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These are my reflections from the road on how Americans are meeting the country’s economic challenges
19:04 UK time, Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Over bacon and eggs and bagels and muffins in a fancy hotel in Washington, one of the US capital's oddest double acts is sounding the alarm.
The American republic, say Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is heading toward the edge of the cliff. Without a deal on tax and spending "we have no idea where it will go".
19:43 UK time, Wednesday, 7 November 2012
"We're going to get blamed if we lose," a Texan member of the low-tax, small-government Tea Party movement told me before the first presidential debate appeared to turn the election on its head.
A civil war may be about to break out between fiscal conservatives and what remains of the more moderate wing of the party, but it will be the wrong battle to fight.
01:39 UK time, Wednesday, 7 November 2012
The music died when the first results came into Romney HQ in Boston - not metaphorically, but literally, as the jazz band that had been serenading Republicans stopped playing.
The chat died too as everyone watched the first results come onto the screen flanking the stage where Mitt Romney will at some stage appear.
03:58 UK time, Monday, 5 November 2012
Up a flight of stairs, away from the organised shambles of the downstairs office, cigarette smoke and weariness hangs around the impressively rumpled figure of Caleb Faux.
On his office wall, posters for Truman, Kennedy and Johnson. On his television, the left-leaning news channel, MSNBC. On his desk, a choppy sea of reports and to-do lists.
18:05 UK time, Saturday, 3 November 2012
Just when you think you have utterly lost the will to listen to another Mitt Romney speech, he hits you between the eyes and comes up with something that really does resemble oratory.
It was a message that had he been able to hew to since the primaries - well, who knows where he would be right now, or where he might be on Wednesday.
07:08 UK time, Friday, 2 November 2012
Ma and Pa's Diner in Virginia is in a squat building by the highway - a place close enough to the airport to make it an anonymous hangout for travelling types. But it's actually a neighbourhood joint.
The counter is wooden; the jukebox is broken. There are five or six tables in booths, around the same number along the window.
06:48 UK time, Thursday, 1 November 2012
"Their firewall," said an uber-confident member of Team Romney, with a hint of glee, "is burning."
The "firewall' in question is the one allegedly dreamt up by Democratic strategists to stop dead any advance by the forces of Mitt: it consists of the Midwestern states of Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin (also referred to jocularly as the rust belt, the corn belt and the cheese belt).
07:08 UK time, Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Before the campaign, a couple of lines about the kindness and decency of Americans.
As I turned back onto the I-90 towards Toledo and eventually Detroit, after a nutritious burger and fries, a filter took cars onto the interstate across a lane of oncoming traffic.
04:36 UK time, Tuesday, 30 October 2012
When the day began it was almost a normal campaign here in Ohio; now, with huge winds and rain lashing down, what became the strangest campaign in modern history has ground to a halt.
As Mitt Romney wound up his speech at Avon Lake High School, word went round the media pack, penned in behind barriers from the crowd of bellowing supporters, that his campaign was cancelling any more events on Monday, suspending for Tuesday as well.
02:45 UK time, Monday, 29 October 2012
It wasn't supposed to start like this.
Right now, I'd hoped to be telling you about Mitt Romney's latest incarnation - the candidate of "big change" - strutting his stuff in Ohio.
22:11 UK time, Friday, 26 October 2012
A warm welcome to my new page on the BBC News website. This will be the home for my reflections, from the road, on American life.
"Who is the most important person you've ever interviewed?" I was asked the other day.
Jonny has been a foreign correspondent for 12 years, working in North America, Europe and the Middle East.
After following Mitt Romney in the final days of his 2012 presidential campaign, Jonny will continue to report from every corner of the United States, exploring how the country deals with relative economic decline and the challenge of social immobility.
Jonny is constantly surprised and delighted by the US and the astonishing variety to be found within.
Mark Mardell
North America editor
The big debates in US politics and life beyond Washington
Katty Kay
Presenter, BBC World News
The power plays in Washington and beyond
Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent
Stories behind headlines, and front lines
Mark Easton
Home editor
The way we live in the UK and the many ways it is changing
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