Read Peter Suderman on Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Paul Ryan
If you haven't read Senior Editor Peter Suderman's November-issue feature essay "Obama's Failed Narrative: Did the presidency ruin a good storyteller, or vice versa?", which was posted here earlier today, you should fix that oversight now. It's an essential insight into the fascinating, slippery, and disappointment-inducing role that narrative-manipulation has played in Obama's career as a writer/politician.
Suderman has also captured two of the other three candidates at the top of the major parties' tickets, in feature analyses worth refreshing every month or so. They are: "Consultant in Chief: Instead of planning to cut government, Mitt Romney is repackaging the same old Republicanism," and "Paul Ryan: Radical or Sellout?" You want to understand these three men? Read these three pieces. I'm not sure we need to understand Joe Biden any more than we already do, though I'm open to persuasion.