All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Tonight, immediately following our primetime coverage of President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress, Katie Couric will speak with Sen. John McCain in a live Web-exclusive interview on CBSNews.com and CNET.com at approximately 10:30 p.m. The Webcast features other guests, too - and all the analysis you expect from what Katie likes to call "the best political team in the galaxy."

And as usual, you get to join the conversation. The Webcast includes live response to viewer questions, which can be submitted now at www.cbsnews.com/webcast or by e-mailing questions@cbs.com.

Check out a preview here:

Our sister blog, Political Hotsheet, is pointing to an item in the Washington Post reporting that President-elect Barack Obama will announce he is tapping CNN correspondent and CBS News contributor Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, to be surgeon general. Could Dr. Gupta be heading to Washington? Brian Montopoli writes:

The Washington Post, citing two sources, is reporting that Obama has offered Gupta the job.

"Gupta has told administration officials that he wants the job, and the final vetting process is under way," reported the Post. "He has asked for a few days to figure out the financial and logistical details of moving his family from Atlanta to Washington but is expected to accept the offer."

CBS News can confirm through a source close to Dr. Gupta that the doctor was offered the position.

Read the full post and check out some of Gupta's work for CBS News here.

We here at Couric & Co. just wanted to take a few minutes and welcome our new cousins in blog-land, Political Hotsheet and World Watch.

Hotsheet is taking the chair previously filled by Horserace, the late, great blog about all things from the campaign trail. It's turning a fresh eye on Washington as the next administration shapes up. Check it out here.

World Watch will include dispatches from our team of foreign correspondents and staff at the London Bureau. It's already up and running with a few posts from Correspondent Sheila MacVicar about the terror – and ensuing investigation into the massacre – in Mumbai. It'll include breaking news items and more in-depth reporting than we can sometimes fit into a broadcast. So check it here and check back often!

And don't forget to give our new neighbors a warm welcome. Leave them a few comments or drop us a note and let us know what you think.

Since 2006, Republicans have lost at least a dozen Senate seats, and more than 50 House seats. They've watched as Barack Obama won the presidency with a popular mandate that no Democrat has seen since Lyndon Johnson.

Amazing, there is now not a single Republican senator on the West Coast, not one Republican congressman from New England. The nation's fastest growing minority group - Latinos - is now the Democrats' fastest growing constituency.

Some strategists are predicting a civil war inside the party of Lincoln, but the real question isn't whether to move left or right but how to move forward, and how to win again on the dominant issue of this election: fixing the economic mess.

A great suggestion came from Gov. Bobby Jindal, a rising Republican star in Louisiana: the party should spend more time thinking about "new ideas and solutions" and less time on political tactics.

Maybe that's one thing all Republicans can agree on.

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Christina Ruffini is a CBS News broadcast associate based in Washington. As of yet, she is uncommitted ... to a Halloween costume.

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It's down to the wire. The big day is rapidly approaching. You know there is a choice to be made, but you just can't stomach your options. It's the same recycled characters, the same hackneyed ideas, the same old party lines. There is no new blood, just the familiar red corn syrup and painted vampire fangs of Octobers past.

But with all you've had to think about lately, your Halloween costume might be pretty far down on the list. It is difficult to justify the purchase of full-body Stormtrooper armor or a historically-accurate Scarlett O'Hara hoopskirt when your 401(k) just dropped 30 percent. And how can you be expected to choose which Power Ranger or Teletubby you want to be when the only colors on your mind are red and blue?

The impending election has possessed many to pick politically themed day-of-the-dead duds. After all, what more colorful characters could there be than the ones running for office? Latex masks of Barak Obama and John McCain are popping up faster than plastic yard signs, and if the sale of beehive-ish wigs is any indication, bespectacled Sarah Palins will be as ubiquitous this season as sexy nurses and sultry cats.

But those of who don't want to end up just another Democratic doppelganger or Republican running mate must find a way to rise above the partisan pack. An Obama mask is nothing new, but pair it with a suit covered in pennies, nickels and pages from an old atlas and you can be "Obama's Map for Change." McCain's mug is musty, so combine him with a large Stetson, six-shooters and a Mel Gibson DVD, to become ...

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[Editor's note: This post was written by Arden Farhi and Jamie McGlinchy of the CBS News digital team. Also be sure to check out the video they put together below featuring CBS News' director of surveys, Kathy Frankovic.]

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Twenty six years ago, then-mayor of Los Angeles Tom Bradley ran for governor of California. Bradley, one of the first black mayors of a major city, was leading his opponent George Deukmejian in the polls just days before the election. But on that first Tuesday in November, it was Deukmejian, a white man, making plans to move into the governor's mansion, not Bradley.

"And thus was born the Bradley Effect ... that white voters will tell a pollster one thing, and the do another," says Kathy Frankovic, Director of Surveys for CBS News.

Throughout the 1980s and up until the early 1990s, the Bradley Effect was evident in other races. David Dinkins narrowly won the New York City mayoral race in 1989 after holding a significant margin in the polls. Doug Wilder nearly lost the race for Governor in Virginia that same year even though polls had him ahead before election day.

Frankovic predicts the Bradley Effect will not come into play in this election.

"I personally don't see the evidence in the surveys that we've conducted that white voters are misrepresenting their point of view and their preference to pollsters," Frankovic said. "I think you have to recognize that times have changed. In the 1980s we had issues like crime and welfare that were very "racialized" issues. We were less than 20 years from the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. We were closer to the urban riots."

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Just forty-eight days from now, more than a 100 million Americans will go to the polls and elect a new president.

We're choosing not just a political party or a set of policies, we're choosing a person. Either John McCain or Barack Obama will bring his own values and beliefs - his strengths and weaknesses - to the White House. Of course, issues matter enormously, and Where They Stand will affect how you live.

But so will the character and leadership of the man himself - his judgment in crisis, his response to adversity, his calm in a storm.

That's why we're launching Presidential Questions on tonight's CBS Evening News. Every Wednesday until the election, you will see both candidates answer the same questions, and you'll be able to judge for yourself.

A Greek philosopher said, "a man's character is his fate." For the president of the United States, character isn't just his fate - it's ours as well.

Jeff Greenfield is senior political correspondent for CBS News.

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No, CBS News is not re-making a famous spaghetti western. Instead, we’re launching a weekly look at the most effective, most depressing and most what-planet-are-we-on events of the political week. The judgments are non-ideological – effective and depressing and weird events happen across the political spectrum – and we don’t have a standard Olympic-style point-scoring standard for this feature.

For openers, we’ve chosen an obvious starting point: Sen. John McCain’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. We’ve seen selections in the past change a campaign for the worse ...

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Kelly Wallace is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.

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It may be hard to believe that after back to back conventions, months of campaigning and a 24/7 news cycle covering every political play, some voters are still undecided. Stumped. Not sure which way to go. Voters like 58-year-old Linda Brode, who we profile tonight on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

“I have no clue who to vote for and I usually make up my mind by now,” she told me with a laugh last week when we visited Tamaqua, Penn., a small, working class town in a key battleground state.

Consider her story – she’s a registered Republican who voted for Bill Clinton and George Bush. My producer, Alberto Moya, was at her home when she watched Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. “If the vote was Tuesday and it was November 4th, I would vote for [Obama],” she told Alberto at the time. “Absolutely with all my heart.”

But then she heard Sarah Palin’s speech...

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From CBS News Producer Jennifer Yuille:
Prospective first lady Cindy McCain told Katie Couric in an interview Wednesday that people would not be questioning whether or not Governor Palin could handle raising a family and performing the duties of vice president “if she were a man.”

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