And a little more on Biden
From Slate:
...As a result, the Obama/Biden campaign was on alert Tuesday. Biden addressed a crowd of about 150 at a community center in Woodbridge, Va., about an hour outside Washington. During the primaries, this would have been an informal event—Biden might have rambled for a bit, mostly from memory, before taking questions from the audience. This time he was all business. The dais/teleprompter setup seemed better suited to an arena than a small gym. Biden read his speech, shook hands, and took off. At one point, a Secret Service guy nudged closed the rope barriers separating the press from the rest of the room. A Biden spokesman said he uses the teleprompter sporadically. He had some new material about McCain supporting Bermuda tax shelters that he wanted to get right. But you can also see why the Obama campaign may see the value of the teleprompter: It's like a verbal leash.
Later that day, after a speech to the National Jewish Democratic Conference, an Obama staffer picked off reporters trying to worm through the scrum surrounding Biden. We dutifully returned to our pen. It would normally be fine to talk to Biden, the staffer explained, but this was a private event, not a campaign event. Yet Alexis Rice, communications director for NJDC, said it was entirely up to the campaign who gets to talk to Biden. "I'm happy to have as many reporters as possible talk to Biden," she said.
Clamping down is a campaign's way of reasserting control. If a candidate can go off-message in an interview with Katie Couric, how can he be trusted to greet reporters at a rope line? Better to run a tight ship than risk a candidate running his mouth.
Sound familiar?