Obama regularly takes questions from the press after nearly every one of his prepared speeches. He has a pool of reporters that follow him from event to event. He goes on the Sunday talk shows. McCain does all of these things as well. This is basic stuff for any politician who's been on the national stage.

Palin, the GOP nominee for the Vice Presidency, hasn't done any interviews or taken any questions at all since being picked. I can't think of another time when this has ever happened. Usually, it is advantageous to get your VP pick out there, to show people that you made a good choice, and to get voters excited about them. The campaign's reluctance to do so shows that she wasn't picked for her abilities, she was picked for her biography. They can't even trust her to answer questions from a press that rarely asks tough questions to begin with!


Every profile I saw of Biden when he was announced as the VP pick mentioned his plagiarism. However, it happened in 1987, and it was a big national story that forced him to end his Presidential campaign in 1988. It's old news. The various Palin controversies are all current events, and are being covered as such. And, yes, there's a tabloid aspect to the pregnancy story that keeps it on the front page as well.


"A pox on both their houses" is only valid if you have a binary definition of pox. The folks that reinvented sleazy politics with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney at the helm are to be given a pass because Joe Biden didn't credit a British Labor leader in a political speech? Really?