A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

WHAT CLINTON WISHES SHE COULD SAY
(John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, Politico)
Why, ask many Democrats and media commentators, won’t Hillary Rodham Clinton see the long odds against her, put her own ambitions aside, and gracefully embrace Barack Obama as the inevitable Democratic nominee?  Here is why: She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama’s likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naive Democrats just don’t see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps, in their view, won’t tell the story. But Hillary Clinton won’t tell it, either. A lot of coverage of the Clinton campaign supposes them to be in kitchen-sink mode — hurling every pot and pan, no matter the damage this might do to Obama as the likely Democratic nominee in the fall. In fact, the Democratic race has not been especially rough by historical standards. What’s more, our conversations with Democrats who speak to the Clintons make plain that their public comments are only the palest version of what they really believe: that if Obama is the nominee, a likely Democratic victory would turn to a near-certain defeat... This view has been an article of faith among Clinton advisers for months, but it got powerful new affirmation last week with Obama’s clumsy ruminations about why “bitter” small-town voters turn to guns and God. 

MORE: The Four Big Problems with Obama's 'Cling' Fling (Mickey Kaus, Slate) 

IS JOHN MCCAIN BOB DOLE OR DWIGHT EISENHOWER?
(John Heilemann, New York)
For all the hosannas being sung to him these days, and for all the waves of fear and trembling rippling through the Democratic masses, the truth is that McCain is a candidate of pronounced and glaring weaknesses. A candidate whose capacity to raise enough money to beat back the tidal wave of Democratic moola is seriously in doubt. A candidate unwilling or unable to animate the GOP base. A candidate whose operation has never recovered from the turmoil of last summer, still skeletal and ragtag and technologically antediluvian. (“Fund-raising on the Web? You don’t say. You can raise money through those tubes?”) Whose cadre of confidantes contains so many lobbyists that the Straight Talk Express often has the vibe of a rolling K Street clubhouse. Whose awkward positioning issues-wise was captured brilliantly by Pat Buchanan: “The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we’re going to have a lot more wars.” A candidate one senior moment—or one balky teleprompter—away from being transformed from a grizzled warrior into Grandpa Simpson. A candidate, that is, who poses an existential question for Democrats: If you can’t beat a guy like this in a year like this, with a vastly unpopular Republican war still ongoing and a Republican recession looming, what precisely is the point of you? 

MR. AND MS. SPOKEN
(Hendrik Hertzberg, New Yorker)
Along with its various derivatives, “misspeak” has become one of the signature verbal workhorses of this interminable political season, right up there with “narrative,” “Day One,” and “hope.” It carries the suggestion that, while the politician’s perfectly functioning brain has dispatched the correct signals, the mouth has somehow received and transmitted them in altered form. “Misspeak” is a powerful word, a magical word. It is a word that is apparently thought capable, in its contemporary political usage, of isolating a palpable, possibly toxic untruth, sealing it up in an airtight bag, and disposing of it harmlessly. 

CANDIDATES LET ADS DO THE TALKING
(Larry Eichel, Philadelphia Inquirer)
The phrase had a nice ring to it. With six weeks to campaign here, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton would make Pennsylvania "the new Iowa." They'd give it the same up-close-and-personal treatment as the first state in the presidential selection process. Except it hasn't turned out that way. Fueled by record spending, the campaign in Pennsylvania has been an orgy of television commercials - particularly for Obama - with candidate travel playing a distinctly secondary role... The amount of money expended on television has been staggering. For the week ending tomorrow, Obama spent about $2.5 million statewide, Clinton about $1 million. No political candidate had ever spent $2.5 million for a week's worth of television in Pennsylvania. "Even considering inflation, it breaks every record by far," said Neil Oxman, a Philadelphia-based political consultant with nearly three decades of experience in state politics. "And that doesn't count what he's doing on radio."

A HILLARY CLINTON PRESIDENCY
(Carl Bernstein, CNN)
What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like? The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency. Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don’t go right. Which is to say, often. And endless psychodrama: the essential Clintonian experience that mesmerizes the press, confuses the citizenry, confounds members of both parties in Congress (not to mention the Clintons themselves, at times) and pretty much keeps the rest of the world constantly amused and fixated.

MCCAIN MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN HIS IMAGE
(Libby Quaid, Associated Press)
The independent label sticks to John McCain because he antagonizes fellow Republicans and likes to work with Democrats. But a different label applies to his actual record: conservative. The likely Republican presidential nominee is much more conservative than voters appear to realize. McCain leans to the right on issue after issue, not just on the Iraq war but also on abortion, gay rights, gun control and other issues that matter to his party's social conservatives... In a national Pew survey earlier this year, voters placed McCain in the middle, where they placed themselves, when asked to judge the ideology of Bush and the presidential candidates. They placed Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama far to the left. And voters who back Clinton and Obama are open to McCain. Nearly a third of Clinton supporters said they would back McCain if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, and more than a quarter of Obama supporters said they would back McCain over Clinton, according to Associated Press-Ipsos polling released Thursday.

MORE: McCain's Campaign Will Be a Long Balancing Act (Albert R. Hunt, Bloomberg)
The Republican Party's success in five of the last seven U.S. presidential elections has flowed from the enthusiastic support of a diverse collection of economic, social and national security conservatives. That coalition is fraying. John McCain, the only Republican who would have a shot at winning the presidency, faces a challenge in keeping this three-legged stool intact for the November election.

'STEADY HAND' FOR THE GOP GUIDES MCCAIN ON A NEW PATH
(Kate Zernike, New York Times)
When Senator John McCain’s campaign was collapsing last summer, it was Charlie Black who set the comeback strategy: Mr. McCain had to win New Hampshire. When conservative opposition threatened to derail Mr. McCain just as he was surging again this winter, it was Charlie Black who called prominent conservatives to secure their backing. And when Mr. McCain was finally the last man standing, it was Charlie Black who engineered the campaign’s takeover of the Republican National Committee. “The Republican Party’s quintessential company man,” as one friend calls him, Mr. Black has worked in every Republican presidential campaign since 1972, and sometimes a couple each season, being diplomat enough to get along with both sides in some of the fiercest rivalries. In between, and often at the same time, he has parlayed his political connections to become one of Washington’s most successful lobbyists, making him an embodiment of the city’s permanent establishment. Now 60, Mr. Black is easing Mr. McCain into his new role as standard bearer for a party that the senator has clashed with and even snubbed over the years. Mr. Black has done so in the quiet way that has made him such an enduring player in Washington.

DEMOCRATS WRANGLE OVER WORDS AND BELIEFS
(John M. Broder, New York Times)
The Democratic contenders addressed the Compassion Forum at Messiah College here, one after the other. Their cold, quick encounter as they traded places on the stage reflected the hostility between them over the past two days as Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly hammered Mr. Obama for remarks he made at a fund-raiser suggesting that some voters turned to religion and guns as consolation for their bitterness about their economic hardship.