Let's Be Honest...

Let's be honest...it's a little dull out there in Presidential campaign land without Mr. and Mrs. Thing. I mean, where's a little Tuzla honey or a good stiff finger jab when you need to spice up the news cycle? Never thought I'd say it, but I miss the Clintons.

And that's because Obama's playing it safe and McCain is...trying to find his teleprompter? Really. Is it so dull that the press needs to run with Obama's 'refine my position' and McCain's mispronunciation of 'Lexington' for three days to stir the pot? Man. We're in for a long, hot summer if that's the case.

So how about this piece of news: the Prime Minister of Iraq wants to set a timetable for troop withdrawal. I think that's interesting, especially since it also sheds a little light on this secret negotiation to permanently have a bunch of military bases in Iraq. But I wonder...are these the type of negotiations that ABC has with ESPN to exhibit NBA Basketball on TV? (Someone tell our non sports fan readers that ABC owns ESPN, so they get the joke. Thank you.) Seriously, though, this is a potentially big story because it reinforces Obama's long held position on getting our troops out of Iraq and accentuates the already exaggerated '100 years' thing McCain stepped into. It also exposes the White House's continual chutzpah to think it can make this kind of an agreement without the approval of Congress. Amazing.

On another front, Jim Webb has unequivocally removed himself from the Obama Veep sweepstakes. I think this is a blow to Obama because Webb was able to do four things: help him with Virginia (Virginia Senator); help him with National Security (ex-marine); help him with the post partisan argument (Webb was Under-Secretary of the Navy in Reagan's Administration and pushed through the new bi-partisan G.I. Bill ); and, for crying out loud, Webb wrote a book on the Scotch-Irish in Appalachia. Talk about an entree to a tough demo group. So, adios, Jim. Ya coulda been a contendah.

Speaking of contenders, MSNBC's Chuck Todd made a great point yesterday on 'Hardball'. He said if the economy had been the dominating issue 8 months ago, today you might have Hillary versus Romney for President. It was the War, stupid, last year and that's where Mac and Obama separated themselves from their respective packs. Not so now.

And speaking of 'Hardball', Philadelphia conservative radio host Michael Smerconish sat in for Chris Matthews last week and showed what a skilled media talent can do with that forum. 'Smerc' as David Gregory calls him, was focused, funny and ran a tight ship, both with his pundits and with the technical performance. Chris needs to step aside as he becomes more and more a bumbling 'Saturday Night Live' caricature of himself.

Speaking of bumbling, I wrote last week that FARC, the Colombian rebel group, had turned over its hostages (which included Ingrid Betancourt) to the Colombian government. While that might be one way to describe it, the better way would be to report what really happened: as part of a brilliant rescue mission by the Colombian Government, the rebels were duped into boarding the hostages onto what they thought was their own helicopter to be moved to another secret location. Totally, my bad. Though it did prove once again, that some governments can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.

Nice going, Colombia. Now if you'd just stop beating union organizers, you'd get a free trade deal that could really help you.

Sorry. Just being honest.

What's your unoticed big story in this Presidential race? Talk about this or anything else by clicking on the 'comments' button, bypassing the Google search and hitting the anonymous or nickname button.