Mickey Kaus, The Daily Caller
It’s Always Sunny in E.J.: WaPo‘s E. J. Dionne argues that Obama has to win big against the Republicans in order to get a sufficient mandate for governing in his second term: Obama's ability to govern in a second term thus depends not simply on his own triumph but also on the decisive defeat of those who have been obstructing him. If he wins but they win, is there much chance that the obstruction will stop?

Dimitri Simes, Nat'l Interest
Governor Mitt Romney has a real opportunity to win Monday night's foreign-policy debate with President Barack Obama. But to prevail, he will need to disregard the suggestions of some of his neoconservative foreign-policy advisers, who are out of touch not only with international realities but also with the realities of American politics.Accusing the man who is justly credited with ordering Osama bin Laden's killing and with ousting the Qaddafi regime in Libya of being a weakling who is constantly apologizing for the United States has little traction with most voters, including...

Laura Washington, Chicago ST
Some people know where the action is (my husband not included).At least for the next two weeks, the action is not in Chicago. Or anywhere in Illinois.

Rutenberg & Zeleny,NYT
BOCA RATON, Fla. — With a last aggressive debate performance behind him and 14 grueling days ahead, President Obama is now facing what he worked so hard to avoid: a neck-and-neck race with a challenger gaining ground when it matters most. Over the last month, through the debates and a gradual moderation of the conservative tone he struck during the Republican primaries, Mitt Romney undermined the Democrats’ expensive summertime work of casting him as the candidate of and for the rich, emerging as a far more formidable opponent than Mr. Obama had ever expected.

Amir Taheri, New York Post
As he runs for re-election, President Obama has tried to portray his foreign policy as a success. A closer look suggests a different picture. Let us begin with a list of areas where US foreign policy has either stalled or suffered setbacks.

Chuck Todd & Jonathan Martin, MSNBC
Chris Matthews, Chuck Todd and Jonathan Martin discuss the state of the race on "Hardball."MATTHEWS: This thing seems to be drifting around. I don't want to bring a lot of numbers in tonight because there's so many of them, they all conflict with each other. Is there a drift, a turn, is it moving towards Romney clearly ever since that first debate? Is that a safe assessment or is it not?

Dettmer, Dickey & Lake, Newsweek
Diplomatic Security special agent David Ubben waits silently, his M-4 assault rifle at the ready as he hides deep in the dark inside the villa that serves as the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Ubben's assignment is close protection for U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, which isn't always easy. Stevens, a former Peace Corps volunteer, likes to get out among the people in the countries where he serves, especially Libya, which he helped to liberate from Muammar Gaddafi during the war last year. But even he has started to believe that al Qaeda is gunning for him, and...

Gearan & Fahrenthold, WP

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
It's been a while since we've had an incumbent President lose an election.  In fact, it was 20 years ago, when George H. W. Bush lost in a three-way fight to Bill Clinton.  What made that election remarkable was that Bush had enjoyed some of the best-ever job approval ratings of any modern American President just a little over a year earlier, into the 80s "” unthinkable these days for anyone, Republican or Democrat.  Bush, a decorated veteran of World War II and a longtime player in diplomacy and national security, lost the election to an upstart Governor when...

Larry Kudlow, CNBC
With the unprecedented budget explosion of means-tested, welfare-related entitlements, does Team Obama think it can buy the election?It's a cynical question. But I wouldn't put it past that cynical bunch.Remember Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt's close aid? It was Hopkins who argued tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect. Sound familiar? And if I'm not mistaken, the high-tax, anti-rich, big-spending, redistributionist FDR is one of Barack Obama's idols.

Ken Burns, New Hampshire Union Leader
One of my favorite movies of all time is Frank Capra's “It's A Wonderful Life,” starring Jimmy Stewart. In the film, Stewart's character, a despondent and near suicidal George Bailey, who runs a small savings and loan in the town of Bedford Falls, is given a gift: the chance to see what his town would be like if he'd never been born — if he'd never extended a helping hand to his neighbors when they needed it most, never helped his community understand how much they depended upon one another. In this alternative vision, the town's...

Matt Viser, Boston Globe
Boston.comClassifieds:Log In   October 20, 2012Jason Reed/Reuters (left); Evan Vucci/Associated PressPresident Obama addressed a crowd Friday at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan shared a laugh at an airport in Daytona Beach, Fla. To Add a message Your e-mail WASHINGTON — With just over two weeks before voters head to the polls, the presidential campaigns are bearing down on the same swing states that have been the focus for the past year, but they...

Fredreka Schouten, USA Today
Bertha Beltran is just a high school sophomore but she is entrenched in a massive voter-turnout operation that could determine who wins the presidency next month. Under a blazing desert sun on a recent Saturday, Beltran, 15, and two other Spanish-speaking teens intercept shoppers heading into La Bonita, a supermarket in a working-class neighborhood far east of Las Vegas' glittering casinos. It's the last day to register to vote by mail, and the trio of President Obama's supporters is pushing to sign up Latino voters, who make up more than a quarter of the state's...

Bob Shrum, The Daily Beast
Wow. You didn’t need a poll to tell you what happened, but the instant surveys exploded in a geyser of good news for President Obama. For example, in Colorado, in a Public Policy Polling sample that was 3 percent more Republican, respondents rated the President the winner 48 to 44 percent-- and crucially, independents thought he prevailed 58 to 36 percent. The CBS survey of uncommitted voters gave Obama a seven-point margin, and he held a 13-point advantage on “helping the middle class.” There was a similar verdict in the CNN poll of debate viewers; and even...

Joan Vennochi, BostonGlobe
Barack Obama won the hope vote in 2008. Now, to keep the White House, President Obama needs to win back the disappointed.Michael Jones is one of them. Jones, one of the questioners during Tuesday night's debate, wanted to know what the president has done to earn his support in 2012. This time around, "I'm not that optimistic," said Jones.

George Jonas, National Post
Few would have thought that the MAD world of Mutually Assured Destruction might seem like an era of sanity in retrospect. The period that created Dr. Strangelove restricted its nuclear club to paragons of predictability compared to today's players, actual and prospective.To start with the obvious, if it's acceptable for North Korea to have nuclear weapons (to say nothing of Pakistan, spawning ground and frequent shelter of the Taliban) how can the world deny nukes to any country? Still, most nations or governments agree that nuclear capability for theocratic Iran is so dangerous as...

Eduardo Porter, New York Times
 With financial markets careening around the world, in January 2009 a newly inaugurated President Obama acknowledged he had to fix the problem pretty fast. "If I don't have this done in three years," he told NBC's Matt Lauer, "then there's gonna be a one-term proposition." Today, Republicans around the country are largely campaigning on the president's words. Conservative economists like Michael Bordo of Rutgers and John B. Taylor of Stanford have written columns for op-ed pages and blogs arguing that by the standard of previous...

Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect
The president did exactly what he needed to in tonight's debate: He used Romney against Romney. President Barack Obama laughs as he talks with audience members after the second presidential debate at Hofstra University.President Obama did what he needed to do tonight. He took the debate to Mitt Romney. He was relaxed, even jaunty, as he scored one point after another. He seemed to be enjoying himself at Romney's expense. He looked more comfortable and commanding as the debate wore on, while Romney looked more stiff, edgy, and salesman-like. 

David Roberts, Foreign Policy
Mitt Romney and the U.S. coal industry are engaged in a very public love affair. In August, the Republican candidate stood on a stage in Ohio and condemned Barack Obama's "war on coal," backed by a group of beefy, safety-helmeted men who looked like they just stomped out of a coal mine. Those miners later appeared in one of Romney's two September ads focused on coal, the "way of life" that, in his telling, Obama is ruthlessly attempting to crush. "By the way," Romney said in his first debate with Obama, lest America miss the point, "I like...

Jim Vertuno, AP
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Lance Armstrong stepped down as chairman of his Livestrong cancer-fighting charity and Nike severed ties with him as fallout from the doping scandal swirling around the famed cyclist escalated Wednesday.Armstrong announced his move at the charity in an early-morning statement. Within minutes, Nike said that it would end its relationship with him "due to the seemingly insurmountable evidence that Lance Armstrong participated in doping and misled Nike for more than a decade."

Mark Landler, NY Times
 HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Mitt Romney tried to use the White House’s shifting accounts of the attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, to paint a broad indictment of President Obama as commander in chief. But Mr. Obama fired back, accusing Mr. Romney of politicizing a tragedy and condemning as “offensive” his suggestion that the administration had misled the American people about nature of the attack.  It says something about the murky nature of the Libyan attack, and its messy aftermath, that Mr. Romney appeared not to know that...

Peter Brookes, Boston Herald
After Team Obama’s horrid handling of the terrible tragedy in Benghazi, Libya, does anyone out there really cling to the left’s quickly unraveling yarn that this administration has a strong record on foreign policy and national security?Sure, the prez and veep continue to chant the mantra that “Osama bin Laden is dead” — and, without a doubt, that’s a good thing. Problem is: al-Qaeda is very much alive.

Bill Keller, New York Times
Back in January I proposed that President Obama do a switcheroo, sending Joe Biden to the State Department and making Hillary Clinton his running mate. I acknowledged the reasons that this was probably a fantasy, but contended the arguments in favor were as simple as one-two-three:    One: it does more to guarantee Obama’s re-election than anything else the Democrats can do. Two: it improves the chances that, come next January, he will not be a lame duck with a gridlocked Congress but a rejuvenated president with a mandate and a Congress that may be a...

Amy Gardner, Wash Post
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — The everyday Americans who engaged the candidates at Tuesday's second presidential debate spoke directly to a question widely expected to decide this election:Whom can they trust to improve their faith in the economy, the country and their futures? A college student, a respiratory therapist and a club owner were among the undecided Long Island voters selected randomly by the Gallup organization to pose questions to President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney during their only town-hall-style debate of the season.