McCain vs. Obama: Dueling Covers

I've now been contacted by three different readers about our

October cover:

They all have asked the same question, in tones accusing us of political bias: When are you going to put John McCain on the cover? The answer, for the record, is that we already did, in September:

Interestingly, at the time we ran the September cover, no one contacted me to ask whether and when we would feature Obama -- even though unlike with McCain issue, we hadn't at that time already published an issue with him on the cover.

We make no endorsement in the presidential race. Our cover stories simply represent an effort to try to discern what each candidate would do as the government's top executive, and what they would expect of the career federal officials who would be asked to implement their policies.