Watching President Obama during the past few debates has given America an upfront seat from which to observe the struggle and penalties incurred by many highly educated African-Americans trying to promote their virtues during the course of their careers.

I have a secret: I can't wait for this election season to be over. It's not that I don't think there's a lot at stake. There is. It's just that, as usual, we're not talking about the real problems facing the country, and real solutions for dealing with them. One candidate has apparently decided that the best strategy is to avoid talking to anyone who isn't already on his side. When you find out what he's been saying to the people he does trust, you can understand why. The other candidate, whom we've sternly instructed to stop spending so much time running the country so he can look tougher on TV, hasn't articulated any new ideas. His central argument -- I cleaned up their mess and killed the guy they couldn't find -- has a certain elemental appeal, but it's not exactly the stuff Spielberg movies are made of.

When even a CNN poll, composed of a sample of debate watchers the pollsters freely admit to be 8 percent more Republican than the country as a whole, hands the debate to President Obama by 7 percentage points, you know that Governor Romney has taken something of a beating.

* Obama delivers pizza to volunteers in swing state office * Romney campaign: Obama can change his style, not record By ...

Mitt Romney was charismatic at the first presidential debate. But he wasn't honest. Mitt Romney needs to spend a few good hours with Mister Rogers, whose humility, plain spoken honesty, wisdom, and integrity could teach him some valuable lessons.

Before last Wednesday's debate, one of the grand viziers of number-crunching said that no one who was in Romney's trailing position at that point had ever come back to win the White House. That looks like a laughable statement now. My own view was that it was way too early to count Romney out. I wrote and said that a guy who had made that many mistakes -- who had had so much dumped on his head, and who still remained within hailing distance of the president -- still had a chance. Less than a week later, things seemed to have turned utterly upside-down. The Denver debate has sent Romney rocketing into a lead, and tightened races in key swing states to the point than a Romney Electoral College victory now seems eminently possible -- rather than the ridiculous GOP wishful thinking it looked like only days ago.

After last week's disastrous debate performance, Democrats in and around the president's camp are privately pointing fingers at each other for Obama's failure in Round One in Denver.

If to be human is to be imperfect, then why does Obama keep bringing up the obvious? When I voted for Obama four years ago, I never asked for perfection. I've never asked that of him or any other U.S. president.

Romney came to fight. Obama came to opine. Romney played to win. Obama played not to lose, and therefore he lost. It is the Democratic disease of our age, this unwillingness to fight for high principle and big ideas and deep values.

Obama dropped the ball. The president had an opportunity to directly ask Romney any number of questions he would have been unable to answer with logic or coherence. Here's a selection.

The Romney campaign's problem is America is listening, but more and more people simply don't like what they're hearing.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — President Barack Obama's re-election campaign doesn't want to talk about what the Democrat is doing to prepare for the fall deb...

There has been a lot of speculation over which sides of the health care debate will be present when the Obama White House hosts a summit on the topic ...

While most of Newsweek's behind-the-scenes Special Election Project reporting reveals serious campaign issues on both sides, there's one funny moment ...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama planned to head to Florida this week for three days of preparation for the first ...

The Obama and McCain campaigns have agreed to an unusual, free-flowing format for the three televised presidential debates, which begin on Friday, but...

James Fallows of The Atlantic watches all the presidential primary debates and comes away with an idea of how John McCain, despite being a bad debater...

WASHINGTON — Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Saturday backed away from rival John McCain's challenge for a series of joint appearances, agr...

WILMINGTON, N.C. — Hillary Rodham Clinton said the assassination attempt Sunday on the Afghan president shows that the U.S. has failed to give p...