James Verini on the first-ever Presidential debate in Kenya, held last week, and Kenyan tribal politics: http://nyr.kr/UIT35V

Photograph: AP.

ROMNEY: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

AIDE: No, no. “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

ROMNEY: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

AIDE: No emphasis at all. Just, “Are you better of than you were four years ago?”

ROMNEY: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

AIDE: Just try saying it all at once with no emphasis.

ROMNEY: “Are you better off than you there you go again.”

AIDE: Colder.

Continue reading.

The first of the debates between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney is on Wednesday night, and so we asked our writers and editors (and one cartoonist) what questions they had for the candidates. Here is a selection for the first debate, which is on domestic issues. See the questions here.

We also want to know what our readers would ask: leave your questions below, and ask them on Twitter by using the #NYerDebateQ hashtag. (And we added a twist: assume, for the sake of the exercise, that the candidates will actually answer truthfully.)

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“I feel bad for Romney,” Nicholas Lemann says, “in the sense that he’s so unable to deal with things in the political storm.” If you let Mitt Romney’s post-forty-seven-per-cent ads tell it, though, he’s the compassionate one. In one, he says, “President Obama and I both care about poor and middle-class families. The difference is my policies will make things better for them.”

Lemann joins Dorothy Wickenden on this week’s Political Scene podcast to discuss his profile of Romney (available to subscribers) and whether or not Romney will be able to dig out of this hole.

Listen to the podcast, and click-through for more: http://nyr.kr/QJ2eNG