Sounding Bitter

" 'And nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti- Semitism than I have.'

"Some Obama campaign aides privately admit that their boss has a tendency to use superlatives when a comparative is called for. What's weird about Obama's peacock displays is that they're unnecessary. No one -- not even messianic Obamniacs -- believe that he has more foreign policy experience than John McCain, although many millions of voters may well come to believe that Obama's life experience in general gives him a better vantage point."

By the way, Michelle Obama took some heat for writing her Princeton thesis on the gulf between black and white, but it turns out her freshman roommate was horrified at being placed with an African American and her mother threatened to pull her from the school.

Lots of blogger reaction to this NYT piece on McCain's advisers:

"One component of the fractious Republican Party foreign policy establishment -- the so-called pragmatists, some of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake -- is expressing concern that Mr. McCain might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush's first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war."

One adviser's quote jumped out at Jonathan Chait:

" ' He operates too much off the cuff and has not done the deeper homework required of a presidential candidate.'

"That's quite an indictment, coming from his own supporters no less!

"I mention this because McCain has made foreign policy knowledge his main line of attack against Barack Obama . . . I think this line of attack represents a huge strategic blunder for McCain. Even if it works, McCain will drive expectations for Obama's understanding of foreign policy so low that he can't help but exceed them. Indeed, the most likely outcome is that the two candidates will debate, and Obama will prove himself as knowledgeable, or probably more knowledgeable, at which point Obama will clear the bar to be commander-in-chief and McCain's best issue will be gone.

"If McCain's campaign was smart, they'd do what Republicans usually do, which is to frame the question not as one of knowledge but one of conviction-- that Democrat may have lots of book learning, but I'm the only one who understands in my gut how evil the bad guys really are."

This is a double fantasy, but Outside the Beltway has word of a poll on two unlikely tickets:

"A John McCain-[Condoleezza] Rice ticket would beat the Democratic 'Dream Ticket' of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Clinton's 'home' state of New York, a Marist College poll shows."