PHILADELPHIA — You know a candidate is really feeling the heat when he starts complaining about the kitchen.

You know a candidate is having problems when he starts complaining about the process.

Wednesday night, in a debate here, Barack Obama complained a number of times about the presidential campaign process and how some people spend way too much time "obsessing" about some of the things he and others have actually said.

They obsess about remarks he admits he "mangled" about people in small towns who, he said, "get bitter" and "cling" to "guns or religion." People also obsess about his pastor for 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who once said the U.S. government brought on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks "with its own terrorism."

"I think what's important is to make sure that we don't get so obsessed with gaffes that we lose sight of the fact that this is a defining moment in our history," Obama said.

He also said: "For us to be obsessed with this — these kinds of errors — I think is a mistake. And that's not what our campaign has been about."

He and Hillary Clinton are trying to deliver a message to the American people, he said, but "sometimes that message is going to be imperfectly delivered because we are recorded every minute of every day."

So, gosh darn it, would you just stop listening to the two of them every gosh darn minute of every day? Would you just ignore them a little more? And while you are at it, would you please stop concentrating on what they say instead of what they mean?

Obama does have a point. But it is the nature of the political process that the dramatic gets attention, and when a candidate makes a gaffe, it is going to get noticed. That is how the game goes.

There is an old saying, "The person who can't dance says the band can't play." And Obama does not like the way the band has been playing lately.

"So the problem that we have in our politics, which is fairly typical, is that you take one person's statement, if it's not properly phrased, and you just beat it to death," Obama said. "And I understand that.

That's politics. And I expect to have to go through this process."

But Obama grew so irritated with the process Wednesday night that he even managed to mangle things a little further.

Regarding Wright, Obama said: "And, you know, the notion that somehow that the American people are going to be distracted once again by comments not made by me, but somebody who is associated with me that I have disowned, I think doesn't give the American people enough credit."

But wait. On March 18, in a carefully crafted speech, Obama said he would not disown Wright. Obama said: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother."

ABC's George Stephanopoulos, one of the moderators of the debate, immediately challenged Obama on this. "You've disowned him?" Stephanopolous asked Obama.

"The comments, comments that I've disowned," Obama said.

For her part, Hillary Clinton made sure nobody would forget any mistake Obama has ever made or might have made, including Obama's friendship with a member of a 1960s radical group.

And what was her excuse for picking at old scabs?

"I know Sen. Obama's a good man, and I respect him greatly," Clinton said, "but I think that this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising."

So blame the Republicans, not her! She must raise these issues because the Republicans will raise these issues. (Though the Republicans will probably say they are raising them because she raised them first.)

Not that Clinton got off scot-free. She had to answer for making up that story about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire.

"On a couple of occasions in the last weeks, I just said some things that weren't in keeping with what I knew to be the case and what I had written about in my book," she said.

She went on: "I'm very sorry that I said it. And I have said that, you know, it just didn't jibe with what I had written about and knew to be the truth."

When most people say things that they know are not the truth, it's called a lie. In politics, it's called "misspeaking," which is a whole different thing.

Just why she made the whole thing up, she did not say. She had a solution, however. She said she would "try to get more sleep."

But not when that phone is ringing at 3 a.m., of course.

To find out more about Roger Simon, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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