The Brokers -- Will They Step In?

The next step seems to be inevitable.

Democratic party matriarchs and patriarchs will speak to journalistic matriarchs and matriarchs and ask the two candidates to simmer down...

And then one candidate, probably Sen. Clinton, will claim the high road throne and extend and olive branch to Sen. Obama, as if it were not her campaign that is widely blamed for starting the knife fight....

I do think that the media coverage of the Power resignation conflates two separate issues, or perhaps it brings them together.

Dr. Austan "NAFTA" Goolsbee, Dr. Susan "No One's Ready for the Call" Rice, and Dr. Sam "Monster" Power are three important advisers to Obama who are refreshingly honest, if impolitic, and whose "gaffes" reflect genuine convictions.

Issue one is whether Obama's campaign rhetoric is sharper than his governing agenda.

Issue two is the gutter-level of the presidential campaign, with the Obama team raising questions about the Clintononian allergy to transparency and the Clinton campaign comparing the tactic to Ken Starr's Whitewater fishing expedition.

Hovering above these two issues is the concept raised by David Brooks today: does Obama join the knife fight and in doing so, does he lose his own soul?
Brooks has a clear answer: pull up! pull up!

What do you think?