President Obama and GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan were in Iowa, where they told supporters that the general election would give voters a stark choice between two visions of the nation's future. With Mitt Romney in Florida and Joe Biden in North Carolina, all four candidates worked to energize supporters in key swing states.

In new ads, President Obama and Mitt Romney seek to raise doubts about each other's character. Romney accuses the president of being willing to do anything to stay president. Obama's ad accuses Romney of making a "blatantly false" claim.

The findings appear to give Democrats plenty of fuel to continue pounding away at Republican Mitt Romney on his tax returns. But there appears to be almost as much support for Romney to stand firm.

Mitt Romney's big foreign trip got off to a shaky start. Among several missteps, the Republican presidential candidate upset his British host by raising doubts about whether the London Olympics would be a success.

The 2008 GOP presidential nominee came to the defense of Hilary Clinton's longtime aide on the Senate floor. While Sen. John McCain didn't mention Rep. Michele Bachmann by name, he made clear he wants her to stop suggesting the aide is helping the Muslim Brotherhood.

There's little evidence that the flap over Fast and Furious will make a difference to most voters come November. But there are a number of conservative gun owners in battleground states like Ohio who could be energized to oppose President Obama.

Paul Krugman thinks he knows what President Obama was trying to say when he infamously said that the "private sector is doing fine." But the economist and New York Times columnist said the president "screwed up the line."

The latest major poll, commissioned by CBS News/NY Times just weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to deliver its ruling on the constitutionality of the health-care law. The survey found that nothing has happened to change the minds of a majority of the public that the law should be overturned.

President Obama revealed in his memoir "Dreams for My Father" his youthful use of illegal drugs as he grew up in Hawaii. But journalist and biographer David Maraniss apparently fills in the picture with quite a few colorful details.

President Obama rhetorically hit Mitt Romney, the all-but-official Republican presidential nominee, with a little barnyard humor. He accused the former Massachusetts governor of not only lying about his record as president but Romney's also.

Mitt Romney and Speaker John Boehner showed a determination Thursday to keep the election-year debate confined to the topic on which they believe President Obama has the greatest vulnerabilty — the economy.

The president and his re-election team are clearly wagering that his support for same-sex marriage will attract more voters than it repels — and allow him to make the choice between himself and Mitt Romney even sharper.

David Maraniss' new biography of President Obama appears from a Vanity Fair excerpt to be an extraordinary glimpse at the president as a young man. It's a reminder that anyone who would become president would be well advised to treat the people they meet along the way well, or at least decently, since one day Maraniss or someone very much like him will be interviewing them.

A president seeking re-election against a backdrop of a lackluster economy would be remiss if he didn't stress his unique roles as the nation's top policymaker for international relations and the military's commander-in-chief. President Obama and his campaign clearly intend to exploit those credentials for all they're worth while pointing out Mitt Romney's lack of them.

President Obama made his first public comments Friday about the Trayvon Martin shooting, which opened him up to approval and suspicion in this racially and politically polarized nation.

David Walker, one-time head of the Government Accountability Office, pointed out something that isn't news but still has the power to disturb when you actually take the time to mull it over: Congress has gotten in the habit of not passing spending bills on time or budget resolutions at all.

From her public appearances, including her resignation video, it was clear that Giffords, even as a powerful symbol of the strength of human will and the advances in trauma medicine, would face significant challenges in dealing with the rigors of a re-election campaign. So her decision, though a sad reminder of what has been taken from her, was not a surprise.

It's been a contest of surprises, with a series of candidates rising to the top to fill the anybody-but-Romney role. So it really shouldn't come as a surprise that on the day of the first-in-the-South primary in South Carolina, it's uncertain what the outcome will be or what comes next.

Steven Rattner, the Wall Street financier who oversaw the Obama Administration's successful rescues of General Motors and Chrysler, now comes to the aid of some other beleaguered members of corporate America — Mitt Romney in his former role as a private-equity CEO, and Bain Capital, the company the Republican presidential candidate once ran.

It's by now a familiar pattern. Speaker Boehner gives other leaders in Washington the impression that a deal has been reached on some fiscal matter. Or, similarly, he indicates that fiscal legislation he's behind can get through the House only to have everything fall apart once his fellow House Republicans, especially the Tea Party wing, weigh in.