It was a very smiley version of the Sunday news shows. Barack Obama appeared on Meet the Press, and John McCain popped up on This Week. And both of them smiled a lot. Perhaps McCain’s aides thought he had been coming through as too cranky and that the best way to counter to such an impression would be to smile frequently. To still further humanize the GOP nominee, the McCain house pets invaded the set mid-interview. What a crazy, unplanned and completely spontaneous accident! Unfortunately, the senator didn’t leverage the incident and failed to show his dogs any love. Opportunity missed. Obama had his own reasons for smiling. As he has positioned himself ever more frequently as a savior responsible for nothing less than mankind’s redemption, Obama has become an increasingly grim and dour figure. What’s more, after Friday’s explosive People Magazine revelation that he denies his children both birthday and Christmas presents, it was necessary for Obama to show a human side. So he sat across Tom Brokaw for almost the entire hour, frequently grinning and occasionally laughing. He even tried his hand at a lame joke or two, quipping after Brokaw mentioned his recent travel itinerary, “It makes me, makes me tired just listening to you read it.” Ha! Haven’t I been telling you this guy is almost as funny as Dukakis? How’d they do for substance? Generally speaking it was a big nothing-burger from both candidates. Still, the more engaging Obama had a pretty good go of it, while McCain had a couple of cringe-inducing moments. McCain’s embarrassing fumbles on gay adoption and his insistence that Wall Street is “the villain” in the subprime crisis likely put conservative teeth on edge. His further expressed willingness to have payroll tax increases “on the table” as a potential means of “saving” social security also likely failed to thrill his base. Nevertheless, McCain’s populist streak is nothing new and will probably be an asset in the general election if he uses it. As for Obama, the only interesting thing of substance that came through during his lengthy appearance with Brokaw was his suffocating self-regard. Did he learn anything new on his trip? Of course not. But when you’re blessed with other-worldly intelligence not to mention super-human judgment, learning new stuff is virtually impossible. On Fox News Sunday, Claire McCaskill and John Thune gamely recited campaign talking points that had grown moldy weeks ago. Zzzzzzz. Both surrogates acquitted themselves well given the thanklessness of the task. Karl Rove then came on and offered some predictions/analyses about the election. I forget what they were, but seem to recall thinking they were interesting. When the panel convened, our own Bill Kristol went out on a limb and made a truly bold prediction – Barack Obama will name his running mate next Monday at 11:00 a.m. Virginia governor Tim Kaine (who has been Obama’s most impressive surrogate if you ask me) will get the honors. On Face the Nation…well, I didn’t watch Face the Nation. I have a life, you know. Even though I didn’t watch it, I think we’re safe in assuming that the show continued it’s long running tradition of avoiding anything remotely interesting, thought provoking or newsworthy.
