Networks Dismiss Hillary Landslide

"Reports the Times: 'In an e-mail message, Mr. Obama blamed a staff member for the oversight, and expressed the hope that "none of this has raised any questions on your part regarding my fundamental commitment to Israel's security. ' "

Tapper puts the total number of blame-the-staff incidents at 10.

Is John McCain weighed down by a giant albatross? Roger Simon examines the evidence:

"McCain's burden this year is as much about convincing voters that he is not a continuation of the Bush presidency as it is about beating his Democratic opponent . . .

"How serious is the problem for McCain? A USA Today/Gallup Poll released Monday states: 'George W. Bush may do as much damage to John McCain's chances of being elected as Jeremiah Wright does to Barack Obama's.' The poll found '38 percent of likely voters saying McCain's association with Bush makes them less likely to vote for McCain, while 33 percent say Obama's association with Wright diminishes their likelihood of voting for Obama.' . . .

"But what helped doom McCain in 2000 -- that he was too much of a maverick for some Republican primary voters -- may help him now. His maverick status puts some distance between him and Bush."

One way for McCain to topple Obama, says Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, is to outwork him:

"Those of us who have traveled with McCain and Obama know that McCain generally appears less fatigued at the end of a long day (although Obama has gotten much, much better since he began his campaign.) But McCain's advisers know that one way to divert attention from their candidate's age is to show voters how hard he works and how little the work seems to tire him. So the plan is, for now, to work McCain to the bone, scheduling grueling days full of town hall meetings and hope that Barack Obama, in following suit, is one who winds up appearing worn out.

"The explicit message: McCain has more energy than a guy half his age; he's got calluses on his hand. The implicit message: Obama's a bit of dabbler, a dilettante."

The vast left-wing conspiracy has had trouble coming to grips with the Reagan legacy. Consider this Louis Bayard review in Salon of a new book by Sean Wilentz:

"Between Ronald Reagan's last year of presidential office in 1989 and his death in 2004, a strange transformation took place within the Washington Post. I only noticed when, in a fit of masochism, I began to plow through the paper's coverage of Reagan's state funeral. As expected, there were the usual encomiums from Krauthammer and Will and Novak -- no different in kind than what they'd been churning out for a quarter-century -- but where was the other side? After decades of antagonism to Republican presidents in general and Reagan in particular, Post reporters, analysts, columnists and editorialists were sprinting -- practically elbowing each other out of the way -- to apotheosize a man they had never even liked, let alone endorsed . . .

"Nostalgia lies so thickly over the '80s that it's hard now to recall what Ronald W. Reagan represented to your average card-carrying liberal. Hating him then was as much an article of faith as hating George W. Bush is now. Everything his supporters loved --the Plexiglas optimism, the blithe disregard for detail, the chuckle, the very cock of his head -- we loathed. To this day, many of my friends refuse to call National Airport by its new title, and to this day, I refuse to pass the Ronald Reagan Building without a private snigger that Mr. Government-Off-Our-Backs has his name forever attached to a massive concrete bureaucratic complex

"But who's sniggering now? History, it seems, is on the side of the turncoat Washington Post, and there's a distinct possibility that if we paleo-libs continue in our ancient rancors, we'll start looking like those troglodytes who still plump for Alger Hiss' innocence. We may finally have to admit that Ronald Reagan didn't . . . completely . . . in every respect . . . suck."

A sad development: NYT Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and his wife, Gail Gregg, are separating after 33 years of marriage.

Did the LAT really run a piece analyzing the candidates' handwriting? (McCain is a pit bull, Hillary precise, Obama fluid and graceful.) Gag me.