off in his own debate against frequent cable-TV sparring partner, Jon Stewart -- said Monday's night debate was "the most boring debate I've seen in my lifetime ... it was just stupefyingly dull."

Ahead of the debate, the conservative commentator said it would be Romney's "final chance to pin the president against the rhetorical wall," and that the focus on foreign policy "opens up Libya big time," as a point to use in his criticism of Obama's foreign policy prowess.

O'Reilly told Rose that Romney took the opposite approach. "I think Gov.r Romney's strategy was to appeal to women. That's why he didn't do any Libyan stuff. He didn't confront ... He wanted to come across as softer to women because that's what he needs to win the election."

O'Reilly continued his critique of Romney on this point, "It's inexplicable that Gov. Romney did not question -- and neither did Bob Schieffer -- the president about Libya." O'Reilly went on to share his own thoughts on the Obama administration's handling of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, saying "I believe that the Obama administration lost control of their ambassador ... in the sense that they did not protect him ... and then after he was assassinated, they went 'holy you-know-what, let's try to sell this."

Still, he allowed that "it wouldn't be fair to lay it on Barack Obama's doorstep ... I don't know what he knew, I just know it was a monumental screwup that should be explained."

Turning to Mr. Obama's debate performance, O'Reilly said, "I think he wants to show Mitt Romney as an amateur ... 'Let's just get it across this guy's an amateur, he's a poser.' In that way, the president was effective. He really had a sharply focused strategy."

Rose and O'Reilly got heated when it came to their interpretations of the responsibilities of a debate moderator. O'Reilly insisted that the "the goal of the debate should be ... to show the American public who the stronger candidate is. You know how you do that? By holding their feet to the fire on certain things that don't make sense ... that's the goal of the debate ... they walk in with rehearsed answers on all three debates and they get to spill them out."

O'Reilly added that overall, "I didn't learn one thing. So why are we wasting 90 minutes of the American public's time if we're not learning anything?"

Lastly, the pair discussed O'Reilly's New York Times bestseller, "Killing Kennedy," a book he says provides new information about why Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated then-President Kennedy. He explained that much of the material in the book was provided by an "FBI agent who was assigned to Marina Oswald," the wife of the Kennedy assassin. Referring to Oswald's motives behind the killing, O'Reilly said, "He was basically a loser who wanted to be a great man ... nothing about ideology, he didn't even dislike JFK."

For more from Charlie Rose's conversation with the fiesty Fox host, watch the video above.