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Apropos of your great post on Hillary and toughness last night, Meghan, it’s worth contrasting the whole “manly-girl = scary-girl” Hillary narrative with the other big campaign story this week: Barack Obama needs to stop being such a wuss. Here’s just a smattering of the recent suggestions to that effect.

I was at the huge rally for Obama in Charlottesville, Va., Monday night. Organizers claim it was the largest paid crowd he’s drawn anywhere as a presidential candidate, and close to 5,000 people showed up. Excellent local coverage here, here, and here. I confess to being less certain than my colleagues that the speech really lifted off. It was good, but it didn’t soar, and I have seen Obama soar. I think where he wobbled was at the moments where he tried to do outrage: He’s pacing the stage, giggling at his own jokes, calling back to the people in the crowd who yell “I love you!” and then he takes on this mask of aggression? Why?

The moments at which he did lift off were vintage Obama: telling the crowd that he needed them to feel powerful enough believe in their government again. He is pitch perfect when he reminds us that government is fixable; that the missteps and lawlessness of the past seven years can be turned around; that democracy itself will lance the wound. Maybe I’m wrong, but if America is one-tenth as sick of the hissing and snarling that passes for political discourse as I am, the whole anger-as-theater thing is not the way to campaign. Don’t get me wrong. I am angry, too. But I have seen what seven years of unhinged political rage achieves. I want less of that, not more.