Going hand-in-hand with liberal pundit angst about the merits of The One, there seems to be an outbreak of candid concern among Barack Obama’s Senate colleagues. After two years of campaigning we hear: “Well gosh, he’s not done anything and he’s sort of a stand-offish arrogant guy.” This roundtable discussion is remarkable. But you don’t have to take the word of reporters and pundits. We had Russ Feingold. While careful to say nice things about his own party’s nominee, Feingold waxes lyrical about John McCain in this report:

“He’s a very good legislator from my point of view, because when he gets onto something, he doesn’t just want to introduce a bill, he likes to move it. And he’s fearless,” Feingold said of McCain, who once called the Wisconsin Democrat a “philosophical soul mate” on reform issues. (The two partnered on several other bills in addition to campaign finance.) “People couldn’t believe how long we stayed on McCain-Feingold. . . . We’d come to those press conferences (year after year) and you guys would laugh at us, I mean, literally,” said Feingold, grinning. “He’s a great guy to fight an uphill battle with legislatively. He keeps his word. . . . I probably shouldn’t be saying this stuff, but to be honest about it, it was one of the better professional experiences I’ve ever had in my life,” Feingold said.

And then there is this from another former colleague:

“John McCain is a known quantity,’ says Bob Kerrey, who thinks Obama will ultimately prevail. “You don’t look at John and say, ‘Who the heck is he?’ he’s a veteran, he’s a guy who got pretty banged up in Vietnam. He can deal with crisis. There’s some uncertainty about Senator Obama.”

(And even worse for Obama, Kerrey throws in this: “The country’s still pretty divided . . . people may want a divided government. They want change but I’m not sure that the Democratic agenda has the support of a majority of Americans.”)

So why all this candor and why only now? Well for one thing, I suspect reporters weren’t asking very many of Obama’s colleagues tough questions while they were tingling and rooting for him to knock out Hillary Clinton . And secondly, it is true — he really didn’t participate in any great bipartisan successes and he’s spent more than half of his brief Senate career running for President. It reminds me of Ed Koch’s crack explaining Bella Abzug’s loss in her own home district in 1972: “Her neighbors know her.”

Does it matter? Russ Feingold isn’t going to move many votes, but the sentiment that he and others are expressing may. In large part it depends on what motivates the majority of voters. The sheer emotional appeal and effervescent allure of The One could well carry the day. But if voters look around at a troubled economy and dangerous world they might want to grab hold of the political grown-up whose colleagues seem to trust to get things done.

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