Andrew Romano

[youtube:ta6EN2h4ys8] When it comes to the mammoth $700 billion Treasury bailout proposed by Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke earlier this week, Barack Obama and John McCain talk a good game.

(AP Photo / Henny Ray Abrams) Remember what I wrote last week about the McCain campaign pulling back the curtain and finally allowing the press and the public to interact, however fleetingly, with its long-sequestered vice-presidential nominee?

I receive dozens of nutty emails from P.R. people every day. But the one that hit my inbox at 11:18 this morning has to be the nuttiest. I won't name names or anything.

[youtube:7rXyTRT-NZg] On the stump, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden likes to say that John McCain is disconnected from ordinary Americans. But lately it seems like Biden is the one who's "out of touch"--at least with his own campaign.

In the latest print edition of NEWSWEEK, atheist author Sam Harris and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson duke it out over the question of whether Sarah Palin is experienced enough to be president.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.THE DEATH OF POLICY(Michael Gerson, via Politico Playbook)[I]t is President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, by proposing the massive government purchase of bad debt, who have assumed the mantle of Franklin D.

[youtube:nKCkeF6LXVc] A lot was happening on the campaign trail yesterday. Barack Obama was stumping in Charlotte. John McCain was speaking in Baltimore.

[youtube:mYYHMKK7z30] Breaking news! The McCain campaign thinks the press is "a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama." Or at least that's what chief strategist Steve Schmidt told a bunch of reporters--I mean, "pro-Obama advocates"--on a conference call this morning.

[youtube:fQ0cq4Nytu8] The only thing dumber than throwing a stone from your glass abode? Throwing a boomerang. Someone should tell John McCain. In presidential politics, negative attacks are pretty much par for the course.

As my NEWSWEEK colleague Jonathan Darman writes in the latest dead-tree mag, Rovean tactics alone do not win the Republican Party elections. This is a center-right country--and Democrats ignore that fact at their own peril.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories. (FYI: I'm on the road right now, so I'll be getting a slightly later start on posting than usual. Thanks for reading, Andrew)POLICIES SOUND THE SAME, BUT GOALS ARE DIFFERENT (John Harwood, New York Times) The economic crisis has snapped voters' attention back to the alternative visions of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, which sometimes sound the same, but are not...

[youtube:Ry9LnAazwMg] During the flight yesterday afternoon from Grand Rapids, Mich. to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Steve Schmidt, Mark Salter and Nicole Wallace pulled back the curtain--or two--separating business-class cabin of John McCain's Straight Talk Air from the traveling press corps' coach accommodations and spent some time talking to a small pool of reporters.

Amid the fiscal crisis, some Dems want Obama to crank up the heat. My NEWSWEEK colleague Howard Fineman reports: The complaint from the Democrats in the room was that Sen.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.WHY IT'S GETTING MEANPeggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal: Here is the tough, sad, rather deadly assumption I see rising among our media people, our thinkers, observers and chatterers, the highly sophisticated who've seen'em come and seen'em go: It is, again: What if neither of them is the right man?

Going down? On Tuesday, I reported that Sarah Palin's favorability ratings, which peaked shortly after the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, were starting to slip.

¡Ay, caramba! All of a sudden, John McCain has a problem with Spain. In an interview Monday with Radio Caracol WSUA 1260AM, a Spanish-language station from Miami, the Republican presidential nominee was asked whether he would "be willing to invite President Jose Luis Zapatero to the White House." This should have been an easy question for McCain to answer--because he's answered it before.

(AP Photo / Gerald Herbert)From the pool report by Perry Bacon, Jr., of the Washington Post on Joe Biden's visit this morning to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio: [Biden] then approached the print pooler and said, "you look liked you played some, man." As the print pooler was saying 'no I didn't," the candidate moved closer, tapped his upper chest and said "you need to work on your pecs." Stumper hereby nominates Joe Biden as America's first Frat Boy in Chief.

[youtube:l0zJiWHqnfA] It's no secret that Barack Obama is confident. After all, he occasionally refers to himself in the third person. "Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there," he once said.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.CAMPAIGN TRAIL REPORTERS SIDELINED (Mike Allen, Politico) The flocks of campaign reporters who fly around the country with the presidential candidates have been more sidelined in the 2008 campaign than any in generations, sealed off from any meaningful access to either Sen.

[youtube:VRZVKE0cnK8] As regular Stumper readers probably know by now, I'm totally addicted to "Bidenisms." By that I don't mean the stupid stuff that seems to slip from the Delaware senator's mouth as at semiregular intervals--like when he said that Barack Obama was "clean and articulate" last February.

It was a moment of earth-shattering import--a brief, blinding instant when everything we ever thought we knew about the nature of the universe was suddenly thrown out the proverbial window.

My Newsweek colleague Daniel Gross asks whether there's any excuse for McCain's gaffe about the economy. John McCain set off a firestorm yesterday when he said, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," while also noting that these are tough times.

[youtube:ONM7148cTyc] This morning, John McCain released an ad called "Foundation" about the current financial crisis. Staring straight into the camera, the Arizona senator pledges to "reform Wall Street and fix Washington." "I've taken on tougher guys than this before," he says, evoking his senatorial scraps and Vietnam service.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.CANDIDATES PROMISE BROAD CHANGES FOR WALL STREET (Nick Timiraos, Elizabeth Holmes and Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal) The candidates, Republican Sen.

Around 12:30 this afternoon, I posted an item here on Stumper called "Palin's Favorability Ratings Begin to Falter." It was a relatively straightforward bit of analysis.

[youtube:4sKhtO6CoeM]With the market in meltdown mode--the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," say experts--and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama still struggling to make his economic message heard above the daily din of campaign distractions, we here at Stumper headquarters have a simple question to ask:Whither Bill?

Sept. 18: For an update on Palin's favorability ratings, click here. [youtube:YpJsQch9uZo] To know her, it seems, is not necessarily to love her. When John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate late last month, the Alaska governor quickly became a media phenomenon.

How can you make $66 million in one month and not be sitting pretty? If your name is Barack Obama. Announced Sunday, Obama's August fundraising haul was, simply put, stunning.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.CANDIDATES STRIVE TO BREAK THROUGH MEDIA FOG(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)[It's] one of the most frustrating challenges that Mr.

Last Friday, I posted an item called "Obama Plays the Age Card (Again)" that was critical of Chicago's efforts to portray McCain as unfit to occupy the Oval Office simply because he's not yet a fluent computer user.