• Mitt Romney: The smartest guy in the room
  COLUMBIA, S.C. - Mitt Romney is the earnest, overachieving school kid in the front row, his right arm thrust high and fingers fluttering in the air, straining to get the attention of the teacher. Mitt's got the answer. He always does.

• Thompson's role of a lifetime
  INDIANAPOLIS - Back when the part-time actor, lawyer, lobbyist, former senator and presidential hopeful Fred Thompson was still merely "testing the waters," he held one of his first official news conferences, in a windowless room of the Indianapolis Convention Center.

• Ron Paul: A seller of ideas
  ANGLETON, Texas - No more Department of Education. No more Federal Reserve Bank. No more Medicare or Medicaid. No more membership in the United Nations or NATO. No more federal drug laws. And, no more U.S. troops in Iraq - or anywhere else on foreign soil.

• Shaped by Vietnam, McCain embraces Iraq in his maverick '08 run
  FORT MILL, S.C. - Ray Dunsmore, a restaurant manager and Vietnam veteran, stood before Sen. John McCain inside the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9138 and shyly told him the story of their connection.

• Hunter runs to shake up governing elite
  SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The first siege of Fallujah was under way in Iraq in April 2004 when a furious Marine lieutenant grabbed a satellite phone and shouted a stream of expletives at the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

• Huckabee, the self-help politician
  Mike Huckabee would later write about that day in 1996 as his "crucible moment."

• Giuliani's record is operatic - dramatic highs and lows
  WASHINGTON - In a city with 8 million people, five boroughs, 24 subway lines and two major-league baseball teams, even the most ardent New Yorker had a hard time keeping track of the many faces of Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

• Growing up in 2 worlds, Richardson learned to see issues from both sides
  IOWA FALLS, Iowa - The seminal moment in Bill Richardson's life came shortly before he was born. His father, a headstrong American banker who worked and lived in Mexico City, told his pregnant wife in the fall of 1947 to pack for a brief trip across the U.S. border.

• For Obama, a tale of 2 speeches
  WASHINGTON - In February 1981, at the small, mostly white college he was attending in Los Angeles, 19-year-old Barack Obama tried something that shaped the course of his life.

• Underdog Kucinich campaigns philosophy: 'Anything is Possible'
  Twenty-six years ago Dennis Kucinich was a rising star. In 1978 the national spotlight shone brightly on the media-dubbed "Boy Mayor," who was sworn in at age 31 as mayor of Cleveland. He was one of the youngest people ever to lead a major city.

• Mike Gravel, an anti-war crusader for two generations
  WASHINGTON - A rookie U.S. senator, Alaska Democrat Mike Gravel, burst onto the Washington scene in the early 1970s breathing fire and brimstone over U.S. involvement in a controversial war. Almost two generations later, he's back at it.

• John Edwards: An urgent agenda
  WASHINGTON - As chemicals coursed through his wife's body, attacking her tumors and plunging her into sleep, John Edwards sat bedside in a drab Georgetown hospital room and planned his future as president of the United States.

• Former first lady seeks to meld many images into one winning bid
  When Hillary Clinton opened her Washington townhouse for a political fundraiser last fall, the highlight for a select few came after the movers and shakers wrote their checks and left.