Sen. Barack Obama's operation has kicked three newspaper reporters off its campaign plane.
Obama's people say it was a tough decision to boot the reporters for the New York Post, the Dallas Morning News and the Washington Times. But, they say, there are only so many seats on the plane and somebody had to go.
It's probably just a coincidence that all three papers recently endorsed Obama's Republican rival for president, Arizona Sen. John McCain.
"It feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth," quipped John Solomon, executive editor of the Times, which lost its seat after three years of travel with the Illinois senator and just 72 hours after endorsing McCain.
That newspaper's website headlined :// www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/01/citizen-of-the-world-speech- cost-obama-tour-700000/ "> www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/01/citizen-of-the-world-speech- cost-obama-tour-700000/ on staging, sound and lights for his Berlin victory rally in July for the more than 200,000 Germans in attendance, who can't vote in Tuesday's election.
Gee, you could dress more than four Republican vice presidential candidates with that kind of money.
The Dallas Morning News, meanwhile, has offered no evidence that its expulsion was payback.
Think about it: Why would a political campaign take retribution on reporters for a decision made by their publication's separate editorial boards? The papers, after all, pay their own way on the charters.
That would be a cheesy, hardball -- and quite possibly counterproductive -- move for a front-runner to do. That candidate's organization would have to reflect an enormous ego and overconfidence to pull something like that.
And it's certainly not the kind of hands-across-the-aisle, bipartisan change we need and/or can believe in a national capital that could use a large dose of both.
Amazingly, as Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post points out, two seats suddenly opened up on the Obama campaign plane this weekend to accommodate reporters from Ebony and Essence magazines.
Another coincidence.
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'527' groups less prominent in '08
With a few notable exceptions, the independent campaign ads that came to define the 2004 campaign -- notably those from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- have played a much less prominent role in Campaign '08.
Perhaps it's because the Federal Election Commission levied fines against many of the so-called 527 groups that were influential in 2004 and 2006.
