The election in November may well turn on decisions made long ago. After Labor Day, there is little campaigns can do to alter the fundamental physics of a race. The best campaigns simply play defense well. In a close race, whichever candidate is most adroit at handling the unexpected will probably find himself with an advantage.

Nonetheless, pay attention to how Barack Obama and Mitt Romney handle these three broad subjects: economic anxiety, foreign policy, and Romney's definition. 

The adjectives used to describe the economy post-convention are "anemic" and "persistent" — as in, persistent, anemic job growth....  More»

When is a gaffe not a gaffe? These days, almost every political miscue is labeled a gaffe. By overusing the word, I think we're devaluing it, and I think we're being unfair to politicians. 

Item: Paul Ryan claims to have run a marathon in less than three hours. The Democrats just loved this one. To anyone who has ever seen a marathon, much less run in one, the boast (made to a radio talk show host who asked him about his best time) was just incredible. That is, it was so ridiculous that it couldn't be true. So why, as Salon's Joan Walsh asked shortly after, would Ryan say something so obviously implausible?...  More»

No Easy Day, a Navy SEAL's first-person account of Operation Neptune's Spear, will not, in and of itself, bring harm to the men who compose the National Missions Force of the United States. Having read the book several times and reviewed certain passages with cleared-in military officials, both retired and active-duty, including one person who is given a pseudonym by Matt Bissonnette, it seems clear that the bad guys won't get much out of the book. As one former SEAL remarked to me, "If you want to know about our T[actics] T[echniques] [and] P[roducers], I can give you a dozen video games that [the military] helped out with, and, yeah there was that...  More»

Didja buy your iPhone 5 yet?

Whenever Apple launches a new product, people who are not obsessive Apple geeks usually react in one of three ways. First there are folks (like me) who are interested to find out what Apple has done. I respect their culture of secrecy, although it seems to have failed them this time around, as there were no surprises when the iPhone 5 was announced.  

Second, there are people who don't follow technology, use it as little as possible, and genuinely don't care. The third category will be people who aggressively, loudly, and conspicuously don't care....  More»

Is Mitt Romney's campaign really in crisis? Or is it operating just as a campaign in the throes of a quest to seat the leader of the free world should? I tend to believe the latter just because campaigns are incredibly intense and complex. Politico, however, says the opposite is true. It has published a well-reported and full-of-good-gossip magazine-length article on the campaign just in time for the Monday news cycle. The log line of the article is that consultants have hijacked the campaign, and that that reflects poorly on the candidate. Its prime example is an exquisitely detailed chronology of how Romney botched his convention speech....  More»

Romney actually said that. He might even believe it. Sometimes you want to go out of your way to wait before reacting to something. Thinking slowly never hurt anyone, at least not in print. But sometimes, your gut instinct is right.  

Mother Jones' David Corn obtained this video, and no one (as of yet) is disputing its authenticity. Here is what Romney says:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that...  More»

The National Football League needs to concede to the demands of its professional referees now — before someone gets hurt and before the soul of the game is compromised. And the NFL's silent partners — the big TV networks, like ESPN, NBC and CBS — need to pressure them to give in. 

Players are beginning to game the relative incompetence of the replacement refs. They are taking more risks. They seem to have lost confidence in a group of men (and one woman) who had very little credibility with them to begin with. Fans can accept the idea and even the reality of replacement refs until games are blown and players start getting...  More»