What’s black and white and red all over?

The embarrassed mainstream media, if Barack Obama loses to John McCain.

That’s the conundrum raised by the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, who quotes Boston University’s Tobe Berkovitz, associate dean of the College of Communication.

If the mainstream media are wrong about Obama and the voters pull a Truman, that is going to be the end of whatever shred of credibility they have left.

It’s happened before, leading to that classic photo of Harry Truman brandishing the not-so-prescient front page of the Nov. 3, 1948, Chicago Tribune declaring Thomas Dewey the presidential winner. That same day, the Portland, Ore., Daily Journal of Commerce laid out what President Dewey would do, under the headline “Dewey Victory Seen as Mandate to Open New Era of Government-Business Harmony, Public Confidence.”

That kind of premature prognosticating isn’t dissimilar to what many media outlets are already writing about a potential Obama Oval Office.

Obama will attempt to fashion a “new New Deal,” most likely with Larry Summers as his Treasury secretary, New York magazine says.

“John McCain’s defeat will be a lonely one,” Newsweek reports, but Sarah Palin could revive the Republican Party for 2012.

Kurtz cites as potential Achilles heels in the rush to judgment pack journalism, media bias and the constant thumps on veep candidate Sarah Palin. Apparently, 1948’s boo-boo didn’t leave a lasting impression. Says Kurtz:

(C)autionary tales abound. On the eve of the 2004 election, (pollster John) Zogby predicted that John Kerry would beat President Bush, a move he now attributes to “hubris and naivete.”

After Bush won, Zogby says, “I wasn’t in a fetal position, but I vowed I wouldn’t do that again. And I haven’t.”

Of note: The latest daily Gallup Poll shows Obama’s lead over McCain narrowing.

Obama is now at 49% of the vote to 47% for McCain among likely voters using Gallup’s traditional model, and at 51% to 44% using Gallup’s expanded model.