Somebody must be up and somebody must be down. Trouble is, campaigns are messy, subtle creatures that don't follow convenient narratives.

President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another?

According to a Public Policy Polling survey, most Americans find lice and colonoscopies more appealing than Capitol Hill.

Political reporters and political professionals rushed to judgment against Romney because we crave clear, unambiguous story lines.

For a man who has compared himself to Theodore Roosevelt and the nation's challenges to those of the Gilded Age, Obama put forward a tepid agenda.

In times of tumult, voters are likely to forgive a president, if not reward him, for compromises made in service of solutions.

Shock, confusion, fear, anger, grief, and defiance. On Sept. 11, 2001, and for the three days following the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, President George W. Bush led with raw emotion that reflected the public's whipsawing stages of acceptance.