MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- The crowd at the Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate in Myrtle Beach was feisty, with whoops and cheers for Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, though not so much for Ron Paul.

Of course President Obama is not concentrating on campaigning, White House press spokesmen assured us -- as the president headed off to Chicago for three fundraisers and a drop-in at his campaign headquarters, two days after a high-roller fundraising choked off traffic five blocks from the White House, with the assistance of a score of D.C. police cars.

To win just under 40 percent of the vote in a primary with five active candidates is pretty impressive, even for a candidate like Mitt Romney, who started off with significant advantages in New Hampshire.

A presidential campaign exposes candidates' strengths and weaknesses. The strengths they're eager to tell you about. So let's look at the weaknesses.

Elections are contests held during a moment in time between candidates who have records stretching back, often far back, into the past. So there is always a tension between the man (or woman) who is running and the moment.

Election year has finally arrived, well after the beginning of a turbulent and unpredictable election season, and voting begins on Tuesday in the Iowa Republicans caucuses.

The world usually turns out to work differently from what American presidents expected when they were campaigning.

LACONIA, N.H. -- Three weeks out from the New Hampshire primary, and voters in the Granite State don't seem to have settled firmly on one of the Republican presidential candidates.

It's highly unusual in a presidential debate for two Republican candidates -- the two leading in current national polls -- to heap praise on a liberal Democratic senator.

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- "We're not going to lose in New Hampshire." So says Mitt Romney's state coordinator, Jason McBride.