Exploring the Issues Behind the 2012 Campaign.
Read the full intro.
What do you think are the most important issues facing the U.S. right now? What are your views on the economy, national security, foreign affairs, health care and the environment? Tell us by tweeting with the hashtag #TheAgenda or by posting a comment.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
The attack in Libya last month has become the focal point of a fierce debate over what role the United States should seek to play in shaping the new order emerging from the Arab Spring.
The Uncomfortable Truth About American Wages: Job creation has rightly been the central economic issue of the last three years as the United States continues its recovery. But the problems with the job market are not entirely recent. Read more…
The dispute over how the Obama administration has characterized the lethal attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, last month boiled over once again in the debate on Tuesday night between President Obama and Mitt Romney. But questions about what happened in the attack, and disputes over who said what about it, have left many people confused. Here are some of the facts as they are now known.
But in Mr. Hubbard’s case, some of his amply compensated work takes policy stands that buttress the viewpoints of the corporate interests that are paying him.Glenn Hubbard is Mitt Romney’s Go-To Economist, The New York Times
Mitt Romney ran to the right in the Republican primaries in 2008 and this year. But as he seeks to appeal to more centrist general election voters, Mr. Romney used new language and struck a different emphasis when referring to his positions and policies. The video clips here offer a few examples of his shift in tone.
The National Journal says the numbers suggest Barack Obama should be losing, and explains why he isn’t.
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney has said much about torture as part of terror investigations during the 2012 general campaign. Read more…
According to 2008 data from the Cornell Survey Research Institute reported Monday in a Times opinion piece, 96 percent of Americans — not 47 percent — have taken part in at least one of these government programs:
By MICHAEL COOPER
When Representative Paul D. Ryan faced a skeptical audience — and some boos — at the AARP convention in New Orleans on Friday, he tried to reassure them by noting that the Romney-Ryan health plan “makes no changes for those in or near retirement.”
He was apparently referring to Mitt Romney’s plan to reshape Medicare in a decade so that future recipients would get fixed amounts of money to buy private insurance or a form of traditional Medicare. But other aspects of their health plan would affect people in retirement now. Read more …
By MICHAEL COOPER
President Obama’s re-election campaign released an ad on Thursday that uses an analysis of an outdated Medicare plan by Representative Paul D. Ryan to warn, “The Romney-Ryan plan could raise seniors’ costs up to $6,400 a year.”
On Friday that statistic — which the Obama campaign has used in previous ads, and which was used in several speeches at the Democratic National Convention — was questioned by a fact-checker who noted that the figure referred to Mr. Ryan’s “original plan” and that it had since been “modified.”
The fact-checker? President Obama, who mentioned it in a speech beamed by satellite to AARP’s convention in New Orleans. Read more …
