Media Didn't Sink McCain

Over in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan waves some rhetorical pompoms for the McCain campaign, but the show lacks spirit. While Noonan assures her readers that McCain isn't quite finished yet, she also concedes that an Obama presidency might not be such a bad thing, and, interestingly, acquits the Republican's favorite scapegoat, the media, of culpability. "You have to go over the head of the interpreters and gently seize the country by its lapels," Noonan writes. "Mr. McCain never got much over their heads. This is not because they're so tall. His campaign was not so much about meaning as it was, in the end, a series of moments"—Joe the Plumber, the trip to Washington, et al.