All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

At a town meeting hosted by Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania resident stood up to say that the health care debate has "awakened the sleeping giant."

Not exactly.

What's it's done, it seems, is stirred a hornets nest, and uncovered disturbing attitudes and emotions that have nothing to do with policy.

Are we really still debating health care when a man brings a handgun to a church where the President is speaking?

How does a swastika spray-painted on a Congressman's office further a discussion about Medicare?

These are tough and challenging times and lots of people are scared about their jobs and the economy. But we can't let fear and frankly ignorance - drown out the serious debate that needs to take place - about an issue that affects the lives of millions of people.

It's time for everyone to take a deep breath and to focus on the task at hand before this sideshow drowns out the main event.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

Talk about 15 minutes of fame. A professional handyman from Toledo, Ohio, was thrust into the national spotlight during last night's final presidential debate ... repeatedly. According to the New York Times, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain mentioned or spoke directly to Joe Wurzelbacher – immortalized as "Joe the Plumber" – more than 20 times during their primetime discussion with Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer.

And as the debate ended, so did Joe's anonymity. By the time he was contacted by a producer at the CBS Evening News, Wurzelbacher said three news trucks were already parked outside his home. But he made time to speak with Katie during both the primetime debate analysis and our online-only Webcast.

See what he had to say - or watch the video - below.

Katie Couric: We want to go to Joe the plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher from Toledo, Ohio, because Joe is telling me that he's got three live trucks parked outside his house - actually from Holland, Ohio, let me correct that, Joe. Was this a bit of a surreal experience, hearing your name mentioned not once, but twice, but almost half a dozen times during the course of this debate, Joe?

Joseph Wurzelbacher: Yeah, actually, surreal's a good word to use for it. It was - you know, I was glad I was able to act as some type of point, you know, to where they could sit there and hammer out what they both think, what they want to say. But ultimately, you know, the important part was the debate.

Couric: And again, why don't you just reiterate quickly for us, Joe, because I want you to get back, get to your local news station where you are, how you felt about the statements made by the candidates vs. the statements you heard when they were out on the campaign trail talking to you.

Wurzelbacher: One thing I noticed ...

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The pundits are spinning like whirling dervishes today to declare their candidate the winner of last night's debate. But no matter who won, the clear losers are the undecided voters.

A CBS News poll found that 72 percent of them still feel the same way today – unsure. Part of the reason may be found in another poll number. Fifty-seven percent said neither candidate did a good job of answering the questions.

Based on the thousands of e-mails to our Webcast last night, the economy is Topic A at the kitchen table. Ellen from Mississippi wrote, "Without the slinging of mud and this one said this and did that, what are you going to do for Americans who work hard for a future that is not too promising?"

401Ks have lost $2 trillion in the past 15 months. The financial mess is already a Main Street problem, but Americans are still just hearing a lot of K Street spin. To the uncommitted voters, here's hoping the third time's a charm – that you'll hear real solutions at the next debate next Wednesday.

All eyes tonight are on St. Louis, where the two vice presidential candidates will hold their one and only debate, at Washington University.

Whether it's curiosity about Governor Palin or Senator Biden, 65 percent of voters, in our latest poll, say they are very likely to watch tonight. The audience may be even bigger than for last week's presidential debate.

But before we all get carried away, one cautionary tale: 20 years ago, the vice presidential candidates Lloyd Bensten and Dan Quayle met for one debate. Bensten told Quayle he was no Jack Kennedy, and was widely considered the winner.

The underdog Dukakis campaign couldn't wait for their bump in the polls the next day. And when the results came in, they had gained one point. Their pollster said, people never vote for vice president. Over the next few weeks, we'll learn whether this year makes history, yet again.

Jeff Greenfield is senior political correspondent for CBS News.

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So the reviews are in and the consensus is: Hillary had a bad night; maybe a bad, bad night. And the question is: so what?

Can a shaky debate performance really matter to a candidate who dominates the national polls, who leads (narrowly) in Iowa and South Carolina, and humongously everywhere else; a candidate who just picked up the endorsement of AFSCME, one of the biggest public employee unions in the country?

Well, yeah ... maybe. And here's why. When Sen. Clinton followed her effusive praise of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to give illegal immigrants drivers' licenses with a refusal to back that idea, a single thought flashed through the minds of a thousand political junkies: "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

That remark by John Kerry, immortalized in late-night comedy monologues and a devastating Bush-Cheney TV ad, encapsulated the view of Kerry as a flip-flopper, a waffler, someone who couldn't be trusted to be clear and steadfast about where he stood.

Clinton so far has dodged that bullet, despite her effort to follow a "general election" strategy through the primaries — that is, to talk in a way that could appeal to independents and moderate Republicans even as she fights for the Democratic nomination. Thus, her tough talk on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, her refusal to say anything about Social Security other than that we need fiscal responsibility and bi-partisanship (how about apple pie while we're at it?).

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Since the YouTube/CNN debate last night seemed geared to the YouTube generation, we thought it would be interesting to hear from the target audience. Eric Kuhn, a 20-year-old summer intern here at CBS, and a student at Hamilton College in upstate New York, filed his impressions for us. -- Ed.

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When I first became a summer intern at CBS News a few months ago, I wondered if I could contribute to this blog. I was really interested in news (obviously) and politics, but how could I compete with the knowledge and background of all of our reporters (come on, they just hired Jeff Greenfield!) and producers? After all, I just turned 20 and about to enter my junior year at Hamilton College, where I am majoring in government.

But, after watching the YouTube Democratic Debate on CNN last night, I found my perfect blog idea, because it was about my friends and me. I grew up in a small town outside of New York City where political discussion is everywhere, whether it’s about tree removal or national elections. While my friends certainly know who is running for president, sitting down to watch a two hour debate on a Monday night is not everyone’s top priority. At first I thought only a few of my peers (like a friend who is interning for CNN) would watch last night’s debate, but on the train into work today, with other commuting interns, everyone was talking about YouTube’s presence on the debate stage.

To add another voice to the echo chamber, I thought the debate last night was historic. Historic, not in the sense of “old media” or even “new media.” It was historic because it was “OUR media,” the media of my generation. And you can bet that if we paid attention, CNN had our attention the entire time, due to the fast-aced, new format...

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The always-interesting Vaughn Ververs has posted his take on last night's GOP debate:

(AP Photo/Jim Cole)

Divisions on issues ranging from immigration to abortion were on clear display.

And after months of treading softly around an unpopular administration and many of its policies, wide cracks emerged between President Bush and the candidates in his own party who are seeking to replace him.

Almost to a man, the Republican field continued to stick with the president when it came to the issue of terrorism and sounded every bit as strong and determined as their party leader in pledging to fight it. But for the first time on a national stage, the candidates began to truly distance themselves from President Bush, sometimes in jarring language.

Follow the link above to find out what the "jarring language" was. Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy (and looooonnnnggg) campaign.

Brian Goldsmith is an associate producer for the CBS Evening News, based in New York.

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As I watched what Al Franken famously called “HANNITY and colmes” after the GOP presidential debate last night, it occurred to me that what I’d just seen was less a debate about the Republican future than a debate about the Republican past. Two of the Big Three both hail from the Bush wing of the Republican Party. They just each represent a different Bush. Temperamentally and ideologically, John McCain and Mitt Romney were as close, and as far, from each other as father and son.

Senator McCain—by emphasizing bipartisanship and the deficit, supporting "comprehensive immigration reform" and campaign finance reform, and opposing "enhanced interrogation" that he equated to torture—stands for the conciliatory, consensus-building politics of George H.W. Bush and James Baker. That doesn’t mean he won’t attack his opponents; his I-don’t-change-my-positions-in-even-numbered-years line sliced like a Ginzu. But it’s not his preferred MO, and it usually comes in the form of a counterattack.

Governor Romney—by emphasizing "conservative principles," MBA management, doing whatever it takes to defend America, and cutely but savagely attacking his opponent with buzz words like "amnesty," "sanctity," "Kennedy," and "Feingold"—stands for the divide-and-conquer politics of George W. Bush and Karl Rove. He jumped at the chance to slam McCain—and even his positive message about three legs necessary for the Republican stool (strong families, strong military, strong economy) is an implicit jab at his opponents.

(Rudy Giuliani, by the way, is an interesting amalgam all his own: more hawkish than Wolfowitz on national security, as conservative as Forbes on the economy, but Evan Bayh on social issues. And, as his attempt at an “I paid for this microphone”/“You’re no Jack Kennedy” moment with Ron Paul demonstrated, he would be absent from the stage were it not for 9/11.)

The larger question is: Having lost the Congress, having sustained a president with sub-30% approval ratings, having endured war and scandal and disappointment, will Republican primary voters believe now is the time to compromise, or now is the time to fight?

The GOP candidates were at it again last night. Vaughn Ververs has a blow by blow analysis:

Tuesday night's feisty debate saw several sharp exchanges as veiled criticisms replaced by direct language, and motives questioned, as well as several sharp exchanges. And while there were no clear-cut winners, there were memorable moments and perhaps one loser, at least in the eyes of many in the audience.

Read on to find out who that was, and what made the debate so "feisty."

Anybody see the debate?

Our own Vaughn Ververs did, and offers some Friday morning quarter-backing right here. Vaughn opines:

As with the Democratic debate last week, almost all of the lesser-known candidates proved up to the task but none were able to break out of the pack. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee sounded eloquent when discussing the issue of life.

“When hikers on Mt. Hood get lost, we move heaven and Earth to go find them. When coal miners in West Virginia are trapped in a mine, we go after them because we celebrate life. This life issue is not insignificant.”

Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, a fierce abortion opponent, allowed that his party could support a nominee who differs on the issue, saying, “I believe in the Ronald Reagan principle, that somebody that's with you 80 percent of the time is not your enemy, that's your friend and that's your ally."

It was that kind of evening for the most part. Even candidates who were thought to have taken indirect shots at their colleagues suddenly clammed up, claiming they had been speaking in generalities. This was an opening sparring session, featuring a few light jabs bit no hard hooks.

Meantime, elsewhere in the blogosphere, this gal thinks it's all too much, too soon, and is a little (okay, a lot) irked at one of the questions, about Bill Clinton:

“This is the question you ask? Okay, well, perhaps…considering President Clinton took very little aggressive action throughout the 1990’s - say, from the first WTC bombing in 1993, to the attack on the USS COLE in 2000 - to curtail the growth and activities of OBL and Al Qaeda, and since President Clinton was the man who, in 1998, told us - along with his entire administration - that Saddam Hussein had WMD and would certainly someday use them…perhaps it’s finally time to let go of Bill Clinton, and look ahead instead of back?

Surf around. Everybody, it seems, has an opinion.