Smart Reads September 19, 2012

September 19, 2012 3:52 pm by Amie Tsang

Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire with no political experience, has consolidated the opposition in Georgia to present the first serious challenge to president Mikheil Saakashvili’s nine-year rule. Courtney Weaver interviewed him in Tbilisi.
Campaigners, TV pundits and political reporters alike are poring over US opinion polls to how the presidential candidates are doing post-convention. Anna Fifield took a wry look at the quirkiest questions out there in today’s Notebook.
Many have commented on how Mitt Romney’s comments about the “47 per cent” reflect badly on him as a candidate, but they were also a bad sign of the state of the political system, according to Ross Douthat.
John Cassidy has also pointed out that Mr Romney’s comments did flag up a serious point: “in a world in which large numbers of poor and working-class voters don’t pay income tax, the standard Republican prescription of across-the-board cuts in income-tax rates… may no longer have the potency it once did.”
Destitute refugees in Homs told Max Rodenbeck how they would like Bashar al-Assad to die in a gory interview that forms part of his revealing review of books on “The Agony of Syria”.

The World