By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 6, 2008; 9:24 AM

Barack Obama, it is now clear, is gambling on a grown-up electorate.

He is gambling that people will see Hillary Clinton's gas-tax suspension as the Washington gimmick he says it is, rather than a nice bit of relief for hard-pressed working folks.

He is gambling that voters won't be distracted by his lack of a flag pin, false rumors about not pledging allegiance to the flag and other assaults on his patriotism.

He is gambling that Americans won't hold him accountable for the incendiary speech of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, now that he's given an eloquent speech on race and cut ties with his former pastor.

And he is gambling, of course, that white voters will look past his race and elect an African American president.

It's a pretty big bet. But it's at the heart of the Obama candidacy.

In the past, of course, Democratic candidates have proven vulnerable to attacks based on their patriotism and their association with fringe characters. And Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry didn't have to deal with being black. Obama is a more natural politician than any of them, and he is hoping to redefine the parameters of presidential elections.

He has had to accommodate himself to some of the grubby rituals of politics. He went bowling, has taken to playing B-ball before the cameras and the other day announced he wanted a Bud. He no longer wants to come off as a brie-and-Chablis liberal, and hey, life is full of compromises.

We'll soon get another glimpse of how successful Obama has been in Indiana and North Carolina.

The New York Times questions whether Obama would be vulnerable to what happened in 1988:

"That year, the Republicans used the symbols of nationhood (notably, whether schoolchildren should be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance) to bludgeon the Democrats, challenge their patriotism and utterly redefine their nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts."

But this is 2008, Joe Klein points out:

"In 1988, [Ronald] Reagan was coming off a period of low poll ratings because of the Iran-Contra scandal, but he was, essentially, a popular president, enjoying a good economy. This year, we have a historically dreadful incumbent president, who has made the most grievous errors overseas of any American president and who is presiding over a bad-to-iffy economy. There will be enormous policy differences between the Democratic nominee and John McCain in the fall.

"So why are we getting all this frantic low-information signaling and skeezy character assassination in the Democratic primary? Because that's what happens in an election where there are no huge policy differences between the combatants--it turns on character, personality and trivia. Whatever you think of them, Clinton and Obama agree on most matters of substance.

"My guess the tone will shift as soon as the Democrats get a nominee. Iraq will be a huge issue. [President] Bush's economic policies--tax cuts for the wealthy, the slavish devotion to the interests of oil companies--will be huge issues. No doubt, there will be trivial pursuits. There always are. But they are more likely to be kept in perspective in an election where Iraq and the economy (and, I hope, the environment) take center stage."

Yesterday's CBS-NYT poll backs Barack on one issue:

"An overwhelming majority of voters said candidates calling for the suspension of the federal gasoline tax this summer were acting to help themselves politically, rather than to help ordinary Americans."

Liberal pundits had doubted the media's ability to referee the gas-tax debate, but American Prospect's Ezra Klein says there are reasons it's been well-covered:

"The problem with the press's relatively good behavior on the gas tax is that it was a one-off produced by a fairly rare set of circumstances: Namely, a 1) high profile fight between two leading national candidates who were 2) on the same side of the partisan divide and were 3) squabbling over a policy issue where there was utter unanimity among experts. You didn't, for instance, have a bunch of Cato or AEI economists popping up in articles to explain the merits of a gas tax holiday."

Arianna drops a mini-bombshell in the GOP race, as I reported on The Trail yesterday:

After sitting on the story for nearly eight years, Arianna Huffington said yesterday afternoon that John McCain told her soon after the 2000 election that he did not vote for George W. Bush.

The private conversation took place at a Los Angeles dinner party, she said, and the senator's wife Cindy said she didn't vote for Bush either. The liberal blogger, who posted the account on her Web site yesterday, said McCain's declaration came after a tirade in which he criticized Bush's tactics against him in their battle for the GOP nomination.

"He never told me it was off the record," Huffington said in an interview. "It shows how far this man has fallen, that he could not even bring himself to vote for Bush and now he has embraced him."

Huffington said she is going public to counter "the media's love affair" with McCain and the lack of attention to a series of misstatements and reversals that have been overshadowed by the Democratic contest. "It is really important to unmask John McCain," she said.

Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for McCain, said "It's not true, and I ask you to please consider the source."

Asked why Huffington would make up her story about McCain not voting for Bush, longtime McCain aide Mark Salter -- who has previously tangled with the Huffington Post -- ripped into her. "Why would she make something up? Because she's a flake, and a poser, and an attention seeking diva. And that's on the record."

Arianna responds here, and explains her reasoning in this post:

"The John McCain the media fell in love with in 2000 isn't on the ballot in 2008. And the proof has all but jumped up and grabbed the media by the throat: the ring-kiss of 'agents of intolerance' Falwell and Robertson; the decision to make permanent tax cuts he twice voted against, saying he could not 'in good conscience support' them; the campaign finance reformer replaced with a candidate whose campaign is run by lobbyists and fueled by loophole rides on his wife's jet; the hard-line stance against torture replaced by a vote allowing waterboarding; the guarded-by-a-battalion stroll through the 'safe' neighborhoods of Baghdad; the use of Karl Rove as an advisor . . . and the embracing of the disastrous policies of a man he so abhorred he would not vote for him.

"What will it take for the Swift Boat Media to realize that John McCain jumped the shark a long, long time ago?"

The day's best essay is in New York magazine, where Kurt Andersen examines the media's infatuation with Obama:

"It's ironic that the media and their fellow upscale Americans are now disposed to like Obama precisely because he resembles them in so many ways. The difference is he's relatively unsullied, an exquisite, idealized version of themselves: educated, thoughtful, twigged to nuance, a lovely writer, well-traveled, witty, cool, dignified, candid, a little quixotic, a clued-in grown-up but not yet ruined by the ugly facts of Washington life. . .

"It's not only that the people who create and run the media--and who love Obama--occupy the social and cultural upper rungs. The world depicted in "the media," broadly construed--not just straight journalism but everything we watch and read and hear--is overwhelmingly a bright, shiny, upscale, youngish world. Uneducated white people, residents of the so-called C and D counties, and the elderly--in other words, Hillary Clinton voters--are seldom allowed into the mass-media foreground, and when they appear it's usually as bathetic figures, victims or losers . . .

"The media didn't see this coming. Back in February, when the new prince was gliding thrillingly up and up toward nomination, a part of the thrill for the media was their happy astonishment that they were no longer cosmopolitan outliers but finally (unlike in 1984 with Gary Hart) in sync with America: Regular folks, white people in Iowa and Virginia and Wisconsin, were actually voting for Obama!

"That was then. With the ten-point loss in Pennsylvania, the latest Reverend Wright eruption, and the shrinkage of Obama's leads in the polls, the media are feeling lousy, and not just because their guy is taking a beating. If Obama is deemed to be an effete, out-of-touch yuppie, then the effete-yuppie media Establishment that's embraced him must be equally oblivious and/or indifferent to the sentiments of the common folk."

Is the right reassessing Hillary? You get that impression from this Noemie Emery piece in the Weekly Standard:

"After March 4, she suddenly seemed to look and sound different: She began to seem real. The shrillness was gone, and so was The Cackle, and so were the forced southern accents that once caused so many so much merriment. Hillary!--whoever that was--never really cohered as a character; her previous poses--the Perfect Wife, the Aggrieved Wife, the Empress-in-Waiting--were all unconvincing, but in her new role--the scrapper, forced to the wall and hanging in there with ferocious and grim resolution--she is suddenly all of a piece.

"Along with her inner JFK, she has channeled her inner Robert F. Kennedy (going back to the days when he was still 'ruthless'), along with her inner Margaret Thatcher--'No time to go wobbly'--along with echoes of the John McCain who clawed his way out of the grave only last winter, and the George W. Bush who just as tenaciously saved his Iraq policy--and maybe Iraq itself--from the Democrats in Congress last year."

The essay draws a blast from Andrew Sullivan:

"The Weekly Standard bows down before the new right-wing Clinton. My own view is that the neocons now see her as the main way to defeat Obama and the possibility of real change in the occupation of the Middle East. They know how vulnerable McCain is -- and fear Obama, because they have not gotten into his head."

I was surprised to see Bill Kristol citing four McCain aides as floating Bobby Jindal for veep:

"They're tempted by the idea of picking someone so young, with real accomplishments and a strong reformist streak."

A 36-year-old who spent three years in the House and a few months as governor? Jindal says it's unlikely, and he's right.

Bill Clinton is getting a more respectful look from the media, first in the WP and now in the NYT:

"The man who has been described as one of the best politicians of his generation has been portrayed -- his friends would say caricatured -- as a political buffoon: a source of constant embarrassment for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton with an unending stream of angry outbursts, impolitic observations and criticisms of Senator Barack Obama, caught on video by the off-air network reporters that follow him around.

"Yet it was hard to find that Bill Clinton as he barreled his way through small communities like this one outside of Indianapolis, adapting to his self-described new role as the 'designated ambassador to the smaller parts of the country' as he campaigned for Mrs. Clinton in preparation for Tuesday's votes in Indiana and North Carolina."

The Chicago Tribune also says Bill's campaigning is "working to great effect." Did somebody send out a memo?

McCain's defense of the war is drawing fire from the likes of Dick Polman:

"It was a small incident, but instructive nonetheless. Asked to critique the fifth anniversary of Mission Accomplished, he at first tried to give Bush the benefit of the doubt: 'Do I blame him for that specific banner? I can't.' Explain that one. Was McCain suggesting that Bush shouldn't bear any responsibility for a giant slogan that was hung above his head for the express purpose of being captured on video for posterity? Didn't Harry Truman say that the buck stops at the president's desk? Did Bush have to hang the banner personally before McCain would deem him blameworthy?

"Anyway, McCain then tried to balance his exoneration with a profile in courage. He added: 'I thought it was wrong at the time.' Explain that one, too. I don't recall, five years ago, ever hearing McCain say publicly that the banner was wrong. On the contrary, he indicated that the banner was just fine. For instance, during a Fox News appearance on June 11, 2003, he was asked to respond to the Bush critics who were questioning whether the Iraq conflict had really ended. McCain's retort: 'Well, then why was there a banner that said 'mission accomplished' on the aircraft carrier?' "

Allahpundit says the man who asked McCain the other day whether he once called his wife a nasty name, as alleged in a new book, was not just a former Joe Biden aide but identified himself as a Huffington Post contributor. W*rning, str*ng lang*age.

Finally, Salon's Joe Conason defends his pal Sid Blumenthal for peddling anti-Obama material to journalists.