The Financial Times runs a must-read profile of Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign.

“If Romney does lose the election, the turning point might be his [mid-June] departure on his six-state bus tour from the New Hampshire farmhouse. While Romney was holding small rallies, generating positive local news coverage, the Obama machine cranked up a campaign of negative attacks costing tens of millions of dollars. Obama’s air war was devastating. The portrait of Romney as a latter-day robber baron raiding companies and laying off workers at Bain Capital angered many business leaders. But it hit home with its target audience, the middle classes of middle America, in states such as Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin. For many political professionals, Romney’s fatal mistake was not to have advertisements up at the same time, telling his own life story on his own terms.”

The Week rounds up advice for how President Obama can adjust to a newly invigorated Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney’s strong debate performance “has generated $12 million in online contributions, his campaign said, as well as a surge in volunteers and bigger crowds at his events,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Republicans and Democrats say Mr. Romney’s performance before a television audience of some 67 million people bought the GOP nominee a second look from swing voters and may help him improve an image battered by negative ads and his own missteps. The debate also gave Mr. Romney a chance to do something he couldn’t in the primary: trumpet his record of working with Democrats and present himself as a practical deal maker who favors results over ideology.”

Daily Beast: Will Mitt get a major bounce?

Mitt Romney regularly claims a track record of bipartisanship as Massachusetts governor by running a state dominated by the political opposition.

New York Times: “But on closer examination, the record as governor he alluded to looks considerably less burnished than Mr. Romney suggested. Bipartisanship was in short supply; Statehouse Democrats complained he variously ignored, insulted or opposed them, with intermittent charm offensives. He vetoed scores of legislative initiatives and excised budget line items a remarkable 844 times, according to the nonpartisan research group Factcheck.org. Lawmakers reciprocated by quickly overriding the vast bulk of them.”

“Nobody had to tell President Barack Obama he had whiffed when he walked off the stage in Denver Wednesday night — nor was he in the mood for a lot of advice,” Politico reports.

Said an adviser: “You could tell he was pissed.”

“At first, Obama didn’t think his performance was a complete disaster. But he began Thursday morning by watching excerpts of his own performance and was especially struck by his own tentative, grim demeanor — especially when he and a more relaxed Mitt Romney were broadcast in split-screen. It was worse than he thought, according to one person close to the situation. He was subdued but positive on a conference call with staff.”

Matt Bai: “Watching the president grimace his way through the restrained back-and-forth reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a friend in Democratic politics, who posited that Mr. Obama simply doesn’t love being president. Not that he doesn’t want the job or believe he should have it, or that its challenges don’t give him plenty of cause for stress or solemnity — just that he doesn’t appear to actually enjoy the daily business of running the country.”

“Mostly, what Mr. Obama seems to get no joy from, and what debates really demand of you, is the opportunity to persuade people that you’re right, by making complex arguments sound simple and self-evident. This is why Bill Clinton’s convention speech stood out as it did — because it reminded everyone of how powerful an enthusiastic presidential explanation can be.”

Nate Silver: “Historically, there has been no relationship at all between the unemployment rate on Election Day and the incumbent’s performance. However, there has been a relationship between the change in the unemployment rate in the months leading up to the election and how well the incumbent does. The decline in unemployment under Mr. Obama this year since December is the largest in an election year since Ronald Reagan’s re-election bid, when it declined to 7.3 percent in Sept. 1984 from 8.3 percent in Dec. 1983.”

The current data “would project a narrow re-election for Mr. Obama by about 3 percentage points — similar to Mr. Bush’s margin over John Kerry in 2004. Especially with the Friday jobs report, the economic numbers now seem just strong enough to make the incumbent a favorite for re-election, based on the way the public has evaluated their presidents historically.”

Rick Santorum got philosophical when asked about Mitt Romney’s pledge to cut off PBS funding, the Washington Post reports.

Said Santorum: “I’ve voted to kill Big Bird in the past. I have a record there that I have to disclose. That doesn’t mean I don’t like Big Bird. You can kill things and still like them, maybe to eat them, I don’t know. That’s probably that. Can we — can we go back on that one?”

Comedian and “home crafts expert” endorses Bob Kerrey (D) in his Nebraska U.S. Senate race in a very original video.

It’s easily my favorite candidate endorsement of all time.

[Read more…]

The Daily Show’s take on the first presidential debate is priceless.

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No pre-written notes were allowed but a video clip shows Mitt Romney pulling something from his pocket at the start of the first presidential debate.

The Romney campaign says it was a handkerchief.

[Read more…]

A Smart Politics analysis of the first presidential debate finds that President Obama blinked at a rate of 70.8 times per minute while speaking and tallied 1,000 more blinks than Mitt Romney during the broadcast. Romney blinked at a rate of 52.8 per minute.
 
“Various external factors can contribute to elevated blinking rates, such as wearing contacts or, in this case, perhaps the bright lights of the staged televised event. And, of course, some individuals may experience an increased rate simply due to nerves or being placed in an uncomfortable situation.”

The Daily reports that Boston College psychophysiologist Joseph Tecce has
found that since 1980, the candidate who blinks the least during the
televised debates has gone on to win the popular vote.

“Muslim Lier”

— Graffiti vandalism on an Obama campaign building in Iowa, reports the Des Moines Register.

Here are the latest polls from the battleground states, updated as need throughout the day:

Ohio: Romney 47%, Obama 46% (We Ask America)

Ohio: Obama 50%, Romney 49% (Rasmussen)

Florida: Romney 49%, Obama 46% (We Ask America)

Florida: Romney 47%, Obama 47% (Rasmussen)

Virginia: Romney 49%, Obama 48% (Rasmussen)

Virginia: Romney 48%, Obama 45% (We Ask America)