Obama’s Got Sole

In light of Sarah Palin's $150,000 Republican-funded spending spree, it's refreshing to see some common sense and frugality -- the kind that goes along with, say, resoling your shoes. Time shutterbug Callie Shell has been following Barack Obama on the campaign, getting snaps of the candidate in his most candid and unassuming moments. If you thought the pictorial books of Clinton's 1992 campaign were good, you'll be floored by this collection. In this shot, taken in March 2008, the BlackBook-endorsed candidate is doing press interviews by telephone in a holding room between events. "Sometime later as he was getting ready to begin his event," reads Shell's caption, "he asked me if I was photographing his shoes. When I said yes, he told me that he had already had them resoled once since he entered the race a year earlier."

And what is Obama really like? “He is very gracious, funny and intelligent. He doesn’t seem to mind me. If he does he and his staff have hid it well,” Callie says. “In some ways the atmosphere on the Obama plane seems a bit more relaxed than Gore’s. Maybe it is because the press seems less hostile. Maybe it is due to the fact that I do not work for the candidate and I get to leave the bubble.” Sometimes a picture truly is worth a 1,000 words. Perhaps Obama can get a comped pair of those Nikes that bear his likeness.