I watched Chris Matthews, parts of Meet the Press and a larger part of ABC Sunday morning, and Face the Nation. For me, the most interesting discussion of the day was the roundtable on ABC Sunday morning. The major topic of the day was of course the presidential race. The major subtopics of the days under that heading was Obama’s move to the center recently in conjunction with his flip flop on campaign financing, Obama and the Clinton’s, and as far as McCain goes, his upcoming trip to Mexico, and his continued efforts to completely tie his campaign to national security.

Chris Matthews had another conservative panel. Again, Katty Kay, from BBC, who to me isn’t that well known of a journalist out in the heartland of the U.S., continues to appear every week, and to sit nearest to Matthews. It’s just interesting, if you ask me. She seemed to the be most liberal member of the panel today - the others being David Gregory, Gloria Borger, and David Brooks. I would rate this panel definitely on the conservative side.

I guess the highlights of the Matthews show was the discussion about Obama’s VP pick. The three most conservative pundits, Gregory, Borger, and Brooks, all said that Obama is going to or should pick Biden. That makes no sense to me. Why would Obama pick Biden, who only got a handful of votes for president, when Clinton got as many votes as he did for president? That means that a lot more people want Clinton for president than Biden. All that would do is inflame the Clinton supporters, the last thing that Obama needs. Only if Clinton has bought into someone like Biden and is willing to go to her supporters and say that she agrees with it could such a thing work. But all of the above said that they didn’t think that Obama was going to pick Clinton. In fact, Gregory says it’s not a possibility. They might be right. We’ll see.

Meet the Press had three western governors at the beginning of the show. One of the interesting things that I noticed was that in the intro of the show, a list of problems facing the west was given by NBC which would be discussed. Missing from that list, very interestingly, was public land management. Yet, a good deal of the discussion with the three governors focused around public land management - and a good deal of it was spent talking about the environmental effects of increased drilling and gas production on public lands. As they were reading off this list at the beginning, I turned to Kristi and said, “what about public lands?” It’s a huge issue out west because the public land is so prevalent. One has to wonder why NBC omitted it from their synopsis of western issues?

Also, Stephanopolous interviewed Ralph Nader briefly. Nader basically said that those on the further left that still supported Obama even though they agreed more with Nader were being disingenous, and should follow their true beliefs in voting. He gave Nation magazine as a the prime example.

The roundtable on the Stephanopolous show was different. It was Vander Heuval from Nation, Hewitt from Townhall.com, an ultra conservative blog, Huffington from the Huffington post blog, and Byron York from the National Review. It started out with Stephanopolous asking Vander Heuval, from Nation, about Nader’s comments. Basically Vander Heuval said that Nader shouldn’t run. She also tried to deflect the issue by saying that she thought that the Bob Barr libertarian candidacy was going to hurt the GOP more than Nader would hurt the Dems. For the life of me, I don’t know why they don’t mention Cynthia McKinney, presumptive nominee for the Green party nomination. She is building more support than Nader, I am pretty sure. But the Dems (nor the media) want to even mention her candidacy.

Vander Heuval also tried to stick up for Obama’s conservative moves in the last week - voting for immunity for the telecoms and at least in part supporting the Supreme Court decision giving a right to individuals to have at least a pistol and rifle in their homes. Huffington did challenge Vander Heuval on her what seemed like complete capitulation to whatever positions Obama took. She said that Obama had made his name by being different - someone that wouldn’t change positions just out of political expediency. She said that he is risking spoiling his “brand” of being different by doing the same thing that other politicians have always done. I think that is right.

This Hewett dude was far out. But Huffington got the best of him when she read what she said was an exact quote from Hewett in an interview this week. The quote had to do with Obama and national security, but I can’t remember exactly what it was. But, it came off so extreme that Hewett was flustered by it and didn’t have a good answer. In my opinion, Hewett came off really bad.

Face the Nation had Lieberman and Wesley Clark. Lieberman was hawking for McCain. What a turncoat. Schieffer asked him about how he felt about McCain’s top advisor, Black, who was quoted last week as saying that if we had another terrorist attack in the U.S. before the election, that it would help McCain. Lieberman of course, like McCain, said, oh, he shouldn’t have said that. Then getting down in the mud with the best of them, did go on to say that the terrorists were going to test a new president, and listed various bad things that have happened to presidents in their first term - clearly insinuating that there was a good chance that something bad was going to happen to the U.S. if Obama was elected. That’s just about as low as Black’s comments.

Wesley Clark didn’t do that great of a job defending Obama. He did do a decent job of defending a pullout of troops from Iraq, and he spoke well defending Obama’s call for more talk between us and our adversaries and friends in the region. All in all, McCain probably got the better of that exchange, but not by a lot, because I think many people are turned off by Lieberman now, both because he has turned against the Democrats, and because many feel he was a poor choice for VP by Gore, and helped cost him the election. But he is an intelligent and articulate man, and that’s why he is such a problem for the Dems.

Brokaw spoke with Chuck Todd at the end of Meet the Press. Todd made one interesting observation about whether or not Bill Clinton will speak at the Democratic convention. He said he thought that they would go along with him introducing Hillary, who will be speaking. But, he said, he wasn’t sure Hillary wanted that. Todd said that he thought maybe Chelsea would introduce Hillary at the convention, thus passing the torch down to the next generation of Clinton. He did say that he thought a tribute film to Bill’s career was probably the most likely portrayal of Bill Clinton. I think the Dems need to be careful about how they handle Bill. He did take a beating during the primary campaign, (because he said a number of really stupid things) but he is an ex-two-term president who still has a lot of supporters.

I think Obama is making a big mistake with his “move to the middle.” I think Huffington is right on with her insights. Too much of this and the excitement that Obama is generating as being the possibility of something really new will dissipate. If that happens, the large, motivated turnout that is needed to sweep a virtually veto proof majority in the legislative chambers will be in jeopardy. If that happens, even if Obama squeaks out a victory, he won’t be able to get much done and his legacy will be that of just another politician. I don’t think he wants that, and the country doesn’t need it.