paddingLeft within a TextFlow

I'm a little confused how the paddingleft, right, bottom, and top properties are supposed to be behave in a TextFlow. For instance, in the following, the only way to actually apply the padding left seems to be to apply the style to the TextFlow itself.

var tf:TextFlow = new TextFlow(null);
var p:ParagraphElement = new ParagraphElement();

var link:LinkElement = new LinkElement();
link.href = "http://www.adobe.com";
               
var linkSpan:SpanElement = new SpanElement();
linkSpan.text = "Some Text";
linkSpan.paddingLeft = 20;
link.paddingLeft = 20;

link.addChild(linkSpan);
               
p.addChild(link);
p.paddingLeft = 20;

//tf.paddingLeft = 20; // this sets the padding
tf.addChild(p);

Am I missing something? Thanks for any help.