Another View of Barack

Of course, the press penalizes spontaneity. Remember when Obama bowled 37 and we spun it into how he was out of touch with working Americans?

And Maeve Reston says she helped torpedo the Straight Talk Express by asking McCain on the bus about the now-disappeared Carly Fiorina's complaint that insurance companies covered Viagra but not birth control:

"In the driveway of the airport motel on the evening of the Viagra question, McCain's aides made an argument that would shape their attitude over the next four months: If reporters were going to ask about issues that they deemed irrelevant to voters, why should the campaign give them access to the candidate at all? [Mark] Salter told me I had made the case for those who thought McCain should curtail his exposure to the press.

"McCain aide Brooke Buchanan sarcastically asked whether contraception was next on my agenda. And Steve Duprey, the candidate's usually jovial traveling companion who often visited the press cabin bearing Twizzlers and chocolate, twisted my question into what I interpreted as an accusation of bias: 'Are you going to ask Obama if he uses Viagra?' "

Why exactly is it unfair to ask the candidate about something said by one of McCain's top surrogates?

Rather than just dumping on the press, National Review's Rich Lowry takes the novel step of . . . blaming the candidate:

"This is the McCain paradox: No other Republican candidate had a character and background -- as a courageously independent spirit -- better suited to making the presidential campaign competitive this year. But perhaps no Republican candidate was so poorly suited to the task of running a presidential race. McCain earned his chops as the media's favorite Republican senator by being a maverick, or in a less exalted formulation, a gadfly. He pursued pet causes inimical to his party, such as campaign-finance reform, and made it his role to tell fellow Republicans what he considered hard truths . . .

"McCain's rapport with the media depended on snarky banter about his own party and about himself. That couldn't continue in the general election, so McCain's campaign cut him off. His lifeline to his former admirers denied to him, McCain became a demonstrably unhappy warrior . . .

"Gadflies are loners because they spend so much time offending their own side. In his initial primary campaign prior to the 2007 meltdown, McCain staffed up with Bush loyalists -- because there were so few McCain loyalists -- who didn't understand his appeal. Now, his general-election campaign is rife with former Bush staffers leaking to the press to save their post-McCain campaign reputations. Ah, the agony of the gadfly."

Maybe we've all glossed over the real secret of Obama's appeal. Tina Brown, riffing on this photo, gets physical:

"For the millionth time the picture served to show how mesmerizingly crisp Obama always looks.

"I can't say if those hand-pressed looking shirts are made of the finest Egyptian cotton or not--maybe they're from Costco--but the point is they suggest it. The simplicity of Obama's lean, monochrome suits and solid blue ties makes every other pol appear porky and plebeian, old school glad-handers in oversize watches. It's not just the clothes, of course. It's the wearer--his carriage, the loping grace of his walk to the stage."