GOP nominee Mitt Romney and the Rev. Billy Graham discussed policy and personal connections Thursday at a meeting at the evangelical leader's home in Asheville, N.C., that ended with the men praying together.
"I'll do all I can to help you," Graham said at the end of the meeting, which also included his son Franklin.
The men discussed religious freedom and persecution, the war in Afghanistan and growing ministries in nations such as China and North Korea. Romney's late father, George, the governor of Michigan, was friends with Graham, and the evangelist held his first crusade in Grand Rapids, Mich., in the year Romney was born, 1947.
Graham asked what he could do for the GOP nominee. "Prayer is the most helpful thing you can do for me," Romney said.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
FOR OBAMA, TO STUDY OR TO CAMPAIGN?
To campaign or to study? For President Obama, that has become the question.
On the calendar, there are 25 days until the election. But Obama's advisers are sending the president to study hall. He will hole up in Williamsburg, Va., for four days starting Saturday to get ready for debate No. 2 on Long Island, N.Y., on Tuesday, and then will do the same thing next weekend at Camp David.
On Thursday, at the University of Miami, Obama delivered a full-throated attack on Romney's move to the center, saying the former governor "is trying to go through an extreme makeover." "After running for more than a year in which he called himself severely conservative, Mitt Romney's trying to convince you that he was severely kidding," Obama said. "Suddenly, he loves the middle class. Can't stop talking about them. He loves Medicare, loves teachers. He even loves the most important parts of Obamacare."
