Pretzel Logic

"In some ways Obama has boxed himself in: in trying to counter criticisms about his experience, he's brought in a team full of gray-haired advisers who, by dint of their long-established positions and Washington relationships, represent the furthest thing from change.

"The shift hasn't just been cosmetic. The liberal blogosphere lit up angrily when Obama signed on to a controversial Senate compromise to authorize President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping programs last week."

One former White House official has been doing his best to paint Obama as a country-club snob. Karl Rove continues the assault in the WSJ, starting with O's now-scrapped, presidential-looking seal:

"Such arrogance -- even self-centeredness -- have featured often in the Obama campaign . . . Mr. Obama has now also played the race card, twice suggesting in recent weeks that Republicans will draw attention to the fact that he's black. Who is unaware of that? Americans overwhelmingly find it a hopeful, optimistic sign that the country could elect an African-American president. But they rightly want to know what kind of leader he might be. They may well reject as cynical any maneuver to discourage close examination of him by suggesting any criticism is racially motivated.

"The candidate's self-centeredness has been on display before. Having effectively sewed up the Democratic nomination, he could have agreed to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations (states Hillary Clinton had carried). While reducing his lead by 50 to 55 delegates, it would not have altered the outcome. But Mr. Obama supported cutting these battleground-state delegations in half. At a time when magnanimity was called for, the candidate decided he'd strut . . .

"Mr. McCain will be helped if he uses Mr. Obama's actions to paint his opponent as someone driven by an all-powerful instinct to look out only for himself."

But "Bush's Brain" coauthor James Moore finds the very idea of Karl as pundit distasteful:

"The media, which he often had the president refer to as 'the filter,' is embracing his intellectual dishonesty with both money and fervor. Never mind that Rove hasn't spent an adult day of his life without spitting out the words 'reporter' or 'media' as though they were so much risen bile. He is now one of the people he had long positioned as an enemy. He writes for Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal, opines on FOX News, and in his spare moments gives speeches at $60,000 a pop while also working on his memoir, which fetched a $1.2 million advance . . .

"I've labored to ignore this man and distance myself from politics but it aggravates any reasonable person to still see Rove getting a venue for his venom. His latest twist on reality is his attempt to paint Senator Obama as one of the sneering country club Republicans that Rove worked so hard to empower. The archetype Rove honored and argued was best fit to lead is now the one that he denounces by trying to attach it to Obama. Irrespective of the fact that his characterization of Obama is as erroneous and ill-considered as almost everything else Rove has created, how does he get away with people taking his pronouncements seriously?"

A possible bipartisan bombshell? Bob Novak says Colin Powell is likely to endorse Obama.

They have long memories at Newsweek. Howard Fineman does a bit of gloating:

"Two new polls--our latest NEWSWEEK poll and an even newer one from The Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News--run counter to the conventional wisdom. They show Obama with wide leads, of 15 points and 12 points respectively.