It seems like just about everybody has spent the last week beating up on the media for showering too much love on Barack Obama, during what John McCain's camp derides as the Obama World Tour.
True, statistics show broadcast networks have devoted more than twice as much airtime in recent weeks to the Democrat than to the Republican.
But don't assume that more coverage is always good coverage. Reports from the Mideast and back home in recent days have revealed that reporters were determined not to cut Obama any slack.
That's only right. Obama has received breathless, man-of-the moment coverage. Now, he has to expect the tough questions that confront any presidential candidate. But even as the media moves to correct itself, it's entering a period of shallow analysis.
It was totally in bounds, and expected, when CBS anchor Katie Couric bore down on Obama on Tuesday night during their interview in Jordan -- demanding to know why the candidate still wouldn't concede that the military surge had helped reduce violence in Iraq.
Obama responded that no one could be certain what would have happened without the troop buildup. He also acknowledged that "the extraordinary work of our U.S. forces has contributed to a lessening of the violence."
Indeed, Obama does appear loath to admit the surge has helped. And, ironically, the relative calm has made his 16-month withdrawal timeline more plausible to many, including the Iraqi government.
That's Obama's mistake -- missing the opportunity to show he recognizes changing circumstances and to prove himself a pragmatist, not an ideologue.
But while Obama mistakenly slights the surge, credit isn't coming his way for describing complexities on the ground that some critics refuse to see.
At CNN, the ever-windy Lou Dobbs sputtered in outrage that Obama was in denial. And the Fox News commentariat slapped the Democrat around as out of touch with reality.
But those television critics, like McCain, sought to turn Iraq into a one-dimensional battleground dominated by a single factor -- the American military.
George Packer, a writer who has spent as much time learning about the reality in Iraq as these commentators spend misreporting it, also criticizes Obama for failing to acknowledge the surge.
But Packer, author of the acclaimed "The Assassins' Gate," also offers the sort of nuanced assessment that is too often absent from the Iraq debate.
