Week In The News: Sandy Chaos And The Campaign's Last Days

Superstorm Sandy shatters the Eastern Seaboard:  Boardwalk gone.  Subway flooded. New Jersey staggers.  And Obama and Romney push to the final days of the campaign.   Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

A super storm for the record books this week, and stormy, super-charged politics on the homestretch to Election Day.  Hurricane Sandy.  Massive.  Laying into the East coast.  Laying waste.  Across a huge front.  Drowning subways in New York.  Blasting New Jersey.

Beating us over the head with costly climate change, says Businessweek magazine.  Their huge cover headline:  “It’s Global Warming, Stupid.”  Unemployment ticks up.  So does hiring.  Barack Obama and Mitt Romney make their closing arguments.

This hour, On Point:  our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.
-Tom Ashbrook

David Shepardson, Washington bureau chief for the Detroit News.

Margaret Talev, White House Correspondent for Bloomberg News.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst.

Politico "President Barack Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie cemented their new-found mutual admiration society on Wednesday, as the men gushed with praise for one another while touring damage from Hurricane Sandy on the devastated Jersey Shore."

New York Times "Mr. Obama’s return to the trail comes after a day that produced remarkable images of cooperation between the president and one of his harshest critics, Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey. The two men toured the state’s storm-ravaged coast, declaring themselves partners in the recovery efforts."

National Journal "A few days ago, I sat down with Rob Jesmer, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Jesmer is usually tight-fisted about his polling; he doesn't share it with members of the media when the numbers are good for his candidates, which avoids the inevitably uncomfortable dilemma when the numbers are bad for his candidates. But he wanted to open his books, if only for a peek, to demonstrate a phenomenon happening across the political spectrum these days: His polls look nothing like polls Democrats are conducting."