The November election is, and remains, Barack Obama’s to lose. Usually, candidates whose victories are entirely in their own hands make it through. It is clear Obama’s path to victory is through the teleprompter. Let him give a big speech and he drives it like Tiger Woods hitting a fairway, as he did Sunday with his stunning sermon about the importance of fathers. But let him sit for an interview with a well-prepared reporter who isn’t interested in shilling for him and Obama makes mistake after mistake. This is what happened the other day with ABC’s Jake Tapper, who got Obama to talk about how we need to treat terrorism as a law-enforcement matter — which is exactly what he should not be saying if he wants to solidify those less-liberal Democratic votes in the states where he was shellacked by Hillary Clinton — and how he opposes all forms of school choice — which works against his vague message that he is a vague agent of vague change.

I suspect this is why John McCain is so eager to get Obama into those town-hall meetings Obama seems intent on avoiding. McCain has been doing them for 25 years and is very good at them; it’s a mark of how good he is at them that he doesn’t make career-threatening gaffes during them. McCain wants Obama off that teleprompter, which is sound strategy. But he can’t make Obama go anywhere Obama doesn’t want to. The media pose a different challenge for Obama.