Avoiding the Press: Palin and Obama

The Left was positively distraught that Sarah Palin spent a few days without doing interviews.  Josh Marshall wrote...

[S]he's so unprepared and knows so little about the challenges and tasks facing the country that she can't even give a softball interview. That's really all we need to know.

Oh yeah?  Here's an April headline about the top of the Democratic ticket.

It's now been ten days since Democrat Barack Obama has made himself available for questions from his traveling press corps, and it appears as though that number could rise even higher.

When Obama did the same thing, Marshall did not appear to be excised about it, notwithstanding his current judgment that this is "really all we need to know" about Sarah Palin.   Indeed, when Obama went quiet, Marshall said he was "out in the field campaigning, not focusing on national media and catering to political junkies around the country."  

When Sarah Palin did it, Kevin Drum saw bad intentions and an attempt to defraud the country....

they're terrified about what might crop up next. So they're keeping her in the deep freeze. ... In a way, it's sort of a test of just how gullible the American public really is. Are they actually willing to vote for someone who's afraid to meet with Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, and Meet the Press? Will they accept a tissue-thin excuse about what big meanies they all are?

 But when Barack Obama was laying low from the press, Kevin Drum was mostly concerned for the campaign strategy.