John McCain doing a live-audience forum at Columbia University, Obama’s alma mater, being interviewed by Time editor, and sober and judicious Richard Stengel (formerly Bill Bradley’s campaign adviser and speechwriter) and PBS correspondent and fair-minded Judy Woodruff (married to Al Hunt), and answering serial questions on how the government should expand public service agencies would be sort of like Barack Obama going to the Naval Academy or West Point before an audience of cadets or midshipmen, to be interviewed by serious-thinking Michael Gerson and a circumspect George Will, on US defense strategy and the military. Both are perfectly legitimate enterprises and have merit, but the latter would be immediately deemed by the left as disproportionate. This, and the Gibson missteps in the Palin interview, are the apparently unconscious and highbrow versions of CNN/MSNBC.