Obama, Up Close and Unfiltered

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 11, 2008 11:31 AM

ST. LOUIS, June 11-- Even when you're at the epicenter of a presidential campaign, the media world can seem a blur.

I was the newspaper pool reporter Tuesday -- due mainly to my willingness to submit to a 6 a.m. baggage call -- when Barack Obama made the rounds with a cardiac nurse at a hospital here. After watching him chat with patients and the medical staff, I tapped out a pool report that other journalists could use as fodder in describing what had happened. It wasn't hard news, just some behind-the-scenes color.

Within moments, Time's Mark Halperin had the verbatim report up on The Page.

Later in the morning, Obama held a news conference with the traveling media. Almost as soon as it was over, part of it was up on YouTube and the video posted on a number of blogs.

In the old days -- a couple of campaigns ago -- one benefit of hitting the road with a candidate was the chance to get the first crack at what he was doing and saying. Now just about everything short of his using the urinal is available within nanoseconds, making it possible to follow the campaign from your desk--or your kitchen--with real-time urgency. When you were the only one who saw the media avail, you could call your editor and tell him what you thought the lead was. When everyone sees the avail, you call and they've already decided what the lead is. Plus you're expected to file for the Web immediately if not sooner.

But one thing you can't get at home is a sense of the candidate as human being: How does he relate to ordinary folks he encounters on the trail? How does he relate to patients who are about to undergo medical procedures? Obama has a relaxed, unassuming air as he makes chit-chat. He could have done a 20-minute photo op, but he spent an hour and a half. Here's what I e-mailed The Washington Post:

Dr. Barack was strutting his stuff as he made his morning rounds at Barnes Jewish Hospital here.

"See, I'm finally doing something," the Democratic presidential candidate told reporters as he wheeled a computer cart into a patient's room. "I'm rolling."

Obama was spending the morning with a cardiac-care nurse, the first of what his staff says will be a series of visits with working Americans. He peppered Kate Marzluf, 26, with questions about her routine, pored over patient charts and perfected a look of medical concern.

The senator stared intently at a monitor showing one patient's vital signs. "How come it's so messy?" he asked. "How old is she?"

Wired for sound and trailed by a press pool, Obama, in white shirtsleeves, watched as Marzluf sorted cups and needles into a plastic tray. "I know this is a stupid question," he said, "but how do you make sure you're not mixing stuff up?"

As the nurse talked about the morning's procedures, Obama said some of it "makes me [faint] just to think about it. You're not drawing any blood, are you?"

He also asked whether hospital food is as bad as it used to be. Marzluf gave him a no comment.

Obama visited four patients, carrying a breakfast tray to 17-year-old Shelby Davis, and telling her mother that today is the 7th birthday of his daughter Sasha. He asked the patients how long they had been there and whether their insurance was covering their costs.

Obama's longest conversation was with Raymond Bisher, 52, a former Missouri police officer with congestive heart failure, a wife working two jobs and a son serving in Iraq. The candidate seemed amazed when Bisher said that his wife takes weekly shots that cost $1,500 apiece. "That's $6,000 a month. Wow," Obama said, assuring Bisher that he would make health care "a big priority."

Bisher, looking at his monitor, told the nurse that his blood pressure appeared high.

"When reporters are around me, my blood pressure goes up too," Obama said.

At his news conference, Obama fielded questions on subjects ranging from tax cuts to health care mandates to crime without missing a beat. But he stumbled a bit on a question about Jim Johnson, who is leading his veep search. A controversy has been brewing since Saturday, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Johnson got special loans as a friend of the CEO of Countrywide Financial, the company under scrutiny in the subprime loan mess--this at a time when Johnson was either chief executive of Fannie Mae or a consultant to the government-subsidized agency. Obama's response:

"I am not vetting my VP search committee for their mortgages. You're going to have to direct -- it becomes sort of a -- this is a game that can be played -- everybody, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships. I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters. I mean at some point, we just asked people to do their assignments. Jim Johnson has a very discrete task."

Hmm . . . That amounts to saying that what Johnson is doing is just not that important. And this isn't a trivial allegation against Johnson.

Atlantic's Marc Ambinder sees the thing petering out:

"I don't see where the story goes from here, pending more revelations, so Obama's answer might be the last we'll hear of it, despite the McCain campaign/RNC's best efforts. That said, yes, the VP search process is a discreet task, but it is one that is extremely important and that has bearing on the future of the country. Johnson is a valued adviser to Obama. Obama's definition of 'tangential' must be quite roomy."

But National Review's Jim Geraghty thinks it hurts Obama:

"It means Obama can't bring up big CEO salaries and compensation, and he can't use his usual stump speech lines about 'powerful Washington insiders' escaping accountability.

"Whatever Johnson brings as a search committee member, there's got to be somebody else out there with the same skills without his dirt and scandals . . .

"Might I add, Obama left his church to get rid of a lingering controversy. I'm not sure why Jim Johnson would expect more loyalty."

Also at NR, Mark Hemingway whacks Newsweek for its recent reporting on Obama and Lieberman:

"Newsweek aids and abets the Obama campaign's decision to slander Joe Lieberman:

" In a brief but animated Senate floor confrontation last week, according to a campaign aide who asked for anonymity when talking about private discussions, Obama told Lieberman he was surprised by Lieberman's personal attacks and his half-hearted denials of the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim . (The aide says Lieberman was 'strangely muted' during the exchange; a Lieberman spokesman says the chat was 'private and friendly.') . . .

"So a call to Joe Lieberman's office was in order. Since Newsweek didn't make it, National Review Online did. Actual Lieberman spokesman Marshall Wittmann says, 'The anonymous Obama campaign staffer's characterization of the private conversation was entirely false and fabricated.' Another Lieberman aide confirmed, 'I was not told that the Obama campaign was selectively leaking the contents of that conversation, or I would have made it clear that that characterization was completely and utterly false. The first time I knew what the Obama campaign was saying was when I saw it in a magazine.' "

Josh Marshall sees Lieberman as a turncoat:

"What does seem clear to me is that Lieberman's days in the Democratic caucus, or more specifically, his days with a committee chairmanship courtesy of the Democratic caucus are numbered in months.

"My assumption is that after the November election, regardless of the outcome of the presidential campaign, Joe will be stripped of his chairmanship. (This seems even more certain to me if Obama wins the general, but I suspect it will happen regardless.) Whether he'll actually be expelled from the caucus I don't know and probably doesn't really matter. Once he's stripped of the benefits he gains from it, presumably he'll leave himself and become an actual non-caucusing independent or, more likely, start caucusing with the Republicans.

"What that tells me is that Lieberman has no incentive not to make the maximum amount of trouble over the next five months both for his senate colleagues and for Sen. Obama."

But for all the day's substantive events, it's this Politico item that gets the Drudge headline:

"Every presidential candidate can use a sexy blonde movie star to liven up his or her campaign, appear at big money events and rally the entertainment community. Sen. Barack Obama's go-to Hollywood hottie is Scarlett Johansson, a starlet who trades frequent e-mails with the presumptive Democratic nominee, campaigns tirelessly on his behalf."

With John McCain calling him Hamas's favorite candidate, Obama may not want to distribute this piece by Tom Friedman, but it is interesting nonetheless:

"This column will probably get Barack Obama in trouble, but that's not my problem. I cannot tell a lie: Many Egyptians and other Arab Muslims really like him and hope that he wins the presidency.

"I have had a chance to observe several U.S. elections from abroad, but it has been unusually revealing to be in Egypt as Barack Hussein Obama became the Democrats' nominee for president of the United States.

"While Obama, who was raised a Christian, is constantly assuring Americans that he is not a Muslim, Egyptians are amazed, excited and agog that America might elect a black man whose father's family was of Muslim heritage. They don't really understand Obama's family tree, but what they do know is that if America -- despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 -- were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name "Hussein," it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations.

"Every interview seems to end with the person I was interviewing asking me: 'Now, can I ask you a question? Obama? Do you think they will let him win?' (It's always 'let him win' not just 'win.')"

There's a new parlor game out there: trotting out reasons why this person or that shouldn't be the VP pick. Slate's Tim Noah picks the junior senator from Virginia:

"The chattering class has fallen hard for Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.

"On paper, Webb is the perfect choice for veep. Is Obama too closely identified with the left? Webb is a former Republican who served in the Reagan administration.

"But Webb's personal history has demonstrated time and again that he can't play well with the other children. A volcanic temperament is endurable in a novelist or an opera singer. It is not endurable at the bottom of a national ticket. Nominating Webb isn't worth the risk that he'll alienate important constituencies, embarrass Obama, or break with him outright, as John Nance Garner did with Franklin Roosevelt. He's trouble, and Obama's already had too much of that."

At the New Republic, Buzz Bissinger zeroes in on Ed Rendell:

"There are a number of conventional reasons for Barack Obama to consider Rendell, who is now serving his second term as governor of Pennsylvania, as his running mate this fall. In the same indefatigable fashion that he delivered a ten-point win for Hillary Clinton in the April Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, Rendell could deliver this crucial swing state to Obama come November. Rendell is popular statewide, and, more important in a presidential election, he continues to maintain Herculean strength in the suburbs surrounding Philadelphia, a traditional Republican stronghold that John McCain must do well in to have any chance of gaining the state . . .

"It's his very unconventionality that makes him such an intriguing choice. Craving some pizzazz to counter the watch-your-back mentality that has become Washington politics? Pick Rendell. Want passion, candor, off-the-cuff gems, moments of keen insight? Pick Rendell. It's true that his one real foray into national politics, as Democratic National Committee chair under Al Gore when he was running for president, ended up in what some would say was excommunication because of a tendency to speak out of turn. But that's what makes Rendell arguably the most refreshing politician in the country . . .

"Rendell is not shy about exposing uncomfortable truths. Like many people, his greatest strength is also his greatest weakness. During the Pennsylvania primary, he declared that some Pennsylvanians would simply not vote for Obama because he is African American. He was, of course, right, but his candor (not to mention his Elmer Gantry-like proselytizing for Hillary) didn't exactly endear him to the Obama camp."

And because I know you can't go a day without veepstakes chatter, NBC's First Read:

"According to sources on the Hill, Obama veep vetters -- specifically Jim Johnson and Eric Holder -- have been asking Dem members of Congress this week their input about potential running mates. The conversations are free-flowing but one name the vetters are inserting in the conversations is one that is not a household name . . . Ret. Gen. James Jones, the former Marine-turned-NATO Supreme Allied Commander."

If Obama's got 20 names on his list, that just leaves 19 to go . . .