and the horse ya rode in on .........

Much better strategy all the way around. Don't you know.

    CHARLESTON, S.C. -- It was billed as a roundtable conversation with plain folks at Jason's Deli in Charleston. Barack Obama joined four women at a table for a conversation - the same kind of thing he's done countless times in his campaign.

    Obama spoke to the women of his plans to change the tax code, to provide tax breaks to low-income wage earners and home owners, to improve a tax credit for the same folks, to reform the family and medical leave act and generally to make health care more affordable.

    Christina Stewart, a dance teacher, cancer survivor, and volunteer instructor of underprivileged children brought her daughter, Camille.

    Camille is eight years old. She has cerebral palsy and is profoundly disabled. She cannot walk. She cannot speak.

    Obama was riveted by her story. He told her of his plan to reform Medicaid, to do away with wasteful spending that would free up better care for her daughter.

    But here's the thing: when Obama and Mrs. Stewart had this conversation, Camille was no longer between them. because after initially placing her at the senator's side, after the photographers captured both in the same frame, and after mouthing some faint sounds that had the very slight potential of being disruptive, Camille was wheeled away. First to the edge of the deli, then outside altogether.

    I don't doubt Obama's concern for the child and children like her. His policies are designed to address such incredible misfortune. But Camille today was basically a political prop. Someone to be seen but not heard - even if she could speak.

    Though politics is full of sentimentality and syrup, it is also a very brusque, impersonal kind of undertaking. This was such an occasion.

    "Where's my beautiful daughter?" Mrs. Stewart asked after the conversation ended. "She's outside in a van," was the response

Scripted as well:

Think these campaign listening tours are getting a little scripted?

The Barack Obama campaign organized an "economic roundtable" of South Carolinians, scheduled with the Illinois senator for 11:30 a.m. today. But nearly an hour and a half before the event -- at 9:36 a.m. -- the campaign e-mailed to reporters a text of what the participants "said."

CHARLESTON, S.C. - Lost in the bickering from this week's Democratic debate was an appeal by Barack Obama for voters not to pigeonhole him as a candidate defined by his racial background.

"I think the media, you know, has really been focused a lot on race as we move down to South Carolina," Obama said on Monday. "I am absolutely convinced that white, black, Latino, Asian, people want to move beyond our divisions, and they want to join together in order to create a movement for change in this country. ... I guess what I'm saying is I don't want to sell the American people short."...

Obama is walking a tightrope here, trying to maximize his African-American support for a badly needed primary victory while reaching out to other groups in hopes of avoiding the label of racial "identity" candidate.

"He is speaking to the broad Democratic coalition in this state - [composed of] older people about health care, about the economy, about the war," said Carey Crantford, a Democratic pollster based in Columbia. "He has not run as a racial candidate in South Carolina."

Some Obama backers believe Clinton's camp has tried to marginalize their candidate by subtly highlighting his identity as an African-American in hopes of diminishing his crossover appeal.

"The Clintons have always put people in a box - they look at everything through racial lines, gender lines, geographic lines; they tend to segment people," said Steve Hildebrand, a senior Obama adviser who spearheaded his Iowa effort. "She goes to Nevada and sits with Latinos in their living room to court their vote - that's not the way Barack approaches people. If the Clintons paint him as the black candidate, no one's going to stop them from doing that. They are playing the same old-style games."