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Here's the top of C.J. Karamargin's lead story, stripped over the top of the Arizona Daily Star: "The White House called it a conversation with President Bush about Social Security.

"It was more like a well-scripted pep rally."

Here's C.T. Revere's lead in the Tucson Citizen: "President Bush held court inside the Tucson Convention Center yesterday, comfortably chatting up his plan to partially privatize Social Security with hand-picked panelists whose experiences helped to drive his message home."

Similarly, on the front page of the Denver Post, Susan Greene leads her story: "Bush's 'conversation' with Americans played out more like a pep rally to sell his plan for young workers to divert some of their payroll taxes into private stocks and bonds."

Ever since his State of the Union address, Bush has been riding Air Force One to and fro, holding campaign-style "conversations" on Social Security during which he typically says nothing new and provides no details of his proposal.

Up until now, not just local reporters but even the national ones as well have typically bent over backward to treat what Bush says at these events like news.

But today's stories capture not so much what Bush says but what is most remarkable about these events: the stagecraft that goes into them and the exclusion of the general public in favor of screened supporters.