The press stand up (while sitting down and looking a little unprepossessing, but still)

Here's a neat video hosted on the Huffington Post:

Lookee!

Some of the comments are pretty good too.

The most interesting thing to me about the video is not that a politician gets caught lying (whether his initial assertion that his campaign isn't run by lobbyists is correct or not, he goes on to suggest none to subtly that he's not in a position to be influenced by lobbyists because he's not part of the Washington crowd - totally untenable after he just admitted that a lobbyist is on the plane with him a lot of the time). Politicians lie all the time. The best part is the bit afterwards where Romney's press secretary shows up to castigate the reporter for ruining the pageantry.

Image managers have to worry about their candidate saying something untrue, but not nearly so much as about them looking unprepared or foolish in a video - more's the pity. The first can be spun, but the second just sits there on YouTube. The current administration gets away terribly with intimidating the press, but Romney isn't even elected yet. I think it's interesting that A) this paradigm of treating the press like your own personal cast of extras for a choreographed pantomime is catching on, B) the press is allowing it - we haven't seen more of this during the campaign, instead getting reporters telling us after the fact that some statement was a lie, and C)That the little old lady in the background was trying to defend Romney.

C is the one I'm most worried about. We should expect reporters to be rude to our elected officials and candidates in our stead. If you say something false or disingenuous in the public eye, it's their job to call bullshit on you.