The fretting on the Left continues about the drifting Barack Obama campaign. From Walter Shapiro today:

“In the next month, Obama will have twin opportunities to restore a sense of surprise and wonder to his campaign. A pedestrian vice-presidential rollout (especially if it is a make-no-waves selection like Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh) and an eloquent-but-empty convention speech could signal trouble. Obama needs to give independents and loosely affiliated voters new reasons to vote for him, since he appears to have reached a temporary ceiling a bit shy of 50 percent in most public polls. [Pollster Andrew]Kohut theorizes that the public’s boredom with the Obama story ‘may account for the way that the horse-race numbers are stalled.’

. . .

But now, with voters suddenly curious about McCain (judging from the Pew numbers), Obama may be a victim of too much too soon. As singers and comedians have known since the early days of vaudeville, the cardinal rule in show business is to leave the stage with the audience wanting more. “

Well, that’s a more credible analysis than Bob Beckel’s effort to convince us that Obama really does have a “moral compass” and he’s a fix-it, can-do “cable guy.” (That would seem to be lacking a key ingredient: any evidence that Obama has ever fixed anything.) Also cable guys usually don’t invite chanting, they just get to work. (Hint: Hillary was the cable gal.)

So should Obama disappear? Reinvent his persona? Talk about the economy? It is a measure of what gentle treatment and how little pressure has been applied to him that two weeks of mildly tough treatment by the McCain camp would leave him and his supporters so flummoxed.