Newsweek CW: Down Arrow on McCain, Polls Show Otherwise

Recent polling shows that Sen. John McCain is in a tightening race with Sen. Barack Obama and that McCain leads Obama in at least two polls of LIKELY voters -- Rasmussen and USA/Gallup. The Illinois senator's Europe junket and McCain exploiting Obama's penchant for platitudes with clever negative ads may explain a second wind hitting McCain's sails.

But to Newsweek's Conventional Wisdom (see screencap above), McCain's campaigning amounted to "tomfoolery" that temporarily put the Illinois senator off-message while making McCain sound like "Karl Rove channeled by Joe Piscopo."

That sounds like conventional wisdom to partisan Democratic operatives, not hard-bitten veteran Washington insiders looking at the campaigns objectively.