While the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain are drawing some comparisons between him and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, there's also Bill Clinton.

A woman named Gennifer Flowers, you'll recall, claimed having an affair with Clinton as he was poised to win the New Hampshire primary in 1992. To quash the damaging story line, Clinton and wife, Hillary, appeared on CBS's "60 Minutes." You know, I'm not sitting here - some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,'' Hillary Clinton famously said. Her husband went on to win the presidency.

Democratic consultant Chris Lehane, who worked on the Clinton campaign back then and went on to serve in the administration, said Cain needs to be careful about his initial response. In public appearances and nationally televised interviews on Monday, Cain categorically denied that he had ever sexually harassed employees, but his story seemed change as to whether he was aware of any legal settlements.

"He drew a pretty specific line in the sand, so his candidacy will rise or fall on whether than information is sustainable in the long haul,'' Lehane said. "A lot of times, people make mistakes in situations like these in that they take a position that ends up imploding. Then they are stuck with that, along with having lied to the public.''  

As for whether Cain's wife of 43 years will be standing by her man, he said Monday that she would be giving an "exclusive'' interview but wouldn't be a frequent presence on the campaign trail.

An outside group of big donors who back Texas Gov. Rick Perry will start running advertisements in Iowa and South Carolina tomorrow, the first in a coming barrage of independent spending on behalf of specific presidential campaigns.

The group, Make Us Great Again, will spend a total of $382,000 on broadcast and cable spots in the two states, according to Jason Miller, a Washington-based Republican strategist who is helping run it.

The South Carolina ads were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

They will spend $57,000 in the Cedar Rapids market, $64,000 in Des Moines and $29,000 in Omaha, the media market that covers western Iowa. In South Carolina, the group is investing $59,000 in the Columbia market and $85,000 in Greenville-Spartanburg. Miller said the group would run a smaller number of spots in eight Iowa and two South Carolina cable markets.

Make Us Great Again is run by a former top aide to Perry, Texas lobbyist Mike Toomey, with help from Miller, who has long ties to the Palmetto State (Miller ran Gov. Mark Sanford's re-election bid in 2006).

The two ads are positive spots -- one for South Carolina and one for Iowa.

Perry's campaign is running its own ads in Iowa. He and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, are the only two candidates to have run television advertisements yet, but with just over nine weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, the onslaught of television advertising is likely to begin sooner rather than later.

The buy is the tip of what's going to be a very, very big iceberg. Make Us Great Again is a so-called super PAC, an independent group that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertisements. Supporters of several presidential candidates -- Perry, Mitt Romney, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Herman Cain among them -- have established super PACs on their behalves.

All that money is going to television advertisements. Romney's PAC alone had raised $12.2 million through the end of June. Other candidates' PACs haven't filed with the Federal Election Commission, but they are each expected to raise millions on their own. And, in this atmosphere, most political watchers expect those ads will be almost entirely negative.

The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision has stirred favorable rumblings about a campaign finance proposal once favored only by GOP lawmakers: Unlimited donations and full transparency.

Even some Democrats are starting to wonder if such a move is better than the current system, despite credible fears that lifting the donation limits would favor corporate leaders and their political cousins in the GOP.

The center-left Tax Policy Center offered a harsh review of GOP Texas Gov. Rick Perry's optional tax plan on its Oct. 26 TaxVox blog last week calling it "a policy disaster" that would do nothing to simplify the tax code and would mainly benefit the richest among us.

"Whatever you think of the rest of Perry's plan, giving taxpayers a choice about how much tax to pay is just plain dumb," wrote Howard Gleckman.

It looks like the Perry campaign may have read the post, because when the Tax Policy Center released its formal analysis of the tax plan on Monday, this footnote caught our eye:

"TPC has made several attempts--beginning Tuesday, October 25--to contact the campaign to clarify key details and confirm the assumptions underlying this analysis. As of Monday, October 31, we have not received any response."

We don't know who he'll be facing yet, but we now know where and when President Obama will be debating for his reelection bid.

The bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates today announced four sites and dates for the fall 2012 faceoffs between the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees (whether a third party candidate emerges and is included is TBD):

• Oct. 3: University of Denver, Denver, Colo.
• Oct. 11 (vice presidential debate): Centre College, Danville, Ky.
• Oct. 16: Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.
• Oct. 22: Lynn University, Boca Raton, Fla

Moderators and formats for the debates will be decided next year, according to the announcement from commission co-chairs Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. and Michael McCurry.

Updated, 3:14 p.m.: National Journal White House correspondent George Condon just passed this on: "The president looks forward to next year's debates," said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina in a statement. "Once the Republicans have selected their candidate we will work through the details with their campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates."

While Herman Cain dealt with sexual harassment charges, a sober and wonky discussion -- the first of its kind -- took place today on his 9-9-9 tax plan. 

Alex Lundry is the director of research at the Republican firm TargetPoint Consulting, which specializes in segmenting and targeting voters based on their consumer and social behavior. Some months ago I asked Lundry what one piece of information, apart from partisan registration, he would most want to know about someone to predict whether he or she usually votes Republican or Democratic. He didn't hesitate for more than a moment. "Whether there is a Bible present in their home," he said.

New Gallup data released today helps explain Lundry's answer. Gallup confirmed that the Republican Party continues to hold the most appeal to the most religiously devout, especially among whites. The results underscore the extent to which the two parties' electoral coalitions continue to revolve around cultural affinities and attitudes rather than class, even amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Herman Cain arrived on Monday at the American Enterprise Institute for a 9 a.m. talk about his economic plan. 

The Des Moines Register's new poll showing Mitt Romney and Herman Cain tied for first place in Iowa confirms what the CBS/National Journal reporters embedded with the campaigns have been hearing on the ground for a couple of weeks now: Iowa Republicans are giving former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney a chance to win their hearts, even though the religious conservatives who dominate the state's first-in-the-nation caucus don't care for him on the issues and may not be entirely comfortable with his Mormonism. The reason?  Romney's electability argument is resonating.

More than ideological purity, it seems, many Iowa Republicans want someone who can beat President Obama, and Romney so far has made the most plausible argument for why he is that guy. Until recently, Romney spent little of his time or his considerable financial resources in Iowa, figuring that his best shot at an early-primary victory was with New Hampshire's more moderate and independent voters.

But the poll also contains some political intelligence that bodes poorly for a Romney win in Iowa.

Stay away?

Whether he's right or not, Rick Perry has a point -- there are a ton of debates planned this year. There's a reason for that: An internal agreement within the Republican National Committee means the party is using some sanctioned debates as an incentive for good behavior, and others as a tool to mollify members who might otherwise cause trouble.

Back in March, the RNC announced it had formed a committee that would authorize presidential debates. RNC chairman Reince Priebus said the committee would help the party streamline the nominating process, and party strategists hoped it would provide guidance and allow the campaigns time to hit the road. Priebus appointed Indiana national committeeman Jim Bopp, who heads a bloc of conservatives within the RNC, to lead the debate committee.

A side note: Bopp was a big-time opponent of then-RNC chairman Michael Steele. He endorsed Priebus for RNC chairman about three weeks before Priebus won the job.

A parallel debate over how to handle the problem of front-loaded nominating contests has gone on within the RNC for decades. When Arizona and Michigan began threatening to move their nominating contests ahead of the approved "window," which opens March 6, the RNC had a few carrots (like, say, debates) and a few sticks (cutting the size of a state's convention delegation) at the ready.

As a candidate for president in 2008, President Obama was cerebral to a fault. His campaign speeches were remarkable not only for their eloquence but for their lack of demagoguery.

That's what made the exceptions noteworthy.

Remember when he said he'd hammer out the health care bill on C-SPAN? Anybody who'd spent any time in Washington knew that was never going to happen.

Then there was the applause line he returned to again and again on the campaign trail. "I have done more to take on lobbyists than any other candidate in this race," candidate Obama said. "I don't take a dime of their money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House."

Who's sorry now?

My colleague, Reid Wilson, succinctly summed up this odd moment.

But allow me one more thought. After the ad had settled in my mind for a couple of days and I got beyond all the weird touches--Cain's oddly revealing smile, the smoke itself--what struck me was the depiction of Cain's right-hand man as another smoker forced to puff outside. After all, Mark Block wasn't filmed taking a drag in some office or in his home but instead on a windswept sidewalk which is probably where most nicotine delivery takes places these days.

It couldn't help by remind me a bit of Michael Douglas in "Falling Down," a not-great-not-bad film about a laid-off aerospace worker who goes on a killing spree. It was a 90s proxy for downsizing, and the beleaguered white male. Newsweek got a cover out of it at the time.

If you feel like you've been victimized and life's been unfair than the image of a guy forced to smoke outside isn't the worst one to use when you're campaigning in this kind of economy. Of course, the question of why Cain, a cancer survivor, would put tobacco front-and-center in his ad is another question. But nothing about the ad glamorizes tobacco, only that defiant puff to the camera that reminds me of another angry white male, Network's Howard Beale.

Rick Perry has never pretended to be a friend to the ethanol industry.

In 2008, he urged the Bush administration to roll back the so-called "ethanol mandate'' which requires the federal government to annually boost biofuel production, mainly through corn-based ethanol. When he entered the race in August, renewable energy lobbyists said they would wait and see whether he would strike a different tone as a presidential candidate.

Well, now they've waited and seen, and they don't like it. The Iowa Renewable Fuels Association put out a statement today that calls his oil-heavy energy plan "a one-two punch in Iowa's economic gut.'' It also assails the television ad he is running in Iowa that promotes oil and natural gas.

"When Gov. Perry entered the presidential race, Iowa's renewable fuels community said it would keep an open mind and not hold past actions by the Governor in his state role against him,'' said Walt Wendland, president of the association. "But we also noted it would be important going forward to determine if Perry is running for President of the United States or President of Texas.  Unfortunately, that answer seems to be leaning heaving toward Texas.''

While the ethanol issue doesn't seem to have the same potency in presidential politics that it used to, Perry needs all the friends he can get in Iowa, where Mitt Romney and Herman Cain lead the polls.

Maybe he can't help himself, but Republican front-runner Mitt Romney offered a very recent example of the authenticity problem that NJ's Ron Fournier describes today in this space.

Speaking at closed-door fundraiser Thursday in Pittsburgh, Romney's position on the causes of global warming continued a rightward shift underway for several months now. "My view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us," he said.

As recently as his 2010 book, No Apology, Romney wrote, "I believe that climate change is occurring...I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor. I am uncertain how much of the warming, however, is attributable to man and how much is attributable to factors out of our control."

Romney's comments at the Pittsburgh fundraiser were captured on video, which ended up in the hands of the liberal Center for American Progress. The center distributed the video to news outlets today.

It's about time to start planning for the post-Herman Cain world, and there are gathering signs that Newt Gingrich could be the next anyone-but-Romney contestant in the GOP primary race.

 If the Cain campaign implodes as it seems determined to do, the question would be who replaces him as the alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney - and if there has been anything consistent about the GOP contest, it's been the need among likely GOP voters for an anti-Romney. Could the baton go to the blunt-spoken former speaker of the House?

After struggling to put a couple pennies together, Gingrich announced in New Hampshire on Tuesday that his campaign had raised over $800,000 in the month of October, more  than in the entire third quarter of the year. Gingrich's poll numbers have also been quietly creeping up lately, from the low single digits to 10 percent in the most recent CBS/New York Times survey. The results put him in third place, after Cain, at 25 percent, and Romney, with 21 percent. The man who led Republicans to congressional victories in the mid-1990s is also now enjoying double-digit support among voters who identify with the tea party in the key primary states of Iowa, South Carolina and Florida, according to a CNN/Time poll earlier this week.

How's Herman Cain's unorthodox campaign to make himself famous across the country before barnstorming the early states going?

Here's one measure: We saw a total of 3 clips involving Cain actually campaigning and communicating with voters from yesterday (one from CNN on his abortion position, one from the Northwest Arkansas Times on his appearance at a local GOP dinner, and one from ABCNews.com on his appearance at an education summit).

Number of clips we saw on Mark Block, Cain's newly-famous chief of staff: 5, including an AP clip that's been picked up by at least a dozen papers.

Herman Cain is Mitt Romney's worst nightmare, but not for the reasons you might think.

Sure, the former pizza company CEO shares top-tier status with Romney in most national polls of GOP voters, and his fortunes are on the rise in early voting states. But nobody outside his small circle of advisers believes that Cain has a significant chance of winning the nomination.

The most serious threat Cain poses to Romney is that his candidacy, however fragile and fleeting, underscores the power of a virtue that Romney seems to lack: Authenticity.

Meet the new bosses. Same as the old bosses.

That's the message from a special analysis Gallup conducted for National Journal that offers a unique peek at the likely composition of the primary electorate that will decide the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. To preview the potential 2012 GOP electorate, Gallup analyzed for National Journal the characteristics of adults who identified as Republicans (or leaned Republican) in tens of thousands of nightly tracking interviews conducted this summer-and then compared the results to similar interviews conducted during the primary fight in 2008. Because the sample involves tens of thousands of interviews, it allows for unusually detailed analysis with very small margins of sampling error.

The good folks at Pew Research Center put a data point on what most American already know: so far this presidential race has been dull.

According to their latest poll, a majority, 51 percent, of Americans say the campaign has been "dull" while 35 percent say it has been "interesting."  Fully half, 50 percent, say the campaign season is too long--and there's still more than a year to go.

The poll also shows that Republicans are more engaged with the presidential race, with 50 percent describing the race as interesting, compared to just 37 percent of Democrats. 

And in New Hampshire, just about anybody does.

Today's the last day for candidates who want to get on the first-in-the-nation primary ballot to file their paperwork. Texas Gov. Rick Perry plans to be in Concord just after noon with his.

During the past few weeks, a parade of big name politicians have traipsed to New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner's office to sign on the dotted line and plunk down their entry fee. It costs just $1,000 to enter the contest (by comparison, South Carolina's filing fee is $35,000), so just about anybody can enter the race. And anybody does.

Forget the fact that it was denied almost as soon as it was reported: The rumor that former first daughter Chelsea Clinton might be mulling a run for Congress is catnip and not just for political junkies.

There's no reason to think this story has any legs, at least for 2012: Unless she decides to retire -- and she says no way -- New Yorkers would be nuts to forgo the clout of Rep. Nita Lowey, the veteran Westchester Democrat who reportedly was going to retire in Clinton's favor, for a little celebrity. Lowey is a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee (those three words always go together, like "wine-dark sea" in Homer), and even in these days of (allegedly) no earmarks, that counts for something.

But, to play Machiavelli for a moment. . .

You may not remember the hit game show Password. It was such a big deal fans can buy DVDs of the CBS years 1962-67 (cue Jerry Seinfeld: "Who are these people?"). Password awarded money if a player identified the secret word based on clues provided by their playing partner. The audience heard the word in advance, voice-of-God style. So?

By my count, 142,130 words have been spoken in the eight GOP presidential debates. The most important word surfaced twice at the Washington Post-Bloomberg debate. That word? Reconciliation: the procedural key to repealing President Obama's health care law (which is the context Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney raised it). It could also be used to enact tax reform.

GOPers now sense they might run the House and Senate in 2013 and have the reconciliation power to do big things with a GOP president or confront a re-elected Obama. This explains the current flat tax fever. Either way, the password is reconciliation.

One reason the Republican presidential contest has been so unusually volatile is that it's become two races running along parallel but very distinct tracks. One of those races seems to be settling down, steadily if slowly. The other still appears perched on an earthquake fault. If that dynamic persists,  former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will remain the favorite for the nomination- even though a significant proportion of the party remains resistant to choosing him.

The evolution of the GOP contest into two distinct races becomes apparent when looking at the long trend in public opinion polling. In the twelve national CNN/ORC surveys about the race conducted since January four different candidates have held or shared the national lead: ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and businessman Donald Trump (neither of whom actually entered the race), Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Other national polls this year have recorded leads for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and more recently businessman Herman Cain.

When Elena Kagan was sworn in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 2010, it was an historic event: For the first time in American history, there was no Protestant member of the nation's' highest court.

Could 2012 be a presidential ticket of a major party without a protestant?

Were Mitt Romney to be the Republican presidential nominee and were he to choose a Catholic running mate--say, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie--that would seem to be such an event. Of course, the Obama-Biden ticket was historically WASP-free, an African-American attendee of the United Church of Christ--until the Jeremiah Wright controversy church--and a Roman Catholic.

The religions of our presidential nominees say a lot about our diversity and increasing tolerance, famously so with Catholics. When Al Smith was the Democratic nominee for President in 1928, it was shocking and another Catholic wouldn't be on the ticket until 1960. Then Catholics began popping up as veeps: William E. Miller on the Republican ticket in 1964; on the Democratic side, Ed Muskie in 1968, Sargent Shriver in 1972 and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. John Kerry was the last Catholic to top a presidential ticket. No one made a fuss and the Kerry campaign found the number of Americans who were even aware of his Catholic faith and for whom it mattered to be inconsequential.

But the religious fludity of our candidates and their families say a lot, too. Ann Romney joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. George W. Bush was raised an Episcopalian but became a Methodist while his brother Jeb the Florida governor, became a Catholic. Spiro Agnew was Greek Orthodox turned Episcopalian. Sarah Palin was baptized a Catholic but her family attended non denominational churches and she joined a Pentacostal congregation

A quarter of Americans have switched their faith, according to a study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and within Protestant affiliations that number rises to 44 percent.

In 2003, Romney was sworn in as governor of Massachusetts using the same traditional Bible that his father had used for his swearing in as governor of Michigan in 1962. Were he to win in 2012 and choose the Book of Mormon for his 2013 swearing in, he'd be part of an American tradition

Social conservatives who are either concerned or confused by businessman Herman Cain's position on abortion rights should stay tuned ... carefully tuned.

After several days of botching an important issue for evangelicals and cultural conservatives, Cain inexplicably stepped into the abortion rights mess he's created again on Wednesday -- and promptly made things worse. At a campaign stop in Corpus Christi, Texas, Cain said that he is "pro-life, no exceptions," which contradicted his staff's explanations over the past several days that the candidate does in fact support the three exceptions embraced by mainstream Republicans: rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.

Pity Rick Santorum. Been campaigning his Pennsylvania heart out in Iowa for months, only to be shown up in the polls by Herman Cain, who has visited only once since the August straw poll.

Still, Santorum keeps showing Iowa the love. Today he announced a whirlwind tour of no less than 29 stops -- 29 stops!-- between Friday and the Iowa Republican Party's Reagan Dinner the following Thursday.

He's close to fulfilling his promise to visit all 99 counties. God Bless.

I'm hearing echoes of Bill Clinton, circa 1996, in President Obama's relection rhetoric.

It starts with the fact that Clinton faced a skeptical electorate toward the end of his first term. Like Obama, voters trusted the incumbent -- even liked him -- but they felt that Clinton was ineffective. A bit over his head.

In another sign he doesn't play by the rules, Herman Cain is not expected at the Iowa Republican Party's Reagan dinner on Nov. 4. "Until I hear otherwise, he is not attending,'' said the chairman of Cain's campaign in Iowa, Steve Grubbs.

Cain has managed to perform a hat trick so far in that he's risen to the top of the polls in Iowa without spending a lot of time in a state where voters pride themselves on looking candidates in the eye. More than once. As GOP strategist/Cain critic Karl Rove put it, "If I see your television ad before you've been in my community, you're a hot dog.''

Will be interesting to see how impatient Republican activists at the dinner are getting with Cain.

Mitt Romney is the other big-name candidate who will be a no-show, but that doesn't come as much of a surprise since he's trying not to raise expectations too high for the Jan. 3 caucus.

Cain's absence may have something to do with his participation that same day in the Americans for Prosperity "Defending the Dream American Summit'' in Washington. Cain has close ties to the tea party group bankrolled by the Koch family's corporate empire.

Mitt Romney will never be the darling of the conservative tea party wing of the GOP, but the Washington establishment is coalescing behind his presidential campaign.

According to a Hotline count, Romney leads his closest rival, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, by a nearly 3:1 advantage in endorsements from members of Congress, and that edge shows no sign of slowing down following Romney's Wednesday D.C. visit. Perry has been slow to pick up lawmaker support even among his tight-knit home state delegation. Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, endorsed Romney on Wednesday and introduced the former Massachusetts governor at a meeting that included nearly 60 members of House Republican Conference.

The Commerce Department report of 2.5 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the third quarter should quiet voter anxiety about a double-dip recession. Other data also suggest a brightening jobs picture. New Gallup surveys indicate a noticeable increase in October hiring that could lead to a Labor Department report next week of a jobless rate below 9 percent.

These two strands of numbers point to the same economic trends lines - more consumer spending and increased business investment. These are organic improvements. They occurred even as legislation aimed at creating jobs remained stalled.

These positive signs could evaporate. They have before. But if the European bailout and debt write-off deal holds and U.S. consumer confidence and business investment rebound, GOP presidential candidates may have to calibrate their economic rhetoric and sharpen their analysis of what's improving, what isn't and why.

I've been thinking about this for a while, but now that we're about a year away from the 2012 elections, it seemed the appropriate time to argue the similarities between 1992 and 2012.

Voter anger is aimed at Washington in general, not just at one party. Fewer than one in five Americans say they have positive feelings about government, a strikingly similar number as in 1992. And Congress is about as popular as dirt, as it was back then (17 percent approved in the last Washington Post/ABC News poll before the 1992 contests).

The White House certainly hopes I'm wrong. The results from 1992: An incumbent president lost, and the House majority lost nine seats.

Here's a fun overlooked fact: While the 1994 Republican class got all the attention, revolutionary as it was, the 1992 class was actually bigger. There were 110 House freshmen in the Class of 1992, and 85 in the Class of 1994 (There are more members still serving from that class, 29, than from the 1994 class, 14, as well).

Rep. Connie Mack's entrance into the Florida Senate campaign will give political pundits another chance to see how potent an issue immigration will be within a Republican primary.  Mack, who changed course and jumped into the campaign last night, is viewed as a leading candidate given the Republican field's fundraising struggles and his brand-name in Florida politics (his father, Connie Mack III, served two terms in the Senate from the Sunshine State.)

But he's been a strident critic of Arizona's crackdown on illegal immigration, even comparing the law to Nazi Gestapo tactics during World War II.  If Rick Perry's support sunk in the presidential primary because he considered opponents "heartless" for opposing in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants, imagine the damage those comments could cause Mack in a Republican primary. 

 Immigration has been a very delicate issue for Republicans, even those inclined to take a more moderate approach. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has touted his Cuban-American heritage as a candidate and senator, has tacked right on the issue.  Rep. Jeff Flake, who is running for the Senate in Arizona, once co-sponsored a bill with liberal Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. Now he's stressing his border security bona fides. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., repositioned himself as an immigration hawk to fend off a primary challenge last year from former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.

That's made it difficult for Florida Republicans: They need to appeal to the GOP base in a primary but can't risk alienating Hispanic voters - especially the largely Puerto Rican bloc around the I-4 corridor -- who are crucial in winning general elections.

Mack's major primary opposition is coming from former Sen. George LeMieux and former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner.  LeMieux has been under fire from the right for his close ties to former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who left the Republican party last year. Hasner has been rallying support with conservatives, but has struggled with fundraising and still lags in early polls.

It appears to be catching on as a strategy for Republican presidential candidates who step in it: Blame the American voters for lacking a funny bone.

Herman Cain tried the tactic after recently suggesting that he would put up an electrified fence along the Mexican border. Awww, that was just a "joke'' he said later. "I did it  in jest,'' he protested. "America needs to get a sense of humor,'' he said. What's wrong with you people?

Now it's Rick Perry playing the comic after he suggested uncertainty about whether President Obama is an American citizen. He later explained it was "fun to poke" at the president. Still on the defensive, he said , "It's fun to...you know...lighten up a little bit.''

With employment at 9.3 percent, are voters in the mood to laugh? The missteps by Perry and Cain say a lot more about their lack of discipline than they do about America's sense of humor.

Why decoded?
 
The dictionary definition of the word is "to translate" ... "to unscramble" ... "to extract meaning from." That is what we're about at the National Journal: Across our print and digital platforms, we help our readers and members cut through the clutter of the mega-information age. As my colleague Ron Brownstein says, "We are sophisticated about the how and serious about the what and the why."
 
Ron will be one of a dozen contributors to our new "Decoded" blog on presidential politics during the 2012 cycle. Our goal is to provide you unique and rich analysis about the race - fresh from the notebooks of our most experienced reporters and editors: Ambinder, Brownstein, Cooper, Davis, Fournier, Frates, Garrett, Kiely, Koszczuk, Kraushaar, Reinhard, Wilson.
 
While there is no shortage of incremental coverage of the presidential race, there are too few places where readers can get the context, history and future impact of today's churn.
We plan to provide it.
 
Check out our posts throughout the day. Start and join conversations in the comment section. Let us know what you know about the how, what and why.

Former GOP Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who is banking his fledgling presidential campaign on a New Hampshire victory, sent an open letter to former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu questioning his endorsement of 2012 rival Mitt Romney.

In a bulleted list of counterpoints, Huntsman argues that Romney does not have the conservative credentials worthy of the Granite State. He writes:

• While Mitt Romney opposed the Bush tax cuts and raised taxes and fees by $750 million in Massachusetts, I signed the largest tax cut in Utah history which helped our state lead the nation in job growth.
   
• While Mitt Romney implemented government healthcare in Massachusetts - which included an individual mandate and became the blueprint for Obamacare - I signed free-market healthcare reform described as "the other end of the spectrum" from the Obama-Romney approach.
   
• While Mitt Romney once declared that he does not "line up with the NRA" and pledged to not "chip away" at Massachusetts' onerous gun control laws, I signed landmark legislation to defend the Second Amendment.
   
• While Mitt Romney was once ardently pro-choice - stating in 1994 that "abortions should be safe and legal" - I am proud to be a lifelong defender of the sanctity of life.
   

While Mitt Romney proudly declared himself an independent during the Reagan-Bush years - even saying during his Senate campaign that he was "not trying to return to Reagan-Bush" - I am proud to have served in President Reagan's administration which ushered in a golden era of prosperity in America. 

Huntsman concludes that "the idea that Mitt Romney is a principled conservative is an impossible conclusion."