We have been reduced to hearing bumper sticker sound bytes for very good reasons. One of them is that journalists will tend to savage, in print, and on television, any candidate that strays from this line. Case in point, Barack Obama tells it like it is to an audience, and Newsweek headlines him as a "scold". Pity the speaker who doesn't speak in sound bytes, because he or she is pilloried by the press as boring.

Journalists also need to evaluate their reporting standards. If the goal is to grab headlines by being attack dogs, then candidates are going to be guarded. That's a fact of life. Who wants to be ridiculed by the press for speaking realistically and supplying fodder for a mean-spirited opposition?