Winner of the Prescience Award

Back in May, the New York Times' Mark Leibovich wrote a piece for the Week in Review called The Upside of Being Knocked Around. I clipped it at the time, thinking I would talk about it on the blog, but I never got around to it. Tonight, I dug through the filing cabinet and found it. (Guess it pays to never throw anything away.)

In the story, Leibovich outlines how the long, bruising primary race between Obama and Clinton toughened Obama and would work in his favor in the long run. In the last couple of days, I've heard several pundits saying exactly the same thing, and remembered Leibovich's astute observations.

The long primary season allowed issues like the 3:00 a.m. phone call and Reverand Wright to come out early instead of late. It required Obama to organize in every state, an infrastructure that then remained in place for the general election. And (in contrast) it left McCain with not much to do for months on end.