Barack Obama has been the target of countless attacks, from countless directions, but seems to be hanging on fairly well. Slate’s Jack Shafer argues that Obama has achieved a level of “superslipperiness,” as something of a “Teflon-coated candidate.”

As long ago as March, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz demolished charges that the press was soft on Obama by cataloging the tough pieces published by reporters exhuming the candidate's past: his financial relationship with friend and fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who is now a convicted felon; his friendship with former Weather Undergrounder William Ayers; his casting of 130 "present" votes as an Illinois legislator; his nuclear energy compromise in the U.S. Senate, said to benefit a contributor; incendiary comments made by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; and more.

To that list add the recent critical dispatches tarring Obama as a flip-flopper. The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg found "the big papers … assembling quite a list of matters on which the candidate has 'changed his position,' including Iraq, abortion rights, federal aid to faith-based social services, capital punishment, gun control, public financing of campaigns, and wiretapping."

What's unique about Obama and his candidacy is that almost none of the stuff the press throws at him sticks. Nor is the press alone in its inability to stick him. Hillary Clinton hurled rocks, knives, and acid at her rival even before the primaries (see this Jake Tapper piece from ABC News) and later upped the ante in desperation. She claimed that he was unprepared to serve as commander in chief and accused him of insulting gun owners and the religiously faithful. The eleventh-hour tactics may have won Clinton votes, but they failed to undermine Obama.

In hoping to explain Obama’s ability to shake off the attacks, Shafer pointed to Obama’s “poise and discipline,” which “allow him to resist whatever bait the press and politicians dangle in front of him.”

Perhaps, but I think the broader argument is flawed, for two reasons.

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There’s probably a general impression among voters that the House of Representatives is a silly, dysfunctional institution, made up of a few too many people who love to hear themselves talk, but aren’t especially fond of governing.

Today is perhaps the single best example in recent history of lawmakers going out of their way to prove that caricature right. John Bresnahan has the story:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House and turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi’s refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy. They have refused to leave the floor after the adjournment motion passed at 11:23 a.m. and are busy bashing Pelosi and her fellow Democrats for leaving town for the August recess.

At one point, the lights went off in the House and the microphones were turned off in the chamber, meaning Republicans were talking in the dark. But as Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) was speaking, the lights went back on, and the microphones have been turned on as well.

Before you rush to C-SPAN to watch the circus unfold, don’t bother — C-SPAN isn’t broadcasting this. In fact, no one is actually watching this unusually stupid display except the Republican House members, their staffers, some tourists in the gallery, and some reporters who happen to be around.

But the GOP seems quite excited to play this little game, whether anyone can see it or not.

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In the spring, Democratic primary voters didn’t fall for misguided gimmicks on energy policy. But if recent polling is any indication, Americans in general are so worried about gas prices, many of them are actually falling for the scam being pushed by John McCain and the rest of the Republican establishment. A CNN poll this week found strong support for coastal drilling, and more than eight in 10 Americans believe laws on offshore drilling are contributing to the recent increase in gasoline prices.

Given this widespread confusion, and the fact that so many Americans have come to believe demonstrably false claims, Barack Obama took the offensive yesterday.

Mr. McCain’s corporate tax plan, he claimed, would yield $4 billion a year in savings for oil companies while his proposed federal gas tax holiday would pay for half a tank of gasoline over the course of an entire summer.

“So under my opponent’s plan, the oil companies get billions more and we stay in the same cycle of dependence on big oil that got us into this crisis,” he told more than a thousand people in a college gym here. “That’s a risk that we just can’t afford to take. Not this time.”

The Democratic candidate then turned to his own plan: A $150 billion investment over 10 years in alternative energies and fuels. (The funding of this plan is not entirely clear.) He counseled optimism, promising a transition to an economy based thousands of new businesses working on wind, solar and bio-fuels.

“We can’t have a policy that tinkers around the margins while going down an oil company’s wish list — it’s time to fundamentally transform our energy economy,” he said. These steps are not far-off, pie-in-the-sky solutions.”

First, this is the right message at the right time. Second, voters almost certainly didn’t hear a word about this, because someone used the phrase “race card” and the media, Pavlov-style, couldn’t resist.

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It’s easy to rail against the political media’s fascination with trivia, but the frustration often misses the mark. Some reporting on human-interest stories relating to presidential candidates is normal; news outlets aren’t going to be all-substance, all-the-time. Adding some trivia to the mix can help make coverage of the campaign, for lack of a better word, “lively.”

The problem is when the media treats trivia as if it were serious. I don’t mind frivolous reporting, so much as I mind when news outlets pretend it isn’t frivolous reporting.

The media covered John Edwards’ haircuts as if they were important. Reporters scrutinized Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits and cleavage as if they were legitimate subjects of journalistic inquiry. Questions about lapel pins have actually managed to make their way, not only into the media’s coverage of the campaign, but into nationally televised debates.

And as of today, we're actually supposed to believe that Barack Obama's "low body fat" is an important campaign issue in 2008.

Seriously.

Thanks to a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general, we got a better sense this week about the extraordinary — and illegal — efforts to politicize Bush’s Justice Department.

But let’s not forget, the problem of basing employment decisions on politics went well beyond the Justice Department. Charlie Savage picks up on an email that went largely overlooked.

On May 17, 2005, the White House’s political affairs office sent an e-mail message to agencies throughout the executive branch directing them to find jobs for 108 people on a list of “priority candidates” who had “loyally served the president.”

“We simply want to place as many of our Bush loyalists as possible,” the White House emphasized in a follow-up message, according to a little-noticed passage of a Justice Department report released Monday about politicization in the department’s hiring of civil-service prosecutors and immigration officials.

The report, the subject of a Senate oversight hearing Wednesday, provided a window into how the administration sought to install politically like-minded officials in positions of government responsibility, and how the efforts at times crossed customary or legal limits.

To be sure, Bush didn’t invent political patronage, and practically all modern presidents have made at least some efforts to, as Savage put it, “impose greater political control over the federal bureaucracy.”

But none have gone as far as this gang. “The Bush administration is unprecedented in how systematic the politicization is and how it extends both across the wider organization chart and deep down within the bureaucracy,” Professor Rudalevige said. “They’ve been very consistent from Day 1 in learning the lessons of previous administrations and pushing those tactics to the limit.”

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The president spoke briefly this morning from the White House, heralding the “success of the surge” for creating “sustained progress” in Iraq. Soon after, Joe Lieberman announced that he and Lindsey Graham are “introducing a resolution recognizing the strategic success that the surge has achieved in a central front — the central front of the war on terror against the enemies who attacked America on 9/11/01, and expressing our thanks to our troops who’ve made that success possible.”

Ben at TP did a nice job knocking this down, emphasizing "the obvious fact that the terrorists who carried out the September 11, 2001 terror attacks operated out of Afghanistan, not Iraq," and that the policy that Lieberman supports has "prevented the U.S. from sending more troops where they are needed, in Afghanistan."

Quite right. I’d add that Lieberman’s insistence that the surge defeated “the enemies who attacked America on 9/11/01″ also suggests he thinks al Qaeda is (or at least, has been) the principal cause of violence in Iraq. That’s completely wrong, too.

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White House attorneys are quite capable of coming up with creative legal arguments. The problem, though, is that judges aren’t willing to reward their creativity.

President Bush’s top advisers are not immune from congressional subpoenas, a federal judge ruled Thursday in an unprecedented dispute between the two political branches.

House Democrats called the ruling a ringing endorsement of the principle that nobody is above the law.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge John Bates said there’s no legal basis for Bush’s argument and that his former legal counsel, Harriet Miers, must appear before Congress. If she wants to refuse to testify, he said, she must do so in person. The committee also has sought to force testimony from White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten.

“Harriet Miers is not immune from compelled congressional process; she is legally required to testify pursuant to a duly issued congressional subpoena,” Bates wrote. He said that both Bolten and Miers must give Congress all non-privileged documents related to the firings.

Because I know this is the first question on the minds of many political observers, I should note that Bates was appointed to the federal bench by none other than George W. Bush. Indeed, Bates has, in general, been a Bush administration ally (he threw out Valerie Plame’s suit against Karl Rove, for example).

But not today. Bates wrote that “the Executive’s current claim of absolute immunity from compelled congressional process for senior presidential aides is without any support in the case law.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it “very good news for anyone who believes in the Constitution of the United States and the separation of powers, and checks and balances.”

So, what happens now?

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I don’t care that John McCain is extremely wealthy. I don’t care that he became wealthy by marrying into a wealthy family. I don’t care about his Armani clothes, his multiple luxurious homes, his wife’s private jet, or his Black Centurion American Express card. His enormous wealth is his business (though it does strike me as more than a little offensive when an obscenely rich senator like McCain votes against an increase in the minimum wage, and argues that our economic problems are “psychological,” but that’s just me).

So, when I saw this report in the Huffington Post about McCain’s Italian leather loafers, which cost $520 a pair, my first instinct was to pay it no mind.

This summer John McCain is traveling in style. He has worn a pair of $520 black leather Ferragamo shoes on every recent campaign stop — from a news conference with the Dalai Lama to a supermarket visit in Bethlehem, PA. The Calfskin loafers, with silver-tone “Gancini” buckles, are imported from Italy.

In response to Barack Obama’s foreign tour, McCain spent much of his energy last week emphasizing his focus on domestic issues. What better way to show his American pride than to tour the country in Italian leather?

The piece shows McCain wearing his extremely expensive Ferragamo shoes all the time.

And while I continue to think this is largely just candidate trivia, it is not without a certain political salience.

I was talking to a friend earlier who summarized the underlying theme of the Republican push against Barack Obama in four words: “He’s not like you.” That sounds about right.

And if so, I have a message for every American family who can’t imagine spending $520 for a pair of loafers: John McCain isn’t like you, either.

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The practice of jumping between the political and media worlds is not especially uncommon, and journalists routinely leave news outlets to pursue opportunities in professional politics. David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, used to be a reporter. Linda Douglass, up until recently employed by National Journal, also joined Obama’s team. In perhaps the most well-known example, Tony Snow left a media job to join Bush’s White House, and then went back to the media.

That said, this is slightly more troubling than most.

Before Ron Fournier returned to The Associated Press in March 2007, the veteran political reporter had another professional suitor: John McCain’s presidential campaign.

In October 2006, the McCain team approached Fournier about joining the fledgling operation, according to a source with knowledge of the talks. In the months that followed, said a source, Fournier spoke about the job possibility with members of McCain’s inner circle, including political aides Mark Salter, John Weaver and Rick Davis.

Salter, who remains a top McCain adviser, said in an e-mail to Politico that Fournier was considered for “a senior advisory role” in communications.

“He did us the courtesy of considering the offer before politely declining it,” Salter said.

That Fournier would consider a role with the McCain campaign is not especially surprising; his political leanings have been increasingly apparent of late. We learned two weeks ago that Fournier exchanged emails with Karl Rove about Pat Tillman, in which Fournier wrote, “The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight.” Fournier was also one of the journalists who, at a gathering of the nation’s newspaper editors, extended John McCain a box of his favorite donuts (”Oh, yes, with sprinkles!” McCain said).

But Fournier is the DC bureau chief of the Associated Press. He’s chiefly responsible for directing the AP’s coverage of the presidential campaign. And yet, Fournier’s objectivity is hardly above reproach — he considered an offer to work for one of the two candidates.

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If someone makes a false claim, it’s a little easier to get away with it the first time. He or she could always just claim ignorance: “Wait, he wasn’t caught in a compromising position with farm animals? Oh, I’d heard that he was. My mistake.”

When someone makes a false claim after he/she has been told it’s false, there’s less of an excuse. At that point, it goes from a mistake to a lie. It’s the difference between inadvertently misleading people and deliberately misleading people.

And John McCain is deliberately misleading people.

McCain and his campaign repeated at least two lines of attack against Obama, which when first said in early July, were called “bogus,” “wrong,” “inflated” and “misleading” by independent fact checkers.

At his town hall today, McCain repeated that Obama wants to raise taxes on those making as little as $32,000 a year and in his campaign’s response to Obama’s event in Springfield, Mo., today, repeated that “…Obama’s bad judgment led him to vote in support of higher taxes 94 times….”

Now, I won’t bore you detailing all of the ways in which McCain is lying here. Instead, I’ll just farm this one out — the claim about raising taxes on those making as little as $32,000 a year is demonstrably false, and the claim about voting for higher taxes 94 times is just as ridiculous.

I bring this up, though, because I think the presumptive Republican nominee is offering up an opportunity to create a new campaign meme: “John McCain has a problem telling the truth.”

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