All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

First off, if you missed our VP debate Webcast last night, you can catch it right here.

While that very Webcast was going on, our crack Investigative Unit was already crunching facts to see whether some of the claims made by Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin actually add up. Of course, several claims completely missed the mark. See what producer Laura Strickler found right here.

And tonight on the Evening News, Laura's working on a piece with Correspondent Wyatt Andrews, during which he'll break down even more of the assertions and accusations - and set the record straight with a little help from FactCheck.org. You'll find Wyatt's piece right here at our Reality Check section right after it airs on the Evening News at 6:30.

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.

Last week on the CBS Evening News (and right here on Couric & Co!), we showed a little preview of what Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden told Katie when they spent a day together in Ohio earlier in the week. In tonight's show, we'll air Katie's full story about going behind-the-scenes with Senator Biden, including his response to this question:

Katie Couric: How is it preparing for the debates?

Sen. Joe Biden: Well, it’s kind of hard to prepare because I don’t know what she thinks. There’s been no – I don’t know a lot about her, so I have to assume for purposes of the debate that she agrees with John on everything.

Watch the clip right here:

Over in the Politics section, there's a real issue for the campaigns to deal with, and as Brian Montopoli reports, it has nothing to do with lipstick. It's Wall Street - tanking.

Both Obama and McCain are vying to take ownership of the economic issue, and are using very different approaches to doing so. You can read Brian's whole report here, or check out a preview below.

With 50 days left until Election Day, the battle for the presidency may have finally settled on a defining issue. And it has nothing to do with lipstick.

The collapse of financial industry titans Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and subsequent stock market crash, just the latest pieces of bad economic news in a year that has been dotted with grim headlines, have forced the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain to put aside some of the more trivial aspects of the campaign and try to cast their candidate as most prepared to properly guide the economy.

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Jeff Greenfield is senior political correspondent for CBS News.

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INDIANOLA, Iowa-- On a bright warm late September Sunday, more than 12,000 Democrats have gathered at the Memorial balloon field in Indianola, to hear six Democratic Presidential candidates--a gathering a cynic might say will produce enough hot air to launch an armada of balloon. They are here for Senator Tom Harkin's 30th annual "Steak Fry"--Iowa being well north of the Mason-Dixon line, they actually don't dry the steaks, they grill them--and to attend a Presidential "Cattle call" where cattle is in fact on the menu.
It is also a place to measure the obstacles--and possible opportunity--for one of the longer of the long shot candidates.

When Delaware's Joe Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972, Hillary Clinton was in law school; John Edwards as at North Carolina State; Barack Obama was 11-years-old.

But even though Biden has spent more than half his life in the Senate, and has chaired the prestigious Judiciary and now the Foreign Affair committees--such background holds little sway in American Presidential politics; just ask the 41 sitting US Senators who have tried and failed to reach the White House since JFK did it in 1960. Clinton and Obama travel with Secret Service protection, and each has raised ten times the money Biden has. John Edwards still has the recognition and much of the organization he had in 2004, when he nearly won the Iowa caucuses. Even New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has spent nearly $2 million n Iowa media advertising; Biden has spent about $270,000.

So Biden travels "light"--in one and two car caravans. He speaks to dozens, not thousands.

So why is he here, 20 years after his first presidential run collapsed amid charges of plagiarism and exaggerated academic credentials?

For Biden, the answer comes down to one word: Iraq, and the fallout from that war...

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