Hate to be the grammar cop, but it is a headline. He's doing fewer big speeches, actually.

And note how the second paragraph is framed. Madonna's quote echoes Clinton's complaint about big speeches.

Another way to put this would be to say that Obama's going back to the smaller, detail-oriented discussions that helped him win Iowa.

Good move. I think he should save them for later in the fall campaign. He'll probably need to retool the speech, since we've heard it a lot.

The Obama political strategy is pretty clever, getting best bang for the bucks and time.

For large states with small populations, like Idaho, "big big speeches" are ideal. Gather the largest crowd in memory and all the state's newspapers and other local media will be all over the story. This brings the message to the entire state in economical fashion. It's impractical to travel to all locations for very few votes.

For large states with large populations, but with limited time, "big big speeches" and saturated TV work best.

However, there's time for Pennsylvania (the way there wasn't with Ohio) and so switching to this six day bus tour of smaller communities with plenty of small meetings -- combined with "big big speeches" in densely populated areas (Philly) or areas with guaranteed large turnout (State College) -- and combined with the large Clinton lead and mistrust of Obama's skin color and latte drinking -- seems like a winning strategy.

Bowling poorly helps as well.

(P.S.: Shouldn't that be "Obama Doing Fewer Big Big Speeches for Pennsylvania"?)

Terry Madonna is a very smart man, but he's wrong about this. He's simply repeating the standard trope about Obama lacking specificity. The problem, of course, is that it's demonstrably wrong - the man's policy proposals are detailed, and he's really not less likely than Hillary to detail specifics on the stump.

What Madonna gets right is the importance of the image of the politician. Working class voters are looking for someone who understands their very concrete problems, who seems engaged in nitty-gritty details. That's a matter of tone and rhetoric. In other words, Obama's problem wasn't a lack of specifics, it was the rhetorical posture he assumed when detailing his specifics. I've written before of the need for Obama to draw on his personal experiences and I'm pleased to see, in the Times and elswhere, that he's been doing precisely that in Pennsylvania. Explaining to voters that he, too, has struggled adds no "specifics," but it does engage them. Dropping the soaring passages from his stump speech which promise that America is a land of untrammeled opportunity, in favor of lines that recognize the difficulties and struggles that many encounter, similarly adds no "specifics." But it's no less effective for that.

So let's discard, once and for all, the hackneyed idea that Obama lacks specifics. He has plenty of specifics - that's not the issue. What Obama lacked was an ability to convince working-class Americans that his inspirational vision of a better future could deliver real, concrete benefits in the short term. He's presently engaged in fixing that. Good for him.

Fewer

Hed should read "Smaller." Not "Less Big."

Eric, are you listening man ?

Less of less and more of fewer.

You can edit your own headlines, can't you ?

This is why Obama is such a good candidate. He looks at the entire political landscape, and he adapts his approach according to what is needed. He can work in multiple formats and focus his message according to what's needed, and it all stays true to his core principles, so he doesn't come off as pandering.

He's going to be a great president.

(And please, let me add my voice to the chorus of fewer not less. Back in olden days, my journalism professors would have left welts for mistakes like that. I still have scars.)