Today, Newsweek posted the final chapter of their Special Election Project, the annual How He Did It book they've published for each presidential campaign since 1984 (when the answer was much easier: he just ran against Walter Mondale). The reporters assigned to the special project are embargoed from those publishing in the regular magazine, so they get jucier anecdotes, more hilarious quotes, and revealing stories, all of which are then packaged and in such a way as to make the winning campaign look like a well-oiled machine and the losing campaign look like a parade of idiots. Did you read the whole thing? We did! We'll share with you the funniest bits, the important takeaway, and the already solidifying conventional wisdom. In short, this is the story of the 2008 campaign: the Hillary Clinton campaign was a stressful psychodrama, the Obama campaign was an intellectual exercise, and the McCain campaign was a ragtag bunch of misfits who stumbled into an insane family nightmare from Twin Peaks, Alaska. Let's begin with Hillary and co. Hillary The Clinton campaign was beset by the vicious infighting among assholes, basically. The biggest and dumbest asshole was chief pollster/strategist Mark Penn!

Assuming Barack Obama pulls this thing off next week, we imagine we're due for a deluge of media gushing over our First Black President. No, seriously, it'll make the last two years look like a dress rehearsal. And it will all lead to a glorious crescendo of treacly nonsense by January, when Obama, secret socialist muslim god willing, is sworn in. So. That really makes it all the more ridiculous that Time editor Richard Stengel has taken to the YouTubes to ask "you" who should be named the Time Person of the Year. Every sitting President has received the dubious honor, with Bush II, Reagan, Carter, Clinton, and others all getting it the years of their elections. And they were all old white guys. So go ahead and email "NOBAMA" to Stengel and see how far it gets you if Barack wins Colorado and Nevada next week. A scant two years after naming YOU Person of the Year, Time is now just jerking YOUR chain.

Time Magazine is so with it. Their cover story this week is about Hillary Clinton. She's really important these days. They also know that in this post self-esteem era, nothing is more appealing that being self-hating. So for a special online feature (the internet is huge!) Time rounds up its all time worst covers. Of course, their choice of covers is a little safe. Those Asian whiz kids didn't make the list, and, for our money, they were totally robbed. Please send in any offensive Time covers that go beyond the "ha-ha, were so silly back then" ones they gave. In the meantime, our round up of their round up, with open captions.

We realize that former mag queen Tina Brown is still a "name" and Hillary Clinton's last week was a compelling story (resembling though it did so many of her previous weeks) but isn't there a wee bit of favoritism involved in a newsweekly running a front page story on a presidential candidate written by a woman who needs that candidate to become president in order for her forthcoming book to actually sell? [Newsweek]

Newsweek put hope-monger's wife Michelle Obama on the cover this week, and they offer a lengthy interview and story that remind us all how Ms. Obama is very smart and outspoken, and also pretty sarcastic. In fact the cover story is basically identical to recent profiles in both the Times and the Wall Street Journal! But obviously there's a lengthy lead time for the newsweeklies, and hey, there are only so many ways to call a woman "sarcastic." This many ways:

Noted asshole and Time "senior political analyst" Mark Halperin said, on Barbara Walters' satellite radio program, that John Edwards thinks Barack Obama "is kind of a pussy." We'd be shocked and appalled if Time hadn't hired Halperin from ABC precisely because of his skill with utter bullshit. They also employ Ana Marie Cox, who has called every candidate a pussy (or worse) at some point. Time political coverage: it's edgy! Until they print it, stripped of each edgy author's edge. (Halperin has already apologized, smugly.) After the jump, Halperin discusses his work as Bob Dole's speechwriter in 1996, his primary qualifications for "analyzing" politics. [Don't Quote Me via Romenesko]

If you're running a media property with an aging audience, there is nothing as depressing as talking to a room full of students, as Newsweek's Jon Meacham discovered. On discovering none of his audience read the magazine, the news weekly's editor summed up his hopeless challenge: "How to get this past this image that we're just middlebrow, you know, a magazine that your grandparents get." (Try avoiding depressing covers like this.)