According to Politico's Jonathan Martin, Barack Obama is making John McBush's head slowly explode:

Openly frustrated by what they see as an ongoing double standard in the press’s treatment of his campaign, Sen. John McCain and his aides have been aggressively denouncing unfavorable stories as “smear jobs” and “scurrilous attacks,” while the candidate himself has launched a series of stinging attacks on Sen. Barack Obama. 

Martin bizarrely thinks this undermines McBush's image as a "happy warrior"

It’s a dangerous posture for a candidate whose political success is intimately tied with his image as an irrepressible happy warrior — equal parts President Ronald Reagan and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, with a dash of his old Arizona buddy Rep. Mo Udall’s sharp sense of humor — and whose appeal to independents owes nearly as much to character and personal narrative as to issues and ideology.

Of course that's a ludicrous portrait of McBush. If there's anything "happy" about him, I've never seen it - and he's been on my TV nearly every day for the past 10 years.

At heart, John McBush is an angry old man. He's angry at himself for having gotten shot down in Vietnam. He's angry at his country for having sent him to Vietnam and then turned against the war. He's angry at George Bush for beating him in South Carolina in 2000 by smearing his "black child." And now he's angry at Barack Obama for being infinitely younger, smarter, more honest, and more popular than he is.

But Martin does hint at the real harm caused by McBush's anger towards the Corporate Media: if he loses them, he loses his only true supporters. As Chris Matthews famously said,

The press loves McCain. We're his base

McBush and his staff have convinced themselves that the Corporate Media is attacking McBush while fawning over Obama.

It’s not just been the candidate himself who has turned feistier, but his campaign as well — especially toward the press.

Since winning the GOP nomination, McCain has been on the receiving end of a number of tough investigatory articles. With no horse race to cover, the press has devoted much of its coverage of the Republican nominee to scrutinizing McCain’s 25 years in Congress.

At the same time, there has not been similar such treatment of Obama — because reporters have been largely focused on the daily back-and-forth of the epic Democratic primary, and also because Obama’s shorter stay on the national stage has left him with less of a record to defend.

Whatever the reasons, McCain aides are exasperated at the difference in coverage.

Apparently Grandpa John napped through April, when the Corporate Media spent the entire month smearing Obama over Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (He must also nap through Sean Hannity's shows, which pathetically try to perpetuate that smear every single day.)

Luckily for Obama, attacking the Corporate Media seems to be the centerpiece of McBush's campaign plan.

After The New York Times ran a story in February that was widely criticized for suggesting — but offering no proof — that McCain had a sexual relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist, Black promised that the campaign would “go to war” with the paper of record.

And when The Washington Post printed a lengthy piece in April revisiting McCain’s well-known and well-documented outbursts of temper, Salter described it as “99 percent fiction.”

“In sum, this is one of the more shoddy examples of journalism I've ever encountered,” he wrote in an e-mail that was published by National Review. “But for the infamous [Times] story, I'd say it was the worst smear job on McCain I'd ever seen.”

Asked about their aggressive pushback, Salter said it amounted to preventative medicine.

“When a story is way off or if the reporting kind of breaks rules and if [left] unchallenged it’s likely to drive other stories, then we need to address it publicly,” Salter said, noting they had done so only a few times.

“We can’t sit back when the press clearly, clearly is giving Obama very favorable coverage and very little tough scrutiny and not sort of call fouls when they happen,” added Black.

So McBush and his crew have decided that any Corporate Media criticism of McBush will be met with a nuclear retaliation.

That intimimdation strategy worked brilliantly for George Bush in 2000 because the blogosphere did not exist, and because George Bush had not yet demonstrated the complete corruption and bankruptcy of the Republican Party.

But after 8 years of Bush and the blogosphere, there's no way the Corporate Media is going to let McBush dictate his own coverage.

If that makes McBush's head explode, it couldn't happen to an happier angrier guy.