As Obama’s World Tour wound down, Maureen Dowd was on hand to observe (and then to share with us in her column today) that the candidate and the campaign “weren’t as wary with the press.”

Indeed:

The senator left his briefing books behind for a rare instance of mingling with his journalism posse at a Berlin restaurant as he sipped a rare “very dry” martini with olives. (This was either because he wanted to charm the press, which, contrary to popular imagination, is not universally enchanted with him, or because he could not get ESPN in his hotel room.)

Such good sports were Team Obama, not only did they entertain questions from Dowd like “what presents [Obama] takes home to his daughters” — that’s “snow globes” for Sasha and “key chains” for Malia—but, Dowd writes, “they didn’t even seem to mind the caricature of Obama, ears sticking out, that had been drawn on the round We-Are-The-World Obama logo in the press section. The cartoon candidate demanded: ‘Worship me.’”

Laugh at ourselves? Yes, we can?