Politics

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigned in Iowa and Ohio Tuesday, as a wave of new polls suggested Romney's strong debate performance last week paid off. Swing states that recently seemed far out of his reach now look like a virtual tie in polls, or even leaning in the Republican's direction.

With the presidential race tightening, both candidates are eying the same prize: Ohio. President Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney both campaigned there Tuesday. It was Obama's second visit to Ohio in five days.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The Libya hearing provides a reminder of the role foreign policy is playing in the presidential campaign. We asked two foreign policy specialists about the candidates' approach to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution is director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar.

SHADI HAMID: Living here in the region, there is a general here that Obama is a weak president.

INSKEEP: A sense he says persists despite the U.S. intervention in Libya and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

A House committee is investigating last month's attack that killed the ambassador to Libya and three other Americans at a consulate in the city of Benghazi. And today, senior State Department officials will be on the receiving end of politically-charged questions. Republicans say that the Obama administration rejected repeated requests for more security.

NPR's Michele Kelemen has more.

For our series First and Main, Morning Edition is traveling to contested counties in swing states to find out what is shaping voters' decisions this election season. The latest trip took us to Larimer County, Colo.

The U.S. Supreme Court returns on Wednesday to the emotional issue of affirmative action in higher education. The court will once again hear oral arguments on the issue, this time in a case from the University of Texas.

Over the past 35 years, the court has twice ruled that race may be one of many factors in determining college admissions, as long as there are no racial quotas. Now, just nine years after its last decision, the justices seem poised to outright reverse or cut back on the previous rulings.

With 27 days until the general election, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was on an Iowa farm Tuesday where he did what he's done for months: criticized President Obama's economic policies, though his critique understandably had an agricultural slant.

Audie Cornish talks with Ari Shapiro about Mitt Romney's campaigning in the Midwest on Tuesday.

When Mitt Romney said he would cut PBS funding in the first presidential debate — and singled out Big Bird, whom he said he liked a lot — he perhaps inadvertently introduced the befeathered yellow children's icon smack into the center of political debate. President Obama approved a cable-only commercial dinging Romney for going after Sesame Street rather than Wall Street, but Romney appears to think he has a winning hand — castigating the president for focusing on a profitable educational puppet empire rather than big issues, like terrorism in the Arab world.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From Ohio now to Michigan, where labor unions are betting big this election. They're throwing their weight behind not one, but three new ballot proposals. The most ambitious of the three would enshrine collective bargaining rights in the state's constitution. As Michigan Public Radio's Rick Pluta reports, that could reverse as many as 170 state laws that currently limit union bargaining power and fundraising.