Hillary's Moment

"McCain delivered 'cheap shots,' said one Romney adviser. Another called McCain's criticisms of Romney 'snide remarks' and 'name calling.' Yet another said they were 'unbecoming.' All of which caused Mark Salter, McCain's closest aide, to go off.

" 'Come on, Mitt, tighten up your chin strap,' Salter, standing just a few feet away from the Romney team, told reporters. 'Of all the ludicrous suggestions -- Mitt Romney whining about being attacked, when he has predicated an entire campaign plan on whoever serially looks like the biggest challenger gets, whatever, $20 million dropped on his head and gets his positions distorted. Give me a break. It's nothing more than a guy who dishes it out from 30,000 feet altitude and then gets down in the arena and somebody says, O.K. Mitt, gives him a little pop back, and he starts whining. That's unbecoming.' "

Not everyone is predicting a McCain surge. Joe Klein, for instance:

"The polls still have John McCain comfortably ahead of Mitt Romney in the New Hampshire primary, but I don't believe them. For one thing, McCain has just dragged himself through two of his worst debate performances ever. For another, Mitt Romney--even though under assault constantly in Saturday night's debate--has had two of his best debate performances yet.

"On Saturday night, McCain went from weird to ugly. The weird part was the first twenty minutes of the debate, the foreign policy section, which should be McCain's kitchen--he legitimately knows more about this stuff than anyone in the Republican field--but he was dead silent. And then, in the emotional heart of the debate--the illegal immigration section--Mitt Romney, loathsome as always on this issue, had both McCain and Giuliani totally on the defensive about the definition of amnesty. Romney's argument that a $500 fine wasn't amnesty is ridiculous. What sort of hoops does he want the illegals to jump? Does he want all 12 million in prison? Does he want to deport them--and, if so, how? . . .

"McCain was nowhere. His answers lacked zing. He seemed tired. He was unable to make a vigorous case for himself as a leader--even his references back to his days in the military didn't cut it with this Republican audience. McCain won here in 2000 because independent voters found him far more compelling than the independent alternative on the Democratic side, Bill Bradley. This time, he's [competing] with Barack Obama for independents in a state decidedly more blue than it was in 2000."

Having written the McCain love affair story eight or nine times back then, I was amused by the Jason Zengerle version in the New Republic:

"There's no denying that the media absolutely loves McCain, and I'd imagine many readers wonder why that is.

"The simple explanation is: McCain affords the press access like no other candidate. In the McCain campaign, there's no barrier between candidate and reporter. If you have a question for McCain, you don't have to bother going to his press secretary; you simply go ask him. On some days, you literally spend eight hours with the candidate, just riding with him in the back of his bus peppering him with questions on everything from Pakistan to his philosophical thoughts about suicide. Toward the end of the day, this amount of unfettered access to the candidate can actually be a bit of a problem, when you start to run out of questions for him and there are awkward silences. But, on the whole, it's hard to overstate the sort of goodwill this access engenders among reporters . . .

"P.S. Speaking of McCain and the media, I was at a dinner tonight with various political reporters who are up here to cover the happenings, and it was pretty funny how giddy/relieved they were at the prospect of a McCain-Obama general election campaign, as opposed to, say, a Romney-Clinton one. Suddenly, the next 11 months of their lives look a whole lot more enjoyable."

I will close with my report on the senator from Illinois:

Barack Obama, now the media's odds-on favorite to win the White House, is drawing effusive praise from the chattering classes.