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Mitt Romney can play politics for laughs.
• The rivals are quieting the bickering to address the venerable Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a white-tie gala Thursday evening at New York City's Waldorf Astoria Hotel that has been a required stop for politicians since the end of World War II.
• In keeping with tradition, both candidates have prepared lighthearted fare for the fundraising event organized by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York for the benefit of needy children. That was the case almost precisely four years ago when Obama and GOP nominee John McCain poked fun at themselves and each other just a day

after an intense presidential debate at Hofstra University on Long Island.
• As in 2008, this year's dinner comes in the wake of a confrontational debate, also at Hofstra, lending an air of drama to the pivot from acrimony to humor.
• What's more, the dinner's host is Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has clashed with the Obama administration over contraception provisions in the new health care law. Dolan has said he received "stacks of mail" protesting the dinner invitation to Obama. But Dolan has sought to avoid playing political favorites, even delivering benedictions at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions this summer.
• The dinner was Romney's only public event Thursday. Obama planned to campaign in New Hampshire, one of the most competitive states in the election, before taping an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" with host Jon Stewart.
• Romney and Obama were traveling to New York, a state firmly behind Obama, as their campaigns mounted an aggressive appeal for undecided female voters.
• During stops Wednesday in Iowa and Ohio, the president mocked Romney's remark during Tuesday night's debate that as Massachusetts governor, he received "whole binders full of women" as he sought to diversify his administration. "We don't have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented women," Obama said.
• Romney made his own pitch to women.
• "This president has failed American's women," he told a crowd in Chesapeake, Va. "They've suffered in terms of getting jobs," he added, saying that 3.6 million more of them are in poverty now than when Obama took office.
• His campaign aired a television commercial that seemed designed to soften his

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