Barack Obama’s Secret Service detail is the same detail the sitting President gets (when not in the Middle East).  I have a hunch that because of all the security around him, and by the way the Secret Service operates, that it is limiting his ability to reach out and touch - both physically and mentally - the voters in the early primary states.  His events have people corralled together en masse,  he regularly has 15 SS members around him, and you rarely see him off of the elevated stage.

Where as one person noted you could go into John McCain’s bus and talk to him for hours on end, maybe a dramatization but nevertheless you can’t dramatize something if it doesn’t happen in smaller portions to begin with.

In effect his popularity, which makes him a target and therefore more guarded, may be his downfall.  It is a very Catch 22 scenario.  Having been likened to JFK, a man who was immensely popular and drove around in a convertible because we wanted to show himself to the people, Obama need not make the same mistake the former President did.  But he also need not make the mistake of not being personable with the people.