By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 17, 2008; 8:44 AM

I have heard Barack Obama give the same speech four times a day and deliver it with verve and a sense of freshness.

But at last night's Philadelphia debate, Obama sounded rehearsed, cautious and, frankly, somewhat flat.

To be fair, the first half of the faceoff could not have been staged more effectively from Hillary Clinton's point of view. Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos forced Obama onto the defensive and kept him there. First, as he knew he would, he had to explain the "bitter" comments, and then he had to defend Jeremiah Wright, or at least his handling of his former pastor.

Hillary got to counterpunch in a more-in-sorrow-than-anger tone, saying she would have found Wright's comments "intolerable," and even to bring up his connection to Louis Farrakhan. Obama seemed pained when he said he found some of Wright's preaching "objectionable" but believes "that he loves this country." He looked like a man having an uncomfortable visit to the dentist.

And the ABC duo wouldn't let up, with Stephanopoulos asking what Obama would do in the fall when the Wright videos were played on television again and again.

In short, this did not resemble the swoon-over-Obama debate on "Saturday Night Live."

After a brief detour, it was a video questioner asking Obama why he didn't wear a flag pin--forcing him to defend his patriotism--and Stephanopoulos asked about his association with former radical William Ayers, who was tied to bombings in the '60s (an issue in which the mainstream media has displayed little interest). Obama was reduced to saying that these "detestable acts" were committed "when I was 8 years old." But why hang with him more recently? Obama didn't really explain.

This was quite a battering. It's hard to score points when you're constantly backpedaling.

The one detour was a Stephanopoulos question to Hillary about a poll showing that a majority of Democrats question her honesty, leading up to the sniper fire incident. Hillary was unusually humble, saying for the first time she was "very sorry" for telling an untruth and "embarrassed by it." That seemed to take some of the sting out of it.

Things were more balanced after that as both candidates pretty much said they would pull out of Iraq no matter what and defended their gun control stances, but the tone for the evening had been set. In the home stretch, Hillary did a read-my-lips-no-new-taxes--for the middle class (under $250,000). Obama countered with a promised cut in payroll taxes for those making under 75K.

It would be hard to avoid the conclusion that Hillary won, but then, she wasn't the one coming under journalistic sniper fire.

Too many morning papers went with the "two candidates traded blows" formulation because that's the tried-and-true formula, but that did not reflect what happened to Obama in last night's debate.

Chicago Tribune: "Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton carved each other up, sometimes gingerly and sometimes ferociously, in a debate Wednesday night that focused on some of the worst moments of the presidential campaign and the candidates' ability to win election in November."

Philadelphia Inquirer: "Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton sparred over each other's electability and the political weaknesses that might make them vulnerable to Republican attack in the fall."

L.A. Times: "The Democratic candidates for president debated forcefully Wednesday over who would prove more electable in November, with Hillary Rodham Clinton repeatedly raising questions about Barack Obama's past associations and Obama contending that her approach typified the blowtorch political style that Americans decry."

But there were exceptions.

"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton went on the attack against Senator Barack Obama on a variety of issues during a contentious debate Wednesday, warning that he would be deeply vulnerable in a general-election fight if he won the nomination," says the New York Times.

"Helped along by the questioning of the moderators, Mrs. Clinton mentioned several areas in which she said Mr. Obama was vulnerable, including the incendiary remarks by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and his service on a board with William Ayres, a former leader of the radical Weather Underground. She even cited Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, who has endorsed Mr. Obama."

Washington Post: "Sen. Barack Obama repeatedly found himself on the defensive here Wednesday night as he sought to bat away criticism of his remarks about small-town values, questions about his patriotism and the incendiary sermons of his former pastor in a potentially pivotal debate six days before Pennsylvania's presidential primary."

Washington Times: "Sen. Barack Obama was treated like the Democratic front-runner for the first time in a debate last night -- fielding hard questions about his ties to a 1970s domestic terrorist, his racially divisive church and his electability."

Politico: "Sen. Barack Obama faced his toughest grilling yet in a presidential debate Wednesday night, spending the first 45 minutes of his last scheduled meeting with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton defending his own words and his associations with several controversial figures."

Liberal bloggers hated the debate, led by those at the Huffington Post:

Jason Linkins calls it the worst debate ever:

"I had one significant worry: that the bulk of the time would be taken up with process questions and media obsessions, and that issues of import would end up getting sidelined. As it turns out, I was depressingly, distressingly correct. In fact, there were times when the debate ventured into territory so utterly asinine that I could scarcely believe what I was witnessing.

"Twas not until the nine-o'clock hour drew nigh that a single issue-oriented question was asked."

Greg Mitchell pronounces it "a shameful night for the U.S. media" (hey, I had nothing to do with it):

"In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia. They, and their network, should hang their collective heads in shame.

"Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent 'bitter' gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin -- while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations."

I disagree. The first half hour was spent on Bittergate, Wright and Bosnia sniper fire--political issues, sure, but all received huge coverage in the media, including the HuffPost. That was followed by lengthy discussions of Iraq, taxes, gun control and affirmative action. I suspect their real beef was that the questions were tilted against Obama, which, in the first half, they were.

Taylor Marsh gives props to the ABCers:

"The truth is that Gibson and Stephanopoulos asked questions that have been on people's minds, but nobody else in the media had the spine to bring up."

Even Obama booster Andrew Sullivan was disappointed in his man:

"It was a lifeless, exhausted, drained and dreary Obama we saw tonight. I've seen it before when he is tired, but this was his worst performance yet on national television. He seemed crushed and unable to react. This is big-time politics and he's up against the Clinton wood-chipper. But there is no disguising the fact that he wilted, painfully...

"This is still the arena we have. It is what it is. ABC News is what it is. The MSM knows no other way. Obama has to survive and even thrive under this assault if he is to win. He failed tonight in a big way."

Atlantic's Marc Ambinder says Hillary shouldn't pop the champagne just yet:

"Keeping the score card, there's no way Obama could fared worse. Nearly 45 minutes of relentless political scrutiny from the ABC anchors and from Hillary Clinton, followed by an issues-and-answers session in which his anger carried over and sort of neutered him. But Hillary Clinton has a Reverse-Teflon problem: her negatives are up, and when she's perceived as the attacker, the attacks never seem to settle on Obama and always seem to boomerang back on her. So it would be unwise to declare that Hillary "won" the debate in the dynamic sense just yet . . .

"A lot of stuff that Obama doesn't [want] Pennsylvanians to think about were the subject of fairly detailed questions. Obama's supporters are already blaming the 'establishment' -- that is, the powerful institution of the mainstream media -- for the tone of the debate. This sets up a blowback scenario wherein his supporters will rally to his defense and lash out at the media very loudly."

The "bitter" debate continues to echo across the blogosphere, with Michelle Malkin weighing in:

"The odor of elitism is like onion breath: It's quick to acquire, hard to mask. Try as he might, Barack Obama cannot camouflage the political stink he exhaled when he dissed small-town Americans as "bitter" Neanderthals "clinging" to their guns, faith, and belief in strict immigration enforcement. It wasn't the first time the effete Snob-ama revealed himself.

"In Philadelphia, he passed up the hometown cheesesteak -- gloppy, artery-clogging, and blue-collar (yum!) -- for a nibble of Spanish-imported, $100/pound ham. In Iowa, he moaned to voters about the price of arugula at Whole Foods. (Fun fact: There aren't any Whole Foods markets in Iowa.) And at an Altoona bowling alley, he couldn't even score his age. Superficial but telling glimpses of a condescending core."

But Malkin doesn't neglect the Republicans:

"Take Obama's GOP presidential rival, John McCain. The New York Times--endorsed media darling got a standing ovation from the nation's newspaper editors at a big journalism powwow in Washington this week. Some maverick. While McCain eagerly criticized Obama as an 'elitist' for his derisive comments about small-town Pennsylvanians, Obama's got nothing on McCain when it comes to insulting average Americans who oppose illegal immigration. Pandering to the open-borders lobby as cozily as Obama panders to San Francisco billionaires, McCain has attacked grassroots enforcement activists as bitter racists and xenophobes, cursed his Senate opponents and mocked the 'goddamned fence' in front of his deep-pocketed business supporters. And who can forget his disdainful admonition to conservatives, whom he berated to 'calm down.' "

Salon Editor Joan Walsh defends Frisco:

"I've seen a lot of dumb excuses for Barack Obama's regrettable remarks about 'bitter' Pennsylvania voters who 'cling' to God, guns and narrow-mindedness in the last few days. But maybe the dumbest are the ones that blame my city, San Francisco. According to the New York Sun, Obama backer Daniel Gerstein opined that 'Obama's mistake was not just what he said . . . but where he said it -- in San Francisco, a center of liberalism often derided by Republicans as culturally apart from the rest of America. The first rule for Obama is: Stop going to San Francisco.' My MSNBC buddy Pat Buchanan picked up that refrain from the right, complaining that Obama's remarks were made 'behind closed doors to the Chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco, in response to a question as to why he was not doing better in that benighted and barbarous land they call Pennsylvania.'

"Of course that's silly. Clearly, Obama could just as easily have made his gaffe at a fundraiser on Wall Street or K Street . . .

"Clinton's caricature of him based on the 'bitter' remark seems unfair. On the other hand, it was a mistake on Obama's part, and as Clinton has noted, it's a particular type of mistake -- seeming out of touch with blue-collar Americans -- that has doomed Democrats in the last 40 years."

The O team isn't worried, Marc Ambinder reports, and he has a theory:

"When you ask various members of the Obama campaign about polling after Obama's remarks, they're likely to respond with a variant of a single answer: the coverage of these remarks are media-driven -- old media driven, at that. (It's true: once this story left the confines of the Huffington Post, it pretty much became a staple of the cablers, the newspapers, and the evening news.) Whenever the media tells them that they've misbehaved, Obama's supporters and the penumbra of undecided Democrats (who are really not undecided between two candidates -- they're just unsure whether they're going to vote for Obama) respond in equal fashion, exerting upwards pressure and reversing the trend of the storyline . . .

"Here's what I think is going on. Time after time, from the beginning of the campaign to now, the media has called Obama on a 'major' gaffe or presented his [reaction] to an event as a 'major' problem only to figure out a week later that Obama hasn't suffered a bit and Hillary Clinton numbers have dropped back down to about 40%."

Of course, a minor problem in the Democratic primaries could become a major problem in the general election.

The Huffington Post, which rarely goes a day without a Hillary-bashing piece or three, cites a book that says Hillary said the following in 1995 in a discussion over appealing to working-class southern whites:

" 'Screw 'em,' she told her husband. 'You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them.' "

Howard Wolfson denied last night that Hillary had said what the author said he witnessed.

Jonah Goldberg calls Barack and Michelle Obama "self-hating yuppies straight out of the 1980s."

The Boss says Obama was born to run: Bruce Springsteen endorses Barack.

Guess who was spotted wearing a flag pin? Allahpundit sticks it to Obama:

"I lost track of this very stupid story after the initial dust-up last October. Evidently a disabled vet handed it to him at [yesterday's] speech, thereby magically ridding it of the Iraq cooties that had rendered it unfit to grace the chest of the Messiah . . .

"Conservatives naturally were blamed for making an issue of this last fall but in fact Obama's the one who politicized it by investing the pin with such grandiose meaning that he simply had to stop wearing it in good conscience. No other prominent Democratic critic of the war that I can think of has felt the need to divest him- or herself of the sort of symbolism that those small town yokels whom Obama has such affection for seem to appreciate so much."

ESPN, canceling an interview with Obama? Here's the lame explanation: "It's absolutely not an issue about any one candidate. Our position is that when they're down to the final two candidates, we'll look for options to interview each accordingly. Fans don't expect political coverage on our air."

Dude, you had an interview with Barack Obama, who's fairly good at basketball (if not bowling). Could it have anything to do with the fact that ESPN's president is a John McCain donor? I'm throwing the penalty flag on this one.

Wouldn't this be tantamount to switching parties?

"Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the Democratic Party's 2000 vice presidential nominee, is leaving open the possibility of giving a keynote address on behalf of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) at the Republican National Convention in September."

Kos wonders why the Dems don't strip Lieberman of his chairmanships: "The dude is a Republican. I wish he'd come out and say so already."