Maybe Obama is bitter. . .

. . .and is projecting his psyche onto small-town America. It's not often that I nod my head in agreement while reading a Dana Milbank piece, but this one had me doing it as he recounted some of the less attractive Obama moments during yesterday's editors luncheon hosted by the Associated Press.

It seems that while John McCain has proven himself to be an open book to the press, Obama has been decidedly less so. And, it's fairly obvious that a little bit of resentment is starting to bubble up within Obama. For instance, this particularly nasty shot at both McCain and President Bush:

"If I had to carry the banner for eight years of George Bush's failures, I'd be looking for something else to talk about, too."

Is that the "New Kind of Politics" Obama has been promising his worshipful minions throughout his campaign? If so, the Old Kind of Politics is starting to look pretty high-minded and nearly as lofty as the Chicago Democrat's rhetorical flourishes.

But, he reserved his most scornful words for a fellow Democrat, despite professing that he's doing his best to exercise restraint:

"Senator Clinton may not feel that she can afford to be as constrained. But I'm sure that Senator Clinton feels like she's doing me a great favor, because she's been deploying most of the arguments that the Republican Party will be using against me in November."

I guess the opposite of bitter in this instance would be "vindication". Rush Limbaugh has to be feeling a good bit of that right about now, what with the smashing success of his Operation Chaos.