During the primary, the national press corps, led by Maureen Dowd‘s continuing Obambi imagery, depicted Obama as a doe-eyed, political naïf, too inexperienced and unseasoned for hardball Hillary. Instead of mouthing such silliness, if they had done some legwork and looked into his Chicago political roots, they would have seen one tough pragmatist not above the use of a few long knives. Smarting from his humiliating drubbing by Congressman Bobby Rush in 2000, Obama jettisoned idealism and recognized in himself and other driven politicians that it takes a “certain megalomania” to win. ["Audacity of Hope" p. 105]. Years later, Obama wrote: “I still burn, for example, with the thought of my one loss:” [Ibid]

Now, once again, I come in praise of detailed research, reporting and writing that tells us more than 100 bloggers or burbling blondes (male and female) on TV. I refer to the New Yorker’s dissection of Obama’s career by Ryan Lizza (July 21, 2008) and how that defeat shaped him. Obama, an agnostic at the time, shopped the churches to find which was the most politically advantageous before picking Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, reshaped a win-win district for his senate campaign, dissed powerful state senator Emil Jones as an “old ward healer” then later called on him to run his U.S. senate campaign and termed him his “Godfather.” He made enemies among the old guard of African-American pols born of the civil rights movement. Some obviously settled old scores in the New Yorker article, making Obama sound not only pragmatic but ruthlessly so if necessary. The seasoned Chicago political consultant and writer Don Rose, who was quoted extensively in the article, later remarked to me about those comments: “In essence if you don’t like him he’s ruthless, if you do he’s practical and methodical.” Rose feels that Chicago politicos who have a more favorable impression are double the numbers of those who don’t.

Obamaniacs may not like this version of their rock star, and other Democrats have turned wary over Obama’s shift on FISA, for example. But, as Lizza reveals, if you study Obama’s past it was predictable: “every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them.” Members of the media, why was it so hard to do a little leg work and ferret this out several months ago, instead of casting Obama, as “some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary?” as Lizza remarks. Today, Obama keeps reiterating the phrase “as I have consistently said”, regarding what is seen as a centrist drift. His “change you can believe in” was never a revolution.

Lizza also commented on the necessary practicalities, a recognition that “superheroes don’t become President; politicians do.” Yes, but sometimes politicians perceived as superheroes do, as witness FDR and JFK. Which brings us to “Obama in Europa” and attendant coverage.

Comments range from the divinely satirical to the insane: “He ventured forth to bring light to the world…. The anointed one’s pilgrimage… And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger ….” These are snippets from Gerard Barker‘s spoof in the Times of London. At the other end are Limbaugh and other wingnuts saying his 200,000 throng in Berlin and Obama’s projected acceptance speech to 75,000 in a Denver stadium smacks of Hitler and Mussolini.

After the explosion of coverage, the media spent endless hours examining — guess what — themselves, wondering whether they have been too kind to Obama or McCain. The answer is yes to both, at different stages in this race. Last week McCain, long the anointed one by old guard journalists for his “likeability” and “sense of humor”, was once again losing his cool and whining that the media had gone all-Obama while he stood in the cheese aisle of a supermarket virtually unmolested. If McCain drew crowds of 200,000 anywhere it would be astounding, but it would also be “news”, and you can bet your marbles and chalk that the media would be there full bore.

Underreported for the most part are the differences on vital issues between McCain and Obama. (As McCain strives to woo women voters, for example, why is it that male journalists seem far less interested in exposing McCain’s negative record and views on women — from McCain’s wish to repeal Roe v Wade to saying women don’t deserve equal pay with men? One exception is the Adam Nagourney of the New York Times, who flustered McCain by asking why he voted against contraceptive aid to foreign countries. See this and other compilations regarding women’s issues here.

Instead, the media continue to stress personality. Roundtable TV discussions abound as to who is more personally likeable (translation: who spends more time joshing with them.) Or they obsess about the latest polls. The one factor worth obsessing about is the number of Americans who are willing to admit in polls that they object to voting for an African-American, as noted in July polling data. “Which gets us down to the real, still largely unspoken question of race,” Don Rose wrote in the Chicago Daily Observer. “There are still loads and loads of Democrats and independents who are unlikely to vote for him because of what still remains of what Gunnar Myrdal called the American dilemma.

“That is the real referendum on Obama.

“More importantly, it’s a referendum on us.”

In examining coverage, it is also clear that we are in a generational gap here, not just among voters, but among the media. Take a long look at the mobs that show up for Obama in Iowa and Minnesota, in Paris and Berlin. They are young and they are led to a young politician via their universal virtual umbilical cord, the Internet. Far more than old-fashioned advance men, the Internet spreads the word to join the Obama fests. I reckon that many of the greyhairs in the media still don’t understand this phenomenon, just as McCain says he relies on his staff to Google and blog. Whether this translates into votes will be Obama’s test.

And lastly, the constant media surge for the moment is trying to get Obama to say the surge was a “success” in those specific words. He has acknowledged it created some changes (and got the facts right that the Anbar awakening came first, unlike McCain.) But unless Obama says “success” he will not be let off the hook.

Such trivia pales in the face of facts from Baghdad. Try this blog which puts it in perspective, giving meat to what Obama has been trying to say about the war in the first place. When McCain, a supporter of the war, brags about military experience and being the one who knows how to “make the right choices” , the media should examine what this war has really meant. Here is Ahmad Fadam, formerly of the New York Times Baghdad Bureau writing on July 23, “Iraq has been destroyed by your Army…you broke it and you have to fix it. More than a hundred thousand people were killed, the infrastructure was obliterated and the country became an open battlefield for terrorist from everywhere.…We never heard [before] of car bombs or I.E.D’s but they are still killing us every day. There is no horrible way of death that we haven’t seen since 2003 and for what?” Baghdad, he reports, is still without reliable electricity, water or any kind of services.

Stick that in your lapel.