With the Democrats in Denver

The national political conventions are gatherings of VIPs, and every VIP expects a good hotel room. That's why media types tend to be relegated to the outskirts, or the suburbs, or the exurbs. And that's why the Cherry Creek neighborhood of Denver -- it is indeed inside the city limits, barely -- has become a vast resettlement camp for notebook-carrying, camera-toting refugees from Washington and New York.

We stick out. We're the ones on foot (this part of town was definitely made for cars), wandering in circles, hoping to stumble across a Starbucks. Helpful hint: If you ask a local, and he or she describes a destination as "right up the street," that means two or three miles.

I was trudging "right up the street" yesterday morning when I ran into a displaced person from the New York Times whose stride, anomalously, had bounce and purpose. He was carrying a swimsuit. "At our hotel, they said we could use the pool at the Holiday Inn if we showed our room card," he said. My smile was, perhaps, needlessly patronizing.

Our hotel has a pool.

Eugene Robinson

Exactly two hours before Sen. Joe Biden was to take the stage for his unveiling as Barack Obama's running mate, an e-mail arrived from the Republican National Committee laying out the case against both men. Printed out, it ran seven pages.

Before sun-up yesterday, the John McCain-GOP presidential campaign had rolled out two television ads blasting the Democratic ticket, including one that accused Obama of snubbing rival Hillary Clinton in the veepstakes.

The Obama camp fired back at McCain almost immediately, labeling the ad "demonstrably false."

I also received an e-mail release from Hillary Clinton's office restating her support for Obama and their shared "commitment to changing the direction of the country, getting out of Iraq, and expanding access to health care." Clinton chided McCain for not including those remarks in his ad.

All that by lunchtime on Sunday.

I cut my political teeth on the 1952 presidential campaign between the Republican candidate, and war hero, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Illinois's Democratic governor, Adlai E. Stevenson. The toughest campaign ad was Eisenhower's animated cartoon about himself accompanied by an Irving Berlin tune, "I like Ike."

Folks, as comedian Flip Wilson used to say, "are so touchy these days."

Colbert I. King