If you didn’t catch the uninterrupted half-hour interviews we landed this week with Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, you may have missed some interesting hidden signals from the candidates that shed a little light on what may really be going on in their campaigns.

John Harris of Politico and I offered each candidate a number of opportunities to take a legitimate shot at their opponent. By “legitimate”, I mean we were looking for hard differences from them on positions, not symbolic or superficial chatter points. By the end of the evening it was clear that Sen. Obama had no intention of saying anything that could be construed as locker room wall material for the Clinton team, or red meat for his supporters. In other words: make no headlines. Sen. Clinton, on the other hand, took the shots when offered, but took them in a toned down manner. She clearly wanted to provoke debate and wrestle some headlines for herself. Read the papers and watch THC cable shows today and you see she succeeded.

What does that say about their campaigns? I can’t be sure, but I get the sense that Obama sees the wave he’s riding and he doesn’t want to get in his own way by saying he’s the front runner. Clinton may say she’s got the lead, but she’s playing like the other team’s got the ball and the clock is running down.

And as for the looming matter of the Super delegates deciding this at the Convention this summer, it was interesting to note that Clinton assured me it won’t come to that – Obama wouldn’t say. Who do you think is?