Chuck Todd: Boys and Girls on the (School) Bus (Good read)

Saturday's assignment: Barack Obama personally knocked on doors in Des Moines to drum up support among Real Iowans. At 10:00 am, Obama addressed the troops at a rally of canvassers in East High School's auditorium. Before the chants of "Fired up!" had even died down, his advance staff started to hustle the press corps outside for a ride to the canvassing site. (Yesterday's middle school safety patrols really do become tomorrow's political minds.)

So onto the bus we climb -- network camera crews, grizzled local print gurus, the posse of young reporters and photographers hoping to launch meteoric news careers from the cornfields of Iowa. And, of course, the occasional household name.

For the three-minute bus ride, freshman-year flashbacks and jokes flew around the bus like paper airplanes. And when the bus stopped, we spilled out into the chilly autumn morning to chase The Candidate through the streets of Real Iowa.

What you'll see on television and in print are images of the indefatigably charismatic Obama hitting the pavement to knock on doors, listen to real people, and campaign as nature intended it. And, to his campaign's credit, the event was as almost as organic as it appears on the screen. The Des Moines residents who answered their doors were genuinely surprised to see him, and they were anything but political insiders -- as evidenced by moments like Obama's patient "what's a caucus?" lesson to two wide-eyed residents.