Why does Dickerson think he's the story?

I don't think I'm the story. I think the story is the election which is what I've been writing about this week both in my Slate pieces about Huckabee, McCain and Edwards and in some of the dispatches on Map the Correspondent like here, here, here, here, here and here. I've also been writing about what I see and experience which gives readers a little peek behind what life is like on the road which people seem to enjoy.

"Manchester, N.H., Noon: There is an old joke about the guy who in the middle of running a marathon got too tired and ran back. Today, I am that man. About 15 miles down Highway 101, headed toward Exeter to catch Obama, I broke off my tour into the driving snow and returned to Manchester.

After I'd settled my rental car on the two thin gray lines on the highway, I called a source at one of the campaigns. I needed to do the reporting and I could either focus on how hard the snow was falling, how much there was on the road, or the discarded spun out carcasses of vehicles that were parked on the shoulder. Or, I could focus on the most wide-open presidential race in the history of mankind.

"You know," he said, "the thing is, God forbid if anything happens, you'll wonder why you thought driving was so important." This was persuasive. I have seen a lot of Obama speeches. I saw him last night. More persuasive, though, was the Wal-Mart truck and his cousins driving as if it were a bright, dry day and the cheap Christmas presents were two days late. The highway has two lanes, but in the snow the lanes are only theoretical."

This was the sort of thing I was referring to.

On the other hand, I appreciated your comments on Edwards' case.

"Corporate power and corporate greed have overtaken this democracy," he says. "It's that simple. And we have to take it back. This is not abstract. It goes through everything we need to do in America."
....
The case Edwards doesn't make is that such measures are necessary. He simply asserts that they are. Edwards doesn't address those in the audience who might say to his corporate bashing: "But isn't it more complex than that?" As Jonathan Alter points out in one example, the drug companies Edwards portrays as the root of so much evil are helping his wife with her cancer. You can believe that corporations do bad things but that they should be regulated, not eviscerated.

I agree with Edwards (and Obama) on this, and suspect that if you asked Edwards, he would agree that corporations need additional regulation, not abolishment.

And I emphatically agree that the candidates should be asked to discuss their cases, why and what. Personally, I'd like to see a lot more of that.