Op-Ed

Regardless of the outcome of the elections, members of Congress will return in November under enormous pressure to “turn off” automatic spending cuts and tax increases that are set to take effect at the beginning of next year.

President Obama won’t have a chance to make up for his uninspiring debate performance until Oct. 22, when he will meet Mitt Romney in Florida with CBS’s Bob Schieffer moderating. The vice president’s debate comes before that, though, as well as a debate with a town-hall format that won’t allow the candidates much opportunity for oratory. So, as an old speech writer, I can’t resist offering suggestions for his last clear chance for summation. Here’s what I’d whisper in his ear the night before.

With polls showing Americans trust President Obama more on foreign policy and a debate devoted to the subject coming up on Oct. 22, Mitt Romney has been clarifying his positions in articles and speeches, including a major address Oct. 8 at the Virginia Military Institute.

Romney says he wants America to lead again, resuming the strategy that guided the United States for the 70 or so years prior to 2009. He has a good point, but much of his attention has been directed at what he considers Obama’s failings — leading from behind, apologizing, not being close enough to Israel — rather than toward delineating his own policy.

A good example was his pallid op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Sept. 30. It began with 10 paragraphs of throat-clearing (“President Obama has allowed our leadership to atrophy,” etc.) and offered precisely two prescriptions: make the ayatollahs believe “when we say an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability ... is unacceptable” and place “no daylight between the United States and Israel.”

Even in an election that will surely turn on economic issues, Americans deserve more from their candidates on foreign policy.

Gallup is reporting that Mitt Romney has received a 5-point bounce from his trouncing of the president in last week’s debate, with the race tied at 47-47 percent. The race is a dead heat and, just like the MLB playoffs happening in Washington for the first time in decades, every single play now counts.

Hunger and malnutrition is the No. 1 risk to prosperity worldwide.

Three weeks into the Comeback America Initiative’s almost five-week fiscal responsibility bus tour, it’s clear we have a real showstopper on board with us: a 100-pound, 10-foot-long digital display whose flashing digits tell their own story.

We have heard the presidential candidates talk a lot about healthcare, defense spending and taxes. 

According to conventional wisdom, only a few “swing” or “battleground” states matter in presidential elections. Candidates take this idea of swing-state determinism seriously — this year, Mitt Romney and President Obama are devoting the bulk of their advertising and organizing to about eight to 10 battleground states. According to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group report, as of late September, spending in each of the eight leading battleground states is already up by 140 percent or more as compared to 2008.

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama do not agree about much, but one thing they do have in common is the belief that their face-to-face debates, beginning Wednesday night0, could change the tone of the campaign, produce new reasons for voters to support or reject their candidacies and ultimately have some real impact on the final result. That’s as it should be. Presidential debates have now become an institutionalized part of the fall general election campaign.

Politicians have promised Medicare benefits worth $37 trillion over the next 75 years. But that huge amount of benefits isn’t paid for, and so those promises will not be kept.