I am not sure what the fuss is about if, as some suggest, it's about the word" clean." NBC led the news tonight with the story about Joe Biden's saying Obama is clean.

But what did he mean? Until we know it's a stretch to consider the line an insult.

Clean with Gene--remember that slogan?--was a compliment.

Clean cut--if that's what he meant--is also a compliment. And no he wouldn't describe too many of his colleagues that way because old men generally aren't called clean cut. Young men are. Obama is young.

Or maybe Biden was alluding to Obama's reputation as a clean pol (distinguishing him from so many other Illinois pols).

Who the heck knows?

If the controversy is about Biden's description of Obama as the first mainstream African-American candidate for president, well, Biden was precisely right. All of the others were regarded when they ran as politically marginal figures.

Biden's statement that Obama is the first articulate African-American to run for president is the one that is the damaging. Clearly Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Shirley Chisolm were articulate. It was indeed their ability with words that made them memorable and influential. But it's not clear that Biden meant to say that. Surely he doesn't believe it. What he did was string together a series of adjectives with an improper antecedant. This is a blunder, but it's not frontpage news and certainly didn't belong at the top of NBC's broadcast.

If this is how the 2008 campaign is going to go I'm already sick of it.