Obama on "The O'Reilly Factor" Thursday (9/4)

Now this should be an interesting event.

Bill O'Reilly has been requesting this for yonks, and the Senator has finally assented to spend some quality time with the Fox commentator. This afternoon, Senator Obama will sit down with Bill O'Reilly for an interview that will be taped and broadcast across several episodes of The O'Reilly Factor. The show will feature the first part of the interview at 8:00 p.m. Thursday--right before Senator McCain accepts his party's nomination.

How does this help Obama? It presents him as a man willing to be available to people who disagree with him ideologically, and it provides him a massive audience (especially on Thursday: O'Reilly's show immediately precedes McCain's speech in St. Paul). The question is how much, if any, thunder might Obama nick from his opponent with this gambit?