The Sisters are Steamed

But there'll be another woman making a strong White House run, right? Not according to this Times Week in Review piece: "Asked to name a potential first woman as president, though, even the shrewdest political strategists said they couldn't think of anyone."

The media, meanwhile, are largely adopting the Obama outlook about today's contests in Kentucky and Oregon:

"By day's end," says the L.A. Times, "Obama expects to have locked up a majority of the pledged delegates to the party's national convention. Though not assuring Obama of the nomination in August, the achievement would signal that victory is near in his hard-fought battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton."

But one person isn't buying that, says the Boston Globe:

"Clinton, who ushered in her historic campaign 16 months ago on the slogan, 'I'm in it to win it,' insisted yesterday she was not planning on going anywhere until all the votes were counted in every state and territory. 'This is nowhere near over,' the senator from New York said at a rally in Kentucky."

Of course, it's been apparent for weeks that Obama would finish ahead in pledged delegates, so making a semi-declaration of victory is an interesting maneuver on his part.

Another hot issue is Obama, on "GMA," telling critics to lay off his wife, Michelle, after a Tennessee GOP Web ad that challenges her first-time-I'm proud-of-my-country remark. (Here's the video.) Uh-uh, says Hot Air's Ed Morrissey:

"If Obama doesn't want his wife to receive criticism, then he shouldn't use her as a surrogate on the campaign trail. Whatever she says on the stump at campaign events is fair game for criticism, just as it has been with Bill Clinton. Obama's camp has unloaded on the former President for statements he made about Hillary's loss in South Carolina and several other incidents in which they believe Bill [Clinton] played the race card to explain Obama's success. Bill's not running for anything this year, but he has made himself a public figure in this primary race, and his statements are also legitimate targets for attack.

"The whininess factor has become a real problem for Obama. Presumably, we'd like a President who doesn't play a perpetual victim on the national stage. What happens when he has to tangle with Congress over policy, or more to the point, when he has to represent America on the world stage? If he can't deal with legitimate political criticism now, what will we get for a response when Obama runs the federal government?"

I do think that campaign-trail statements by Michelle Obama are fair game, since she's in the arena.

The White House launched a campaign against NBC News yesterday over the handling of a presidential interview granted to chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel. This prompted a sternly worded letter from President Bush's counselor Ed Gillespie:

"NBC's selective editing of the President's response is clearly intended to give viewers the impression that he agreed with Engel's characterization of his remarks when he explicitly challenged it. Furthermore, omitted the references to al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas and ignored the clarifying point in the President's follow-up response that U.S. policy is to require Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program before coming to the table, not that 'negotiating with Iran is pointless' and amounts to 'appeasement.'