Spike in Republican enthusiasm for Mitt Romney

>> affairs correspondent andrea mitchell and our white house director, chuck todd , both in the washington bureau. chuck, let's begin with you, two new polls, different sets of numbers, what do the numbers tell you?

>> reporter: look, when i dug into them, they both told us the same thing, there is a spike in the republican enthusiasm for romney , that is why you see the voters shifting towards romney . and it depends on how you wait to sample. and yes, one poll seems to be a little more republican than the gallup goal -- polls, there is more enthusiasm among likely republican voters than likely democratic voters. this has been a problem for the democrats for six months, and you're seeing more in this poll than the last debate. and the big moment will be joe biden , and paul ryan , you see them prepping in a way they have not done before. they have done a lot of mock debate sessions with joe biden . paul ryan has never been on this big a stage before. he has reviewed the sarah palin debate, watched joe biden 's speeches to try to get a sense of joe biden . they will be seated. but i can tell you the republicans are a bit nervous about this, because joe biden is very good in settings like this, because -- being a u.s. senator .

>>> now, andrea, what was the chief take away from the speech that romney gave today. i know he did emphasize for a while, libya , of course that has been an ongoing situation for the united states .

>> reporter: in fact, it was all benghazi , benghazi , and that is really the reason, the romney campaign attacking the white house on foreign policy , they believe that the white house is lacking in the foreign policies . they worry that the al-qaeda affiliates were active in the campaign militias. daryl issa is holding hearings this wednesday, focusing in part on this e-mail from the embassy in tripoli, last february, asking to leave a special team in libya for another four months. the commander of that team will reportedly testify that ambassador chris stevens , who of course died in the raid, wanted to keep the team even longer but of course was let down. it is not clear how long the security agents stayed. tonight, they say the original team was being fazed out as libya teams took over, and could not have prevented the fatal attack in benghazi . the top terrorism official is on his way to libya to make his own assessment tomorrow. so you can tell the white house is taking it very seriously.

>> andrea mitchell in the d.c. news room, along with chuck