An expert says that when televised presidential and vice presidential debates began, they were supposed to be about discussion and dialogue 鈥� not winners or and losers. But that's never how the American public or journalists saw things.

To this day, getting a third-party candidate into a presidential debate is practically impossible. So we invited two of the third-party candidates 鈥� Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein from the Green Party 鈥� to a debate of our own.

The latest poll by NPR and its bipartisan polling team shows President Obama with a 7-point lead among likely voters nationally and a 6-point lead in the dozen battleground states where both campaigns are spending most of their time and money. But battleground voters were also more downbeat about the direction of the country.

When evaluating our presidential candidates, it's a common clich茅 that the most likable candidate always wins. A "likeability" metric might not matter as much as you think. Voters, says one political scientist, actually decide on the basis of who they think is going to do the best job.