The Note: Bad Humor

July 14, 2008 -- Whose political purgatory will last longer -- Jesse Jackson's or Phil Gramm's?

Whose joke fell flatter -- Bernie Mac's, or that one on The New Yorker cover?

Which Monday fight has the most implications -- Sen. John McCain vs. Sen. Barack Obama on immigration (with McCain getting his turn at La Raza), or Barack Obama vs. Jesse Jackson (with Obama due to speak in front of the NAACP)?

Who will be the first candidate to find the right pitch on housing? (And who will try to make new friends named Fannie and Freddie?)

Which measurements really matter -- the ideological distance between McCain and Obama, or the distances between the candidates' primary-era images and general-election realities?

Speaking of measurements -- no more talk of outlier polls now: It's Obama 44, McCain 41 in the latest Newsweek poll -- compared to a 15-point spread in the previous survey.

"Obama's rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate," Newsweek's Jonathan Darman writes. "Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience -- an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests."

You can underline and bold-highlight this sentence: "In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage," Darman writes.

Just maybe slightly on that subject . . . Obama seeks further clarification for his Iraq position on Monday, with a New York Times op-ed.

"We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months," Obama writes. "In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected."

He wants a new focus on Afghanistan: "As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan," Obama writes.

Obama wants to reset the dial before his trip: Per the campaign, "On Tuesday, Obama will deliver a major policy address on Iraq and national security in Washington. He will focus on the global strategic interests of the United States, which includes ending our misguided effort in Iraq."

Maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger is right -- that, as he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos Sunday, "flip-flopping is getting a bad rap."

(And would the governator take on a role as an energy and environmental policy czar in an Obama administration? "I'm always ready to help in any way I can," he told Stephanopoulos, as he slammed the Bush administration for inaction on global warming.)

But as both candidates line up against the images they constructed so carefully way back when, warning signs are emerging, should they choose to heed them.

Watch the concern grow: "On defining issues -- security wiretapping, gun control, campaign finance, Iran and Iraq -- he has done partial or full about-faces. Hardly a day goes by that he doesn't attack John McCain in typical partisan fashion," Michael Goodwin writes in his Sunday New York Daily News column. "And when he denies with a straight face that he's changing anything, Obama gives new meaning to chutzpah."

"It is not the small adjustments to previously-held positions -- FISA, the Second Amendment, Iraq. It's a sense that Obama's ample self-regard is lapsing into hubris," Andrew Sullivan blogs for The Atlantic. "Any one of these misjudgments would be a trivial lapse -- and we all make mistakes. It's the combination that concerns me - and the possibility that this campaign is becoming far too cocky for its own good."

"I'm not saying we're there yet, but that's the danger," David Sirota tells The New York Times' William Yardley. "He is a transformative politician, but he is still a politician."

The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza traces Obama's eager image-making back to its Chicago roots: "Although many of Obama's recent supporters have been surprised by signs of political opportunism, [Chicago Alderman Toni] Preckwinkle wasn't. 'I think he was very strategic in his choice of friends and mentors,' she told me," Lizza writes. And later: " 'Can you get where he is and maintain your personal integrity?' she said. 'Is that the question?' She stared at me and grimaced. 'I'm going to pass on that.' "

(Lizza recounts an angry, possibly physical exchange between Obama and a fellow state lawmaker, where Obama "supposedly" said: "I'm going to kick your ass!" And let's see how Republicans play with Obama's post-9/11 column, where he said the "essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers."

Chicago is the setting for The Washington Post's Shailagh Murray, who looks at the tight circle of Obama insiders -- and includes some hints of just a little loosening. "As Obama's campaign expands for the general-election campaign and the candidate has less time for his friendships, certain strains are starting to show," she writes. "At his Chicago headquarters, insecurities have flared as the circles multiply and more people crowd inside. [Valerie] Jarrett said her main focus in the coming weeks will be to help the new hires integrate smoothly: 'It's important that people feel good about this.' "

Maybe he knows what he's doing. David Broder casts him as an "intrepid aviator": "When the pilots were over a target heavily defended by antiaircraft guns, they would release a cloud of fine metal scraps, hoping to confuse the aim of the shells or missiles being fired in their direction," Broder writes in his Sunday column. "In the weeks since he effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, the Illinois senator has done a similar trick, throwing out verbal hints of altered positions on any number of issues. This is creating quandaries for the Republicans who can't figure out where to aim."

Key point: "Obama will be in trouble only if the pattern continues to the point that undecided voters come to believe that he has a character problem -- that they really can't trust him."

Are these the right moves? "While Obama has clearly reframed his Iraq position with an eye toward November, he also has good substantive reasons for backing away from some of his past rhetoric," The New Republic writes in an editorial. "All in all, the recent flaying of Barack Obama makes for a depressing object lesson in how our press and our political discourse treat nuance. If Obama, as we've been told, suddenly has a 'problem' on Iraq, it's only because American politics has a much deeper one."

And is this the right move? "Senator Barack Obama on Sunday proposed offering tax breaks to small businesses as an incentive to provide health care to their employees, borrowing an idea from a former rival in the Democratic presidential race," Jeff Zeleny writes in The New York Times.

"This is an adoption of a part of Sen. Hillary Clinton's health care plan -- and one that Obama gave Clinton direct credit for during his announcement," per ABC's Sunlen Miller.

It "marks the first policy-related olive branch he has offered to his vanquished rival,"the New York Sun's Russell Berman reports.

Is it just remotely possible that the Obama campaign is having second thoughts about forgoing public financing? Don't answer that until you watch David Plouffe's new fundraising video: "We have to make sure that we are matching [RNC spending}, and the only way we can do that is for you all to continue to help us," Plouffe says in the appeal. "The cavalry does not exist."

The battle for Latino voters is joined, again. "The two men face very different tasks. Obama is seeking to solidify his standing among a group that has historically leaned Democratic, whereas McCain is working to convince Latinos that he deserves their support, based on his stance on immigration and experience as a border-state lawmaker," Perry Bacon Jr. and Juliet Eilperin write in The Washington Post.

With his gap among the critical Latino constituency dangerously wide, McCain, R-Ariz., on Monday goes before the National Council of La Raza Annual Conference in San Diego to push back at Obama on the issue of immigration reform:

"I cast a lot of hard votes, as did the other Republicans and Democrats who joined our bipartisan effort. So did Senator Kennedy. I took my lumps for it without complaint," he plans to say, per his campaign.

"My campaign was written off as a lost cause," he'll continue. "Senator Obama declined to cast some of those tough votes. He voted for and even sponsored amendments that were intended to kill the legislation, amendments that Senator Kennedy and I voted against. . . . I do ask for your trust that when I say, I remain committed to fair, practical and comprehensive immigration reform, I mean it. I think I have earned that trust."