WASHINGTON - With the election over, it is time to say happy trails to Reuters “Tales from the Trail” election blog and give a warm welcome to “Front Row Washington” which will provide readers a view from Reuters correspondents working the political beat around town and the country.

Reuters has a front row seat to all the action in Washington, whether in the White House, Pentagon, State Department briefing rooms or in halls of Congress. From here we will offer readers insight, analysis and behind-the-scenes stories as Democrats move into the White House and Republicans try to influence policy decisions.

We heartily thank all our readers over the last year or so who have made this blog a success and invite you to stay tuned because it will be a fun ride over the coming years.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden gave a group of Cub Scouts an impromptu tour of his campaign aircraft, showing them the cockpit and handing out Halloween candy.

The young scouts, some of them wearing red plastic fireman hats, had been visiting firefighters at the airport when Biden, on a campaign swing through northern Florida, arrived with his entourage.

“Have you ever seen a big plane before, up close?,” the senator asked the boys. “You guys wanna come and see my plane? I’m gonna get in trouble but come on.”

When he introduced himself as Joe Biden, one of the boy’s said he had heard of him on television. “Yeah, I’m Barack Obama’s running mate,” replied the Delaware senator.

One by one, he took the boys into the cockpit to meet the pilot and see the controls and then posed for pictures with them.

When one of the boys pointed to candy in a basket and asked whether they were Biden’s snacks, the senator whispered, ‘You can sneak one if you want,” and then handed out the candy to the boys before leading them out.

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PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — On Sunday night, John McCain returned to where it all began.

The Republican presidential candidate flew to New Hampshire for one last question-and-answer session with the voters who put him on the map in 2000 and brought his campaign back from the dead in January of this year.

“I come to the people of New Hampshire … and ask again to let me go on one more mission,” McCain said at the Peterborough town hall.

Peterborough has a special significance for McCain. It hosted his last town hall meeting in 2000, when he won the Republican primary over frontrunner George W. Bush. Peterborough also hosted McCain’s 100th town hall gathering last year, at a time when his campaign was out of cash and on the rocks.

“There was a time not that long ago that I was riding on a well known airline, Group C in the middle seat, from Baltimore to Manchester, so we’ve come a long way thanks to you,” he said, referring to a period when he would fly on discount Southwest Airlines to get to campaign events.

Now McCain has two private jets to carry around his entourage.

The question-and-answer session had a more casual feel from the amped-up, tightly scripted rallies that dominate his schedule in the campaign’s final stretch. No teleprompters were in sight as the Arizona senator fielded questions from an enthusiastic crowd on immigration, student loans and energy.

McCain was joined by a posse of senators – Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Judd Gregg and John Sununu of New Hampshire, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Sam Brownback of Kansas — but was introduced by Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, a demigod of sorts in Sox-crazed New England.

New Hampshire may have rescuscitated McCain’s career twice before, but it might not help him on Tuesday. The former Republican stronghold has been trending Democratic in recent years, and polls show McCain trailing Democratic rival Barack Obama by an average of 11 percentage points.

Tellingly, senior aide Charlie Black didn’t mention New Hampshire as he sketched out a possible victory scenario to reporters on the plane earlier in the day.

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden displayed some frustration at being tightly managed by the Obama campaign for fear he might go “off message.”

Speaking to students at the University of Florida in Gainesville Sunday, Biden appeared to stray from the text in front of him and took his eyes off the teleprompter.

What he said was not controversial — that he was more passionate about America’s prospects than when he first ran for the Senate in 1972 — but it was obviously not in the prepared script.

“I believe the possibilities for this country are absolutely amazing and stop moving the prompter,” he told his staff from the podium, referring to the teleprompter.

“There is a prompter that I hardly ever read. They put it up to make me sound disciplined,” Biden quipped to the crowd.

The usually loquacious Biden has been unusually disciplined during the campaign, avoiding wordy speeches and seeking to stay “on message” as Barack Obama’s running mate.

His biggest gaffe so far has been to say that if Obama wins, he will be tested in his first six months, a comment Republican John McCain seized on as he argued that the first-term Illinois senator is too inexperienced to be president.

Biden has had limited interaction with the small group of reporters traveling with him but insisted in an impromptu news conference on Friday that he had not been “muzzled” by the Obama campaign.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jason Reed. Biden and Obamappear at a campaign rally in Sunrise, Florida, on Oct. 29, 2008.

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. - Pennsylvania native and Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden hopes the Philadelphia Phillies’ baseball World Series win is a good omen for Tuesday’s presidential election.

“How about those Phillies?” Biden said at a rally in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on Thursday.

The Philadelphia Phillies won baseball’s World Series on Wednesday against the Tampa Bay Rays, in a game watched by Biden’s wife, Jill, who like him is a rabid Phillies fan.

“I am on the campaign trail and she said: ‘Joe I am going to the (baseball) series,” Biden said.

Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, said his wife appeared on a local Philadelphia radio station on Thursday and raved about the performance of Phillies pitcher Brad Ledge, who clinched the Phillies’ win by shutting down the Rays in the last inning of Wednesday’s game.

“It must have given her an idea because when I called her to say hello, she said, ‘Joe, you have to do with this campaign what Brad did that night.’ Lights out tonight, lights out …” he said.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Bill Kostroun (Phillies’ Geoff Jenkins sprays fans with champagne after the Phillies defeated Tampa Bay to win the World Series)

BOSTON - Democrat Barack Obama leads his Republican rival John McCain by a nearly 2-1 ratio among young voters in the race for the White House, a poll by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics showed on Wednesday.

Obama leads McCain 56 percent to 30 percent among likely young voters, according to an online survey of 2,406 18 to 24 year olds conducted by Harris Interactive for the institute between Sept. 12 and Oct. 6. Fifteen percent were undecided.

Obama’s lead is essentially unchanged from polls in July and March, the institute said.

Both parties have sought to mobilize young Americans who voted in the largest numbers in at least 20 years in the 2006 congressional elections, energized by the Iraq war, and turned out in record numbers in the 2004 presidential election.

Mirroring the broader electorate, the economy is the No. 1 issue for America’s youth. More than half, or 53 pecent, say economic issues are their top concern, compared with 30 percent in March, the poll showed.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young. Obama supporters hold up a cardboard cutout of the candidate at a campaign event at the Palm Beach Community College in Lake Worth, Florida, Oct. 21, 2008.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - There was a sharp exchange among patrons during Barack Obama’s visit to a barbecue restaurant on Sunday, highlighting the strong emotions the U.S. presidential race is stirring in the final weeks of the campaign.

Obama stopped by Cape Fear BBQ in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to pick up some chicken, collards and baked beans and court voters in this traditionally Republican state.

Some patrons cheered his arrival while others looked on with curiosity and surprise. One woman yelled, “Socialist, Socialist, Socialist — get out of here.” Obama was across the room at the time and did not appear to hear Diane Fanning, 54, who was among several patrons who had just come by after services at the local Presbyterian church. She said she was annoyed that the Illinois senator had stopped in at the restaurant that she regularly visits.

Obama supporter Cecelia Hayslip, 61, responded to Fanning’s comments by saying, “At least he’s not a warmonger.”

Lenox Bramble, 76, isn’t an Obama supporter but he also was bothered by Fanning’s comment. “Be civil, be courteous,” he said.

Later, Bramble and his wife, Kit, seemed to find some common ground with Obama when he said he shared their concerns about the loss of textile jobs to other countries and underscored his pledge to try to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Act.

They later said that while they found Obama likeable, they were not going to vote for him. Lenox finds Obama too inexperienced while Kit said she had been a conservative Republican since Barry Goldwater’s 1964 candidacy and wasn’t about to change.

Obama had more success with first-time voter Mike Long, 33, who talked to the candidate about health care. Long said he had gone from being less than 50 percent likely to vote for Obama to being 98 percent certain he would back the Democrat.

Obama later walked over to Fanning’s table and extended his hand to her but she did not shake it. 

North Carolina is among some traditional Republican states that have turned competitive in recent weeks. George W. Bush won the state handily in both 2000 and 2004, racking up more than 12-point wins each time. But an average of recent polls on the Web site RealClearPoltics showed Obama with slight 1.3 percent lead in the state.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young - U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama makes a campaign stop at a restaurant in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Oct. 19, 2008.

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate John McCain may not have blinked first in his debates with Barack Obama — but he certainly blinked more often, which is not a good thing.

Candidates who blink more than their opponents in debates tend to lose presidential elections, says Boston College psychology professor J.J. Tecce, and McCain outblinked Obama during the their three debates this fall.

“People are picking up McCain’s rapid blinking and saying, ‘There’s something about him that’s awfully twitchy and nervous and I don’t think I want to vote for that guy,’” said Tecce, who has presented a paper on blinking in debates.

Tecce said rapid blinking is an indicator of negative emotions such as fear, pain or stress. Most people blink 10 to 20 times per minute, a rate that increases to between 30 and 50 times per minute if they’re in front of a television camera.

The Republican McCain, who trails Democrat Obama by 4 to 14 percentage points in most polls, blinked 109 times per minute during the first debate, while Obama blinked 73 times per minute. Tecce said that gap persisted in the next two debates.

Obama has unhelpful tics of his own, such as a tendency to  look down at the ground, but voters appear to not pick up on these cues as readily as they do rapid blinking, Tecce said.

The presidential candidate who blinked more than his opponent during debates has lost every election since 1976 — with the exception of 2000 when blink-happy George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore but won the White House.

The blinking pattern held during this year’s Democratic primaries. Obama and rival Hillary Clinton each registered about 40 to 50 blinks per minute during Democratic debates, far less than rivals who quickly dropped out of the race.

On the Republican side, McCain was the fastest blinker of the bunch. Ron Paul clocked in at a serene 10 blinks per minute and only Mitt Romney registered in the ideal 40-blinks-per-minute range.

“I think they shot themselves in the foot on body language,” Tecce said.

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Cracked. Shattered. Whatever. Forget the glass ceiling, policy trumps gender in the race for the White House as far as Hillary Clinton is concerned.

“Of course it’s exciting to have a woman on the ticket,” Clinton said in a CNN interview when asked about the vice presidential candidacy of Republican Sarah Palin.

“But that in and of itself is not enough reason … and really no one will shatter that ceiling until we have a woman serving as president or vice president,” she said in the interview broadcast on Tuesday.

Clinton, a New York senator, saw an opportunity to be the first U.S. woman president slip away with her Democratic presidential primary loss to Barack Obama.

When Palin joined the Republican ticket as John McCain’s running mate, she credited Clinton with leaving 18 million cracks in the so-called glass ceiling — a reference to the number of votes she won in primaries before dropping out of the race.

But the two women have little else in common, especially on the divisive issue of abortion rights, which Palin opposes.

“I am going to be supporting women and men with whom I agree, who I believe have the right policies and the right ideas about what’s best for America,” said Clinton, who is campaigning for Obama in several states before the Nov. 4 election.

Pressed on Palin’s candidacy and wanting to see a woman in the White House, Clinton was firm.

“I would like to see the very first woman in the White House who I agree with and who I think has policies that would really fulfill the goals that I have for our country,” she told CNN.

It was clear the governor from Alaska was not that woman.

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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Democrat Barack Obama raked in $9 million at fundraisers on Tuesday night flanked by celebrities. But he stopped far short of celebrating.

The White House hopeful kept the tone of his remarks  somber as he talked of the financial crisis that has cast a pall over the economy to an audience that included Pierce Brosnan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jodi Foster and Jamie Lee Curtis.

“This should be a celebratory evening. We’ve got 48 days to go in a campaign, a campaign that started 19 months ago, at a time when a lot of folks thought we might not get here,” Obama told a reception of 800 people at the swank Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

“I’m not in a celebratory mood,” he said, listing recent events such as the financial turmoil, a deadly train crash in Los Angeles and Gulf Coast hurricanes.

Obama’s Republican rival, John McCain, mocked him for mingling with his “celebrity friends” while middle-class Americans were spending their time worrying about the economy.

At one reception, where donors contributed $2,500 a piece to Obama’s campaign coffers, singer-actress Barbra Streisand gave a rare singing performance.

At an earlier dinner of around 300 people at the Tudor-style Greystone mansion in Beverly Hills, donors paid $28,500 a plate to the Democratic Party and dined on beef filet, asparagus and salad with goat cheese.

Asking them to work hard to help get him elected, Obama said the financial crisis “has reminded people what’s at stake.”

“It’s reminded people that this is not a game. This is not a reality show,” he said and then added, to laughter, “No offense to any of you here.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/ Tobias Schwarz (Barbra Streisand, shown in a 2007 performance in Berlin, sang at an exclusive fundraiser for Obama Tuesday night.)