Tony Blair hopped a train with no money in his pocket, nor check, nor credit card, nor ticket.  That last omission near tripped him up.  His bodyguard offered to pony up the $49, but the “inspector” (we’d say conductor) said skip it. 

The whole thing led Political Diary’s John Fund to observe:

It’s one thing for the Queen to proceed through life without having to worry about carrying any of the coins or bills that bear her image. But now that he’s a private citizen, Mr. Blair should make at least an effort to pretend once again he’s a normal human being.

If he does, and succeeds, he will be the not-so-little train passenger that could.

Moreover, if I were the queen, I’d have those coins and bills ready with my picture on them.

“Meet Professor Obama,” says Chi Trib’s John McCormick.  He’s

the sometimes aloof campaigner who can come across as a bit smug and has been known to talk about such things as arugula, an upscale leafy green, in places like corn-fed Iowa.

You can feel you’re in his classroom.  He likes order in the classroom.

“Everybody have a seat,” he said . . . in Gary, Ind., as he finished a speech and prepared to take questions. “We’ve still got a little more work to do.”

He tells how to behave:

“Now, there are only a few rules. Rule No. 1: Raise your hand. Don’t shout out at me because there are going to be more questions than I have time,” he said.  . . . . 

He betrays “professorial tendencies,” which “could . . . be used against him in a general election, especially if the liberal elitist branding takes hold,” says McC. 

He was “clumsy” in San Fran when he talked of Pennsylvania job-deprived as clinging to guns or religion, he said, is irritated by accusations of inability to relate to working-class people, but things like “actuarially speaking” come out readily.

Chi Trib studied how he talks.  He’s understandable by high-school seniors or college frosh, Trib found, “two grade levels above Sen. Hillary Clinton,” who speaks to h.s. sophs or juniors.

He scolds, mocked young woman with cell phone in San Antonio: “She’s talking to her girlfriend. She’s all like, ‘Girl, I got a front-row seat.’”  Then a peremptory “Turn off your phone.”

To another in Terre Haute, about to ask him something with something in her mouth: “Take it out.“

He glared at early leavers from small meetings in Iowa. 

But he gets praise as teacher at U. of Chi law school by law prof Cass Sunstein:

“He was thought to be non-ideological, completely prepared, conversational, not full of himself, clear, respectful of all sides and completely on top of the material,”

And from former student Erika Walsh:

“He was one of the least hubristic professors I had.  . . . He’s not an elitist. He certainly has the credentials to be, but he’s interested in people and not condescending at all.”

Hubristic?