As a recovering pollster (I worked for Democratic pollster Peter Hart from 1974 to 1981), let me weigh in on the controversy over whether the polls are accurate.

In 2008, voters under 30 preferred Barack Obama over John McCain by a 66 percent to 32 percent margin. Among older voters, Obama led McCain by 50 percent to 49 percent.

"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside," Barack Obama said in an interview Thursday on the Spanish-language Univision network. "You can only change it from the outside."

In Libya, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues were murdered Tuesday. Earlier that day, protesters in Egypt stormed the U.S. embassy and tore down the American flag.

The consensus on Barack Obama's acceptance speech Thursday night, and in effect on the Democratic National Convention as a whole, is that it was a bust.

"One question, Mr. President," read the words on the front cover of this week's Economist, behind a silhouette of the back of Barack Obama's head, "just what would you do with another four years?"

Today, the 40th Republican National Convention assembles in hurricane-threatened Tampa, Fla.

Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan was supposed to be a problem for the Republicans.

On the USS Wisconsin in Norfolk harbor, a coatless Mitt Romney named a tieless Paul Ryan as his vice presidential nominee.

Traumas suffered by a society generations ago can still have a negative effect centuries later.