Obama, Throwing Heat

Josh Marshall remembers when Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were grilling Obama about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and flag pins:

"After the ABC debate train wreck from last April, I have a hard time believing any candidate -- particularly Barack Obama -- would be stupid enough to accept an invitation for another ABC-controlled debate. And both Obama and McCain have turned down ABC's invitation for an ABC-controlled 'town hall meeting' in Manhattan moderated by Diane Sawyer.

"Interestingly, both campaigns negged the idea on the same grounds: that any town hall events they do will have to be open to all press and not sponsored or organized by a single news organization.

"Perhaps ABC would be more suited to staging a debate between Hannity and Colmes."

It's hard to overstate how bummed Republicans are over McCain's lousy speech on the night when Obama was clinching last week. Bill Kristol, a longtime McCain booster, doesn't sugarcoat it:

"McCain chose to speak early in the evening, before the polls closed in South Dakota and Montana, thereby getting the jump on Obama. He read a disjointed set of remarks at a badly staged rally at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner, La. Here's part of an e-mail message I received as McCain spoke, from a Republican who admires him: 'They could have done so well tonight, shown a tone of confidence. Instead it looks like a bad Congressional race: dumb green puke background, small crowd . . . Makes me want to cry.'

"In any case, with the battle against Hillary Clinton behind him, everything seems to be going swimmingly for Obama. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign dog-paddles along. And almost every Republican I've talked to is alarmed that the McCain campaign doesn't seem up to the task of electing John McCain.

"Several of these worried McCain supporters cited the decision by the campaign gurus that McCain's Tuesday night speech should consist in large part of criticisms of Obama's various proposals. The attacks often concluded, 'That's not change we can believe in.' Is it wise to begin a general election campaign by making fun of your opponent's slogan and presenting yourself mostly as a debunker of his claims? Even hard-hearted Republicans think a general election message should be a bit more positive than that."

The Daily Mail tracks down McCain's first wife, Carol, but she does not throw him under the Straight Talk Express:

"My marriage ended because John McCain didn't want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens . . . it just does."

In Tuesday's print column, NBC's Richard Engel responds to criticism of his war coverage.

I wrote Monday about Mayhill Fowler, the Huffington Post blogger who reported both Obama's "bitter" comments and Bill Clinton's "scumbag" tirade, both under questionable circumstances. The Fowler saga has now sparked a rather sharp exchange between Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis and Politico's Michael Calderone: