The Candidates and the Issues

By Michael Barone

Editors note: The following excerpts originally appeared in a February 26, 2007 U.S. News & World Report column written by Michael Barone.

In my U.S. News column this week, I took a look at presidential candidates' websites and analyzed their treatment of issues ...

... [Readers] may criticize me for listing John Cox. He's a Republican, a Chicago-area accountant and investment adviser who launched a campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004 and then withdrew before the primary. That's the seat ultimately won by Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Many journalists would say that Cox is not a serious candidate. And that's almost certainly true in the sense that his chances of winning the Republican nomination are microscopic. But you could make that same judgment about the chances of Tom Tancredo or Mike Gravel or Chris Dodd or Duncan Hunter. All but Gravel are likely to receive some coverage, and I think rightly so. After all, the press covered Alan Keyes and Gary Bauer in the 2000 campaign. In any case, I decided to mention Cox, who seems to be an intelligent man (I've interviewed him twice) and who has county coordinators in all of Iowa's 99 counties. One function of a columnist is to be a neutral or at least fair-minded conduit of information....