Clark Misfires

The other big news is the apparent rapprochement between Barack and Bill, with both sides praising their phone call yesterday. ("President Clinton continues to be impressed by Senator Obama . . . ") Hmm . . . I wonder if this knocks down an anonymously sourced report in London's Telegraph:

"The Telegraph has learned that the former president's rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence.

"A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could 'kiss my ass' in return for his support."

No confirmation that any kissing took place.

For all the talk about changing positions, the L.A. Times has a fine piece about McCain's flips and flops:

"The Arizona senator has swerved from one position to another over the years, taking often contradictory stances on the federal government's role in energy policy. At times he has backed measures to ease restrictions on oil drilling off the coast and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Other times he has voted to keep them.

"He has championed standards to require that automakers make vehicles more fuel-efficient, yet opposed standards to require that utilities use less fossil fuel by generating more power from renewable sources, such as wind and solar.

"McCain has rejected federal tax breaks for renewable energy producers, but backs billions of dollars in subsidies for the nuclear industry. He has criticized corn-based ethanol for doing 'nothing to increase our energy independence.' Yet while campaigning in 2006 in the Midwest corn belt, McCain called ethanol a 'vital, vital alternative energy source.' "

Well, if you're going to get picky about it . . .

And on that subject, the broadest indictment yet of the media's Obama coverage comes from Charles Krauthammer:

"Normally, flip-flopping presidential candidates have to worry about the press. Not Obama. After all, this is a press corps that heard his grandiloquent Philadelphia speech -- designed to rationalize why 'I can no more disown than I can disown my white grandmother' -- then wiped away a tear and hailed him as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. Three months later, with Wright disowned, grandma embraced and the great 'race speech' now inoperative, not a word of reconsideration is heard from his media acolytes.

"Worry about the press? His FISA flip-flop elicited a few grumbles from lefty bloggers, but hardly a murmur from the mainstream press. Remember his pledge to stick to public financing? Now flush with cash, he is the first general-election candidate since Watergate to opt out. Some goo-goo clean-government types chided him, but the mainstream editorialists who for years had been railing against private financing as hopelessly corrupt and corrupting evinced only the mildest of disappointment . . .