Some thoughts on a Monday Wednesday morning

As the title if this post might suggest, I started this post on Monday and then got distracted by work. So picking up where I left off...

I would think that most of our blog readers are also Doonesbury fans, but in case you're not, I wanted to highlight this week's series on Obama. I have really enjoyed the excellent war-related stories that Garry Trudeau has featured recently, but the younger Doonesbury generation (Zipper, Jeff and Alex chief among them) is clearly about to be swept in the Obama phenomenon.

In a follow up to last week's hub-bub on the McCain story, Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor of the New York Times (that's NYT-speak for ombudsman), condemned the story pretty strongly in his column on Sunday, stating that although the lobbying piece of the story may well be newsworthy, "if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide." I tend to agree with Hoyt about the sex piece. But, since we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, I have been glad to see some solid follow up from other publications on the lobbying part of the story.

And in another example of how perceptions can vary widely, on the front page of today's Washington Post is this lede:

In their final debate before critical primaries in Ohio and Texas, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton clashed sharply on familiar ground, arguing Tuesday night over who has the better health-care plan, who has been right about Iraq and who would move most aggressively to rethink trade policy as president.

And just two sections later on C1 is this, somewhat different, take from Tom Shales:

People and pundits who carp when political debates get too harsh and hostile can be counted on to complain that last night's debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, televised on cable's MSNBC, was too tame and tepid. It was, in fact, a relief to find both Democratic presidential candidates in a temperate zone, though that's a space that Obama has occupied from the beginning.

I didn't get to see much of the debate, but my mother thought that Hillary was a bit off - especially with her comment about always being asked questions first and that maybe the moderators wanted to offer Barack a pillow. While I think that the Hillary folks have a case for a mild media bias towards Barack, publicly complaining about your coverage never works. Average voters seldom care. And Clinton does have one of the hardest nosed press operations out there - so some of the media attitude towards the Clinton campaign is a visceral reaction to that treatment.

On a more personal note, this will unfortunately be my last post on politics for this blog. I have taken up a position with the Democratic National Convention and with that exciting responsibility comes the very reasonable restriction that I can't just blabber on about the political horserace in the public sphere. Not to fear - you'll still get my captivating thoughts on the weather in Denver and how good the snow is up at Vail.

One last thing - for all the sound and fury my parents made about not letting me drive until I was 17, I distinctly remember having my license about as soon as was legally permissible. Apparently today's parents are holding the line a little more tightly.