Debate day reading list: how to bone up before Barack Obama and John McCain's final showdown
Tonight we will be live blogging Barack Obama and John McCain's final presidential debate, just as we did their previous showdowns. You can find our coverage right here, beginning at 5:30 p.m. PDT.
While the candidates brush up on their talking points (we already know Obama's, because they were accidentally sent to the media), we thought you might want to bone up, too. So we present you with our debate day reading list -- a collection of some of the most interesting politics stories online:
Stephanie Strom of the New York Times writes an illuminating piece about Obama's connections to ACORN, a community organizing group that Republicans say committed voter fraud in several important swing states. Does the ACORN fracas seem ugly? It won't after you read Jill Lepore's article in the New Yorker about how we used to vote. In the nineteenth century, she says, Americans sometimes had to quite literally fight their way to the polls on election day (they also had to bring their own ballots).
Meanwhile, in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Frank defends another favorite McCain campaign target -- William Ayers. And Politico's Jeanne Cummings notes that while McCain's ads linking Obama to Ayers are getting a lot of attention -- Obama is actually airing many more commercials.
John B. Judis write in the New Republic about politicians' personalities and the role that “heroism” has played in some elections.
Ryan Lizza profiles Joe Biden (remember him?).
Our own Johanna Neuman and Seema Mehta preview the debate, and Richard Cohen explains in the Washington Post the questions he'd like to see the candidates answer.
And finally, if you don't have time do all that reading, Slate recaps all that has happened in the election since the first presidential debate in a handy (if a bit slanted) four-minute video:
-- Kate Linthicum
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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So far, all the conclusions by all the pundits are
totally based upon POLLS. Not a single actual vote
has been cast yet. Obama supporters gush at how
well their man has done in the debates, which proves
once again that Obama is a good debater and a good
speaker. It doesn't say anything about his character,
judgement, or what kind of a leader he would be.
I still would rather trust a man who would not sell out
his fellow prisoners, even during 5 years of torture,
than to trust a man who betrayed a 20 year friendship,
for personal ambition. And ... regarding this election,
until people actually vote ... it ain't over till it's over!
Posted by: Howard | October 16, 2008 at 03:51 PM