Health care has become one of the starkest contrasts between President Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign. And that’s surprising, given that once upon a time they both came up with similar plans to fix the system.

Stuart Altman, a professor of health policy at Brandeis University, says the two men once occupied the same political space on health care.

“I would define Obama as a moderate liberal and Romney as a moderate conservative. … Both of them came to the same conclusion,” he says. They decided what was needed was a system “built as much as possible on the existing health insurance system.”

Both men embraced what was considered to be mainstream health care policy thinking: maintain the employer-provided system but get everyone covered through an individual mandate — a requirement to buy insurance.

From Victory To Problem

Romney went first. In 2006, as Massachusetts’ governor, he talked about the state’s mandate in decidedly nonideological terms: “We’re going to say, folks, if you can afford health care, then gosh, you’d better go get it; otherwise, you’re just passing on your expenses to someone else. That’s not Republican; that’s not Democratic; that’s not libertarian; that’s just wrong.”

Getting rid of free riders was a moral issue for Romney and many Republicans back then, says Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who helped the Romney and Obama administrations design the individual mandate. Gruber says he could tell that health care overhaul had a particular appeal for Romney — a businessman who specialized in turning around troubled companies.

“Mitt Romney was a management consultant. And what management consultants are is they’re sort of like engineers. They go in, they see a problem, they solve it,” he says. “I saw a lot of excitement, this passion, to say, ‘Wow, we can move this piece around, add the mandate, rededicate the money, put it together and we can solve this important problem. Isn’t that really neat?’ “

Just as passing a national health care law was supposed to be the legacy achievement for Obama, Gruber says that back in 2006, as Romney got ready to run for president, the Massachusetts law also looked like a surefire political winner.

“You can understand his thinking, right? He thought, ‘Look, I can run for president by saying I solved this intractable problem by bringing conservative principles to bear — individual responsibility, the health insurance exchange.’ I mean, there was a guy from the freaking Heritage Institute on the stage with Romney at the bill-signing,” Gruber says. “This was a victory for Republican ideals, a victory for using market forces to solve an intractable problem, and I think that Romney probably thought, ‘Isn’t this a great thing I can run on as a Republican?’ … I would have thought so, too.”

Changing Positions

Over time, Obama and Romney have had a mirror-image relationship with the linchpin of their health care laws: Romney was for the mandate before he was against it. Obama was against the mandate before he was for it.

“The irony is even worse than that,” says Altman, the Brandeis professor. “I worked for Obama during the election and he was adamantly opposed to the individual mandate. … I was on his advisory group, and we said, ‘But you know, you really do need an individual mandate to make this all work together.’ He said, ‘I won’t support that because you’re asking, you know, not wealthy people to buy expensive insurance. We’ve got to get the cost down.’ “

During the 2008 Democratic primary, the mandate was the single biggest policy divide between Obama and opponent Hillary Clinton.

In a debate, candidate Obama blasted Clinton’s plan for an individual mandate by citing the experience in Massachusetts.

“Now, Massachusetts has a mandate right now,” he said. “They have exempted 20 percent of the uninsured — because they’ve concluded that that 20 percent can’t afford it. In some cases, there are people who are paying fines and still can’t afford it, so now they’re worse off than they were. They don’t have health insurance and they’re paying a fine.”

A Shifting Middle

And Romney and Obama have something else in common, Altman says. They were both victims of the same political sea change: The Republican Party got a lot more conservative.

“Obama campaigned that he was going to be a different kind of a president. He was going to get things done; he was going to compromise,” Altman says. “And when he got to Washington, he realized that the Washington that he thought was there wasn’t there anymore. So the movement of the Republicans to the right … hurt Obama and really put Romney in a bind.”

Romney’s bind was apparent in the GOP primaries, when conservatives questioned his ability to attack the president on a plan so similar to his own. But now, with the nomination virtually in hand, Romney is making health care the heart of his argument against the president.

“The president’s plan assumes an endless expansion of government, with rising costs and, of course, with the spread of Obamacare,” Romney says. “I will halt the expansion of government, and I will repeal Obamacare.”

What was once a common bond is now a deep divide.

“I will not go back to the days when insurance companies had unchecked power to cancel your policy, or deny you coverage, or charge women differently from men,” Obama says. “We’re not going back there. We’re going forward.”

There is no overlap at all in the two men’s current approaches to health care. If Romney is elected, he’ll work to get rid of the law that was based on his own plan. If the president wins a second term, he will fight to keep what he can. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

I have a thing about political fakes on Twitter. I HATE them. And when I say fakes, I mean a handle that appears to be a senator or representative, but is very obviously written by some 22-year-old staffer.

See, I already get 200 or 300 emails a day (not kidding!) from congressional offices barking their points of view and snarling at the opposition. And that’s enough. I do not want that kind of stuff in my Twitter feed. In fact, let me be bold: That is not what Twitter is for.

What I do like is politicians whose tweets actually, really, identifiably come from them. The ones who tweet interesting facts, interact with their constituents, and even — gasp — crack jokes on occasion.

So on this fine #FF, let me recommend a few pols who walk the walk and tweet the tweet.

Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y. (@RepSteveIsrael): How could you doubt that the congressman from Long Island is writing his own tweets, with gems like this: “If u want to understand laws of physics, watch 8 lanes of traffic being merged into 4 at Queens Midtown Tunnel during Monday morning rush.”

Rep. Thad McCotter, R-Mich. (@ThadMcCotter): McCotter possesses that rare combination (in Washington, anyway) of heightened sense of humor with high IQ. Can you hear the sarcasm in his re-election announcement tweet? — “Once more unto the breach, Dear Friends.” (And don’t miss the pic.)

Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis. (@RepSeanDuffy): At only 40 years old, Duffy is about as close to being a digital native as any member of Congress. (The average age in the House is 57; in the Senate it’s 62.)

But it’s his zany attitude that makes following Duffy fun. For example, the recent hashtag trend he sparked, with a video of the Wisconsin ax he brought to Washington: “Where would you cut govt #spending? Reply using #bringtheax! RT and follow if you agree we need to cut spending.”

Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker (@CoryBooker): After the Democratic mayor of New Jersey’s largest city rescued a woman from a burning building earlier this year, who wouldn’t want to follow his every move? He’s serious about Twitter: In the winter of 2010, Booker responded to a constituent’s tweet by showing up at her elderly father’s house to shovel snow in the driveway.

The cherry on top? His penchant for doling out 140 characters of inspiration. Like this verse of William Ernest Henley’s 1875 poem “Invictus”: ” ‘It matters not how strait the gate / How charged with punishments the scroll / I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul’ WEH”

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J. (@RushHolt): You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be in Congress, but it doesn’t hurt. Holt is proof of that. His serious and calm appraisals of political situations also manage to charm, and he’s good for some old-fashioned banter with colleagues. Like this response to the news that Newark Mayor Cory Booker (see above) is among the most popular politicians in the country; only 6 percent of his constituents have an unfavorable view of him: “@CoryBooker Next time try to save a sinking ship of kittens, that might convince that last 6%”

Happy Follow Friday, everyone. May your tweets be genuine.

<3, @RadioBabe

Follow our recommendations so far, and get future picks, here: https://twitter.com/#!/nprpolitics/the-npr-twitterati [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Much of that debate has been philosophical. But now that the law is under review by the country’s highest court, politicians have to plan for the real implications of the court’s decision. That’s proving particularly difficult for congressional Republicans.

They’ve rallied for repeal of the plan since the day it passed in 2010. And they won a majority in the House later that fall.

But now the GOP has a problem. In the two years since the law passed, several of its parts have become very popular with voters — among them, parents’ ability to keep kids on their health plans until age 26 and a ban on denying insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

So it wasn’t surprising when news leaked to Politico last week that Republicans were making plans to try to preserve those popular parts of the act if the Supreme Court strikes the law down.

But the political blowback for the GOP was immediate and harsh. Staffers described dozens of calls from angry conservatives. Right-wing think tanks blasted the endorsement of what they called “government meddling in business.” And just a few short hours after the news was leaked, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, sent an email blast to the media, saying, “Our plan remains to repeal the law in its entirety. Anything short of that is unacceptable.”

This isn’t the first time GOP leaders have hinted at their support for those provisions. Right after Republicans first won the majority, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., spoke at a forum at American University in Washington.

Student Alyssa Franke, who has a chronic medical condition, asked Cantor the question that still stands today: “Will you try to preserve these two provisions as they stand or continue to push for a full repeal of the health care bill?”

At the time, Cantor said: “We too don’t want to accept any insurance company’s denial of someone because he or she may have a pre-existing condition. And likewise, we want to make sure that someone of your age has the ability to access affordable care, whether it’s under your parents’ plan or elsewhere.”

That was more than a year and a half ago, long before last week’s firestorm over the same Republican sentiment.

What changed? Well, reality. Back in 2010, the concept of repealing the Affordable Care Act was a long shot. The idea of keeping the popular provisions and dumping the rest was mostly theoretical.

Now, there’s a real chance the Supreme Court could strike the whole thing down. And the law is designed so that the ban on pre-existing conditions and the parents’ insurance provision are paid for by the thing Republicans hate — the mandate that all Americans buy insurance.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California put the Republicans’ quandary this way: “It’s all about the guys who brung ‘em to the dance. It’s about the health insurance industry, and that’s the agenda that they will roll out.”

Insurance companies, many of which are big Washington political donors, are prepared to fight tooth and claw against any new insurance mandate that doesn’t also generate new profits for them.

So Republicans may have to choose who they’re going to listen to — the voters or the donors. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Pennsylvania, with its 20 electoral votes, is a frequent stop for presidential candidates. But, amid a campaign likely to focus on a handful of battleground states, some are starting to wonder if Pennsylvania is still a swing state.

At the Universal Bluford Charter School in a largely African-American neighborhood in West Philadelphia, Romney toured a computer lab, helped students with an assignment in language arts class and listened to the kids sing.

Standing in an inner-city schoolroom of swaying kids, Romney looked a little out of place. But as a former governor and CEO, he seemed comfortable leading a panel of educators.

“Education and the gap in the educational opportunity and achievement of people of color in this society, I believe, is the civil rights issue of our time,” Romney told the panel.

Romney repeated his view that class size is not the biggest factor in a school’s success. He says it is good teachers, good leaders and two-parent families who get involved in their child’s education.

At one point, he turned the conversation to an issue on the minds of a lot of Pennsylvania’s swing voters.

“Right now with so many people out of work — and particularly in the minority communities — this is devastating,” Romney said.

Swinging Suburbia

Winning voters in Philadelphia is a long shot for Romney. The city voted for President Obama by a 5-to-1 margin in 2008. Still, television cameras will send out pictures of this event across the state, and in some of those areas, voters are more open to Republican candidates.

“I think if there’s any place in the state that’s going to make or break a presidential campaign, it’s suburban Philadelphia,” says Chris Borick, professor of political science and director of Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.

Borick says all the way north of Philadelphia into the Lehigh Valley there are legions of swing voters. He says some of them changed their party affiliation from Republican to Democratic in recent years.

They did it “because of dissatisfaction with some of the movement of the Republican Party to the right,” Borick says, but, he adds, they are “by no means totally sold on Barack Obama or the Democrats.”

Winning Over Voters

It’s easy to find these voters on the streets of Allentown, Pa.

Patricia Terreros was a Republican, then switched parties and voted for Obama in 2008. Now she’s a registered Republican again.

“I have three master’s degrees and I have to work 70, 80 hours a week just to make it,” Terreros says.

The economy is also a concern for Bob Wise of Conshohocken, Pa. He voted for Obama in 2008, despite being a longtime Republican. He’s just the kind of voter that Borick says Romney has a chance to attract.

But Wise says Romney’s comments in February that his wife has a couple of Cadillacs and that he has friends who own NASCAR teams still bother him.

“I think that Romney has the challenge of trying to acclimate himself with … John Q. Public,” Wise says.

A Blue State?

In the last few elections, Pennsylvania has been considered a swing state. Voters here did elect a Republican governor and U.S. senator in 2010. But when it comes to the presidential race, Pennsylvania has voted Democratic in every election since the state narrowly backed Republican George H.W. Bush in 1988.

“Pennsylvania has gone Democrat five times in a row, so it’s hard to claim swing status if you’re, literally, not swinging,” Borick says.

But Borick says past races have been so close that Republican candidates believe they still have a chance, if they can convince just enough of those suburban voters to swing their way. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

“We can’t have newspapers?” I asked.

“You guys know the rules,” the smiling marshal said.

Our copies of the Winston-Salem Journal and The Wall Street Journal were promptly spiked in the trash can. The funny thing is, we did know the rules, and for the previous 3 ½ weeks had been reading our newspapers in the hallway and disposing of them before entering the courtroom.

“We had to pick up some newspapers yesterday,” the marshal continued, “so they’re not allowed anymore.”

Ah, the new rules.

Each weekday morning for the past five weeks, after taking off my shoes and watch, passing through the metal detector and waiting in line, I’ve entered the small — often cramped — windowless federal courtroom in Greensboro.

Thursday marks Day 24 of the trial of Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and 2008 Democratic presidential candidate facing felony charges related to campaign donations he allegedly used to hide his pregnant mistress.

And it could be a while before the jury reaches a decision. Just before lunch on this, the fifth day of deliberations, jurors sent the judge a note asking for 20 additional pieces of evidence to help in deliberations.

Judge Catherine Eagles then brought the jury of eight men and four women into the courtroom: “I can just send back everything,” she told them. “Would you like me to send back all of the exhibits?”

As several of the jurors nodded, the man who has been speaking on behalf of the group said, “Sounds like a great idea.” There are about 500 pieces of evidence in total.

Most of the media contingent is hoping a verdict comes before the holiday weekend, although none of us really has a clue as to when the jury will actually render its decision. My prediction was three hours or three weeks, which puts me on the hook for June 8 (I hope I’m wrong).

So after 17 days of testimony ranging in nature from salacious to personal to nap inducing — at least for a couple of jurors — we wait.

And we wait without our iPhones, Droids, wiki apps or Pandora.

Computers are banned from the courtroom. So, too, are any sort of recording devices, camera phones and food.

Gum is a no-no, and I’ve cautiously (don’t tell anyone) popped in a few cough drops, hoping to avoid a contempt-of-court charge.

Experienced court reporters from the national media have described the lack of communication and accommodations from the court as “arbitrary,” “shameful” and “silly.” It has seemed occasionally petty and too often inconsistent.

As for the meatier stuff: Some of the evidence introduced in testimony has been posted to the court website and is accessible to the public.

But that’s only the written documents. All voice mails and any videos that we heard in court are nowhere to be found, as of yet.

Judge Eagles indicated weeks ago she would “deal with” voice mail and videos later on, but had some reservations about posting them to the Web. She hasn’t given any indication if she will release the juror names either.

On Wednesday, a group of 10 media outlets filed a joint motion requesting information on the jurors once the trial ends.

Just when it ends is uncertain. The good news is that since the jury began deciphering six counts of alleged campaign finance violations last Friday — and are no longer physically in the courtroom — we can read those newspapers again.

Jeff Tiberii is a reporter with North Carolina Public Radio. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

This time, though, there’s a deadline, and the consequences of inaction would be immediate. That has many in Washington saying: Here we go again.

In the past week, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner have begun a new round of sparring over the U.S. debt ceiling.

That’s the limit on the country’s line of credit — a limit that lawmakers have set and raised dozens of times over the years, as the federal government has spent more than it has taken in.

When Boehner and the GOP took the House majority at the beginning of 2011, the speaker laid down a new principle: Republicans would not pass an increase in the debt limit unless an equal amount was cut from the budget. And, they said, they would not consider tax increases on the wealthy as a way to fix the deficit.

The partisan fighting that followed was among the most acrimonious, bitter and biting debate many in Washington can remember.

Now, fast forward to last week, and a speech Boehner gave to the Peterson Foundation’s 2012 Fiscal Summit.

“In my view, the debt limit exists precisely so that government is forced to address its fiscal issues,” Boehner said.

Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told the hundreds of economists, policy experts and political operatives present that he is sticking to those principles — and, furthermore, he will demand a vote on the debt ceiling before this fall’s elections.

The Coming Storm

Last summer’s debate was a doozy. But in many ways, the approaching crisis is much worse. Lawmakers have passed so many temporary bills in recent years that an almost unbelievable number of issues come to a head all on the same day: Jan. 1, 2013.

If Washington doesn’t act by that day, tax rates will shoot up for everyone. Huge, indiscriminate cuts in military and domestic programs will take place. And, shortly after that, the nation will again hit the debt ceiling, putting into doubt whether the government can pay its bills.

In his fiscal policy speech, Boehner said: “Previous Congresses have encountered lesser precipices with lower stakes and made a beeline for the closest lame-duck escape hatch. Let me put your mind at ease. This Congress will not follow that path, if I have anything to do with it.”

The response from the Obama administration? “We’re not going to recreate the debt ceiling debacle of last August,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. “It is simply not acceptable to hold the American and global economy hostage to one party’s political ideology.”

‘A Pretty Disparate Caucus’

Perhaps the biggest sticking point in last summer’s negotiations was a split among House Republicans themselves. Dozens of them had been elected only months before, many promising to carry their strict conservative principles to Washington. Compromise was not their plan. And even when the speaker and the president came close to a broadly applauded deal, a critical number of Republicans refused to vote for it.

On ABC on Sunday, Boehner acknowledged this friction still exists in his party.

“You know, I’ve never been shy about leading,” he said. “But leaders need followers. And we’ve got 89 brand-new members, we’ve got a pretty disparate caucus, and it’s hard to keep 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to get a bill passed.”

Boehner said it’s not a bad thing that House Republicans want him to go further.

“I want to do more, too. But Republicans are still a minority here in Washington,” he said. “Democrats control the Senate, we’ve got a Democrat in the White House, and our members are pretty frustrated.”

And this may be the real point here. Rather than having to compromise on a spending, taxes and a debt deal going forward, Boehner and House Republicans would like to find a way to get their principles enshrined in law. And the only way to do that is to change the political makeup of the government itself.

So while they will talk about this issue a lot in the coming months, real solutions aren’t likely to come before Election Day. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

A speaking role at the Republican convention, where Mitt Romney is expected to accept the nomination?

A seat at the party’s rule-making table to advocate making it easier for non-mainstream candidates to compete in future GOP nominating contests?

Well, yes, as a start.

But it’s increasingly looking like Paul, 76, and his passionate loyalists are consolidating clout in state party organizations and laying the groundwork for a presidential run in 2016 by the congressman’s son, freshman U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

A run even — and, perhaps, especially — if Romney is the incumbent president. It’s a scenario that the younger Paul, 49, a Tea Party favorite, has not tamped down.

“Sounds like a good question to have no comment on for me,” he said, grinning, at a recent Cato Institute forum, when asked directly by the moderator about whether he’d challenge a potential President Romney four years from now.

Son Of Liberty

The younger Paul, like his dad, has shown no hesitation in taking on the powerful in his own party. He did it to win his Senate seat, and he’s doing it Tuesday in the GOP primary in Kentucky.

The presidential part of the state’s primary, in which 42 of Kentucky’s 45 GOP convention delegates are at stake, may be a done-deal yawner between Romney, the elder Paul and former candidates still on the ballot.

But Paul the younger has stirred things up in a hotly-contested open congressional seat by backing, with the Tea Party and the free-marketers at Club for Growth, a candidate who is taking on the establishment party pick.

Sound familiar?

David Boaz, executive vice president at Cato, the libertarian think tank, views his home state of Kentucky as an unlikely launching pad for a candidate like Rand Paul.

“My home state is not all that libertarian,” Boaz says.

Yet Rand Paul won an open Senate seat there in 2010 by smiting in a primary the GOP candidate preferred by party power brokers, including Kentucky’s senior senator, Mitch McConnell, and then defeating the Democratic state attorney general in the fall election.

“Rand Paul has softer edges than his dad,” Boaz says. “That helped him get elected to the Senate.”

For Boaz, author of Libertarianism: A Primer, those softer edges exhibit themselves like this: “Rand Paul talks about reforming the Federal Reserve, not ending it. He talks about extricating the country from the war, but is not as dogmatically non-interventionist as Ron Paul. And he talks less about Austrian economics and more about the budget.”

But make no mistake, Rand Paul’s brief electoral record and his emerging on-the-stump persona shows that he is more like his father, who ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1988, than those selling the softer side of Rand Paul might want to acknowledge.

Efforts to modulate the Paul family’s political and public personality have also been undertaken in Ron Paul’s delegate-gathering campaign. Recently, his campaign staff called for Paul supporters and delegates to act civilly and with decorum, drawing no negative attention to the movement.

Libertarians, after all, view what’s happening in the Republican Party as a battle for the soul of the party, a battle that may in four years pit Rand Paul against Mitt Romney.

“Since the Republican Party is the vehicle through which this action is happening now, it’s probably better if Romney wins [this year] and is as bad as the libertarians expect him to be,” Brian Doherty, senior editor of the libertarian Reason magazine, said recently at a Cato event to promote his book, Ron Paul’s rEVOLution.

That scenario, Doherty argued, would allow a “convincing primary challenger to make very real to the party that there are two wings to the party fighting for supremacy — the Romney wing vs. the Paul wing.”

If Obama is re-elected, the expected GOP nomination free-for-all in 2016 –those in the wings include New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — would greatly dilute Rand Paul’s ability to take that battle to the party.

Ready For A Libertarian?

Much has been made of new polls that show Americans are increasingly more tolerant of same-sex marriage, and less supportive of restrictions on gun ownership.

But those who have seized on the new data as proof that the country is embracing libertarian values, including those of less government intrusion in peoples’ private lives, as well as in the business world, may be overstating their case.

“The dynamics of those two issues are very, very different,” says Carroll Doherty of the Pew Research Center.

The change in attitude toward same-sex marriage is “a wave among younger people,” he said. “The big shift in gun control attitudes has been since Obama’s election, and among whites, and especially men.” A Gallup survey in 2011 showed that support for gun control measures had fallen to historic lows.

“You have to be very careful about talking about a real libertarian trend on issues,” he said. “It’s a sentiment that’s been out there, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it growing.”

Pew polling in May 2011 suggests that about 10 percent of registered voters nationally describe themselves as libertarians. They are predominantly Republican, white and male, and are strong economic conservatives and “relatively liberal” on social issues.

They are less religious than any other Republican group, Carroll Doherty says, adding that, in fact, they are less religious than the general public. Fifty-three percent of those polled who identified their views as libertarian said religion is an important part of their lives, compared with 71 percent of the overall population.

Though many Americans don’t understand the term “libertarian,” Carroll Doherty says, Pew identified key beliefs including being “highly critical of government, not very supportive of the social safety net, and taking a more liberal view on social issues.”

“What’s interesting is because of the partisan structure, it’s still hard for libertarians to find a comfortable place in either party,” he says, making it difficult to say whether there’s a natural constituency nationally for a candidate like Rand Paul.

Libertarians like Boaz argue that their analysis of national polls, and a focus on two or three salient questions about the size and power of government, suggests that up to 15 percent of Americans fit the description of a libertarian.

“There are plenty of libertarians,” he says. “It’s a significant bloc potentially available to a candidate who is fiscally conservative and socially liberal.”

Libertarianism With A Capital “L”

Theodora “Tonie” Nathan ran for vice president of the United States on the 1972 Libertarian Party ticket.

Now, 89, Nathan, who lives in Oregon, regrets the decline of the party, especially in her state, but sees opportunity working under the Republican banner and opportunity for Rand Paul.

“I think he can influence more people that way, change their attitudes,” Nathan said in a telephone interview this week. “The more voices we have to talk about personal liberty and less government, the better off the nation is.”

The chorus of voices, whatever its size, seemed destined to be led by one Paul or another for the foreseeable future.

Oh, and one other point the author Brian Doherty wanted to make during that recent appearance at Cato: Ron Paul has a “base that’s willing to give — and that’s very important in politics.”

Just ask Mitt Romney, who has raised $97.9 million as of April 30. Ron Paul raised $38.7 million, more than any other GOP presidential challenger.

Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson? He reported collecting $807,273. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Among registered voters, 47 percent said Obama and 47 percent said Mitt Romney when asked which candidate they trust to do a better job handling the economy.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll of adults nationwide shows Obama with a slight edge — 49 percent to 46 percent — when registered voters said whom they would pick if the election were being held now.

And the economy easily trumped all other considerations, with 52 percent of respondents calling it the single most important issue in the November election.

The candidates were essentially tied on who would be better at creating jobs.

Obama led Romney, 48 percent to 40 percent, when respondents said which candidate “better understands the economic problems people in this country are having.” But that’s a slight decline for Obama on the question since early this year (he was at 53 percent in February), and a slight increase for Romney (who was at 36 percent in February).

Obama’s job approval number was 47 percent, down from 50 percent last month. In the poll, conducted May 17-20, 42 percent of respondents approved of Obama’s handling of the economy, down from 44 percent in April.

Overall, 77 percent of adults questioned said they were closely following the presidential race. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe is a sort of legal rock star, particularly among liberals. First-year law students he has never met don’t just show up at his door saying, “I want to work for you.” At least they didn’t until March 31, 1989.

Tribe recently retrieved his daily calendar from that year and pointed to the entry for the last day in March. Just above reminders for “Haircut?” and “Write US Atty,” it says, “11 am: Barack Obama (1L),” indicating that this was a first-year law student.

“And then it has a phone number, which I guess is his dorm room,” Tribe pointed out, “and there’s an exclamation point next to it.”

That was to remind Tribe how impressed he was by this skinny kid in jeans, a sweatshirt and an afro.

Obama’s Harvard Law School education set him on a path to national prominence. And although likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney sometimes attacks Obama for having “spent too much time at Harvard,” the school is one thing the men have in common.

Obama arrived on the law school campus 20 years after Romney earned a joint degree from the law school and the business school.

Like Romney, Obama was older than the typical student. While Romney spent time as a Mormon missionary in France before Harvard, Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago. When Obama arrived on campus, Tribe says it was clear that “he wanted to make a difference. He wanted to learn how the system worked.”

Finding Common Ground

Their first conversation lasted hours, and Obama went on to work for Tribe on articles and books, including one called Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes.

Tribe recalls that his research assistant tried to find a way out of deeply entrenched lines of the abortion debate, focusing instead on education and access to birth control. “It’s as though he was looking not just for a point in the middle of a spectrum, but for a line that was perpendicular, so that one could get outside the tragic choice.”

The two have remained close, with Tribe serving as a mentor and informal adviser to the president over the years.

Professor Charles Ogletree plays a similar role in Obama’s life. In 1989, Ogletree taught a non-credit Saturday course to give first-year students a basic set of skills in law school.

Ogletree remembers the student who always arrived on time, sat in the front row, and was professorial almost to a fault. After answering the question, Obama would say, “But Al, who talked earlier, had a very good point when he said X. And Sarah, I think she really captured it when she said Y. And if you think about Latoya, her analysis was …” at which point Ogletree would interject, “Barack, I’m teaching this class, not you!”

That might sound like the arrogance Obama is sometimes accused of, but to Ogletree it sounded like this student was trying to bring everyone into the conversation.

Bridge-Builder And Trash Talker

Even then, classmate Ken Mack recalls, Obama stood apart. Mack is now a professor at Harvard Law School and author of the book Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer.

“He seemed to know who he was, be very grounded,” says Mack. There was no sign of the kid people used to call “Barry.”

“If you would’ve told me that someone had called him Barry, I would have been surprised. Barry is a little bit diminutive — that would not have fit him at all,” Mack says.

After class on the basketball court, a whole different personality emerged. The conciliating bridge-builder was replaced by the trash-talker with a left-handed jump shot.

Obama played every chance he could get, including on the black law students’ association team.

One day the team agreed to play Walpole prison. Obama was the starting center, standing face to face with his much bigger opponent.

“And so Barack started the game by the usual embracing, good luck, what are you in here for?” says Ogletree. The inmate replied, “Double murder.”

“Barack played no defense at all that game. Didn’t shoot any of his traditional jump shots,” says Ogletree, laughing. “That’s the only time that Barack Obama, in my knowledge, didn’t talk trash, either then or now, about basketball.”

Taking The Lead

By the end of Obama’s second year, his academic record and reputation had qualified him to run for one of the most prestigious roles at the law school — president of the Harvard Law Review.

The review editors were a partisan, contentious group. Classmate Brad Berenson remembers the guy from Hawaii who floated above the fray. “One of the enduring images I have of him is of a guy in jeans and a leather jacket, Jimmy Dean style, standing out in front of Gannett House smoking a cigarette.”

Berenson was one of the conservatives, and in a long, contentious election, his group ultimately supported Obama’s candidacy.

“They did that in part because they had a sense that he was more open-minded and would listen to the conservatives, and would value and accept their contributions in a way that some of the other candidates would not,” says Berenson, who worked in the George W. Bush White House and is now a member of Romney’s justice advisory committee.

The conservatives’ intuition turned out to be correct, says Berenson. “He ended up upsetting many more of his colleagues on the far left than those of us who were on the right, in part because the bottom line for him as president of the law review always remained putting out a first-class publication.”

‘An Honest Grade’

Being the first black president of the Harvard Law Review had perks. Obama received national media attention and a book deal. By the time he was ready to leave Cambridge, Mass., every door was open to him.

Mack, Obama’s classmate, remembers walking back from Harvard Square getting a bite to eat with his friend. “Everyone knew he could clerk for the Supreme Court, get a high-paying law firm job, at least make a lot of money for a couple of years before he went off and did something else,” Mack says. “And he said that he had decided that he wasn’t going to clerk, and he wanted to go back to Chicago and just get started in the work that he wanted to do with his life.”

In Chicago, the newly minted lawyer with a Harvard degree returned to community organizing work, and eventually a political career.

Ogletree never imagined that his student would become the first African-American in the Oval Office. “My assessment was … that he was going to be the best damn mayor that we’ve ever seen in history.”

Obama recently joked about that assessment with his old friend and mentor, asking, “Man, why did you downgrade me?”

Ogletree replied: “It wasn’t a downgrade. It was an honest grade.”

In a previous part of the “Parallel Lives” series, Ari Shapiro explored Mitt Romney’s years at Harvard. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

That’s what President Obama said during a press conference in Chicago minutes ago, when he was asked what he thought about Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker’s critique of the campaign ad about Mitt Romney’s time as CEO of Bain Capital.

If you missed it, Booker made news by going off message on Meet the Press.

“This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides,” he said. “It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity, stop attacking Jeremiah Wright.”

President Obama praised Booker but then he went on to staunchly defend his campaign ad, which accuses Bain Capital of destroying a steel company in Kansas City. In it, some workers say Bain was running a sweat shop and that Bain loaded the company with debt only to declare it bankrupt and run away with the worker’s pensions and health insurances.

“I think there are folks who do good work in [private equity],” Obama said. “But understand their priorities are to maximize profit … and [that] won’t be good for communities.”

Obama, who spoke after a NATO summit, said if Romney was running on his record as a business executive, then his record at Bain was fair game.

“If your message is, ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’ then you’re missing what this job is about,” said Obama.

The president said that unlike the job of an private equity firm, which is to make money for investors, the U.S. presidency is about governing for the good of everybody.

Obama said his job was to find out “how … we create an economy where everybody … has a shot at success.” [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]