Andrea Mitchell’s amazed reaction, after Sununu confirms that, why yes, he did indeed intend to call the president of the United States “lazy,” without skipping a beat… is kind of priceless.

JOHN SUNUNU: What people saw last night was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, and how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are, and how he has failed to even begin to address them. And I think even the liberal press reacted with shock at this revelation, and I find it fascinating, now this morning, after they’ve slept, to watch them all scrambling around to clean up the mess the president left on the floor last night. On the other hand, Mitt Romney came in with a lot of specifics, a lot of very sharp knowledge of issues, not only with the Obama-version of bumper-sticker numbers, but the governor showed that he understand policies and he understand how to make policy into law talking about what he did in Massachusetts.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Governor, I want to give you a chance to maybe take it back. Did you really mean to call Barack Obama, the president of the United States, lazy?

JOHN SUNUNU: Yes. I think you saw him admit it… he said, you know, ‘they’re making me do this work.’ He didn’t want to prepare for this debate. He’s lazy and disengaged.

John Sununu: The man, the myth, the legend. It has been quite a treat to watch Obama’s various minions in both his campaign and the media try to find ways to provide some cover for Obama’s epic failure, which has included the notion that the president didn’t devote enough time to practice and preparation — but judging from Andrea Mitchell’s face, accusing the president of being lazy is just beyond the pale. Of course, the wagon-circling spin is only going to continue, as Rob Long points out at Ricochet:

That’s what the next few days will be: Obama’s too smart, he’s too cerebral, he’s too thoughtful, he’s too professorial.

Anything but the truth: he’s a rotten candidate and a lousy president and he’s got precisely zero to run on.

The words he didn’t say “spoke the loudest?”  He said plenty.  And America heard it.  And it can all be boiled down to this:  I’m out of gas.