A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

MCCAIN CAMP, IN RELAUNCH, SEEKS TIGHTER MESSAGE FOCUS
(Elizabeth Holmes and Laura Meckler, Wall Street Journal)
John McCain will spend the coming week talking about the economy, but the Republican presidential candidate isn't expected to say anything new. Rather, he will repackage proposals he has already outlined -- ones the campaign fears nobody heard. "We don't think we've made the case eloquently," Doug Holtz-Eakin, the campaign's policy director, said...  The goal is to put out a consistent message each day that can penetrate voters' minds. The ability to control a certain story line through a 24-hour news cycle is seen as one element of a successful modern political campaign and, so far, Sen. Obama has been seen as better at sticking to his chosen theme for a day than has Sen. McCain... The McCain makeover involves a complex task: How to control a politician best known for ask-anything town-hall meetings and long, rambling conversations with reporters on his campaign bus -- and, now, on his campaign plane, dubbed the Straight Talk Express.

OBAMA'S ODDS
(Charlie Cook, National Journal)
If you believe the Intrade betting odds, Barack Obama has a 65 percent chance of beating John McCain in November. Similarly, in the Iowa Electronic Markets, Obama has a 64 per-cent chance of winning. Indeed, a look at much of the polling data might lead one to conclude that Obama does in fact have a 2-1 chance of becoming the next president. And yet most trial heats show the presumptive Democratic nominee with an advantage of just 4 to 6 percentage points--a fairly insignificant edge and certainly not one to warrant such favorable odds.

ECONOMY'S MOVE TO THE FORE POSES PROBLEMS FOR BOTH CANDIDATES
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
Not since at least 1980, when the United States was reeling from the oil shocks, inflation and slow growth of the previous decade, has the economy been in worse shape heading into the heart of a presidential campaign. ... Both candidates plan to spend this week focusing almost entirely on the economy. But both face political problems with the issue. Mr. McCain ... has been shadowed by his statements earlier in the campaign that he is not expert in the subject of the economy and by the likelihood that voters will associate him with the economic policies of the Bush administration... Mr. Obama ... has had difficulty connecting with working-class voters, and his more ambitious responses to economic problems like expanding access to health insurance would be paid for in part by tax increases, always a risky proposition. The two campaigns are retooling strategies and preparing for what aides said would be months of economic speeches, town-hall-style meetings on the economy and economic proposals, both new and repackaged--testimony to how the campaigns view the electoral environment.

MORE: McCain Promises to Balance Budget (Mike Allen, Politico)
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to promise on Monday that he will balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by curbing wasteful spending and overhauling entitlement programs, including Social Security, his advisers told Politico. The vow to take on Social Security puts McCain in a political danger zone that thwarted President Bush after he named it the top domestic priority of his second term... The pledge is a return to an earlier position he'd later backed away from. On April 15, McCain backed off a February pledge to balance the budget in his first term when asked about it by Michael Cooper of  The New York Times, who reported that McCain said “at a news conference … that ‘economic conditions are reversed’ and that he would have a balanced budget within eight years.” McCain advisers admit that the document is a repackaging of previous policies, without dramatic new initiatives.

CONSERVATIVES READY TO BATTLE MCCAIN ON CONVENTION PLATFORM
(Michael D. Shear, Washington Post)
Conservative activists are preparing to do battle with allies of Sen. John McCain in advance of September's Republican National Convention, hoping to prevent his views on global warming, immigration, stem cell research and campaign finance from becoming enshrined in the party's official declaration of principles. McCain has not yet signaled the changes he plans to make in the GOP platform, but many conservatives say they fear wholesale revisions could emerge as candidate McCain seeks to put his stamp on a document that currently reflects the policies and principles of President Bush. 

OBAMA FACES RESISTANCE FROM TOP SUPPORTERS OF CLINTON
(John R. Emshwiller and Christopher Cooper, Wall Street Journal)
Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, faces dissent from dozens of top fund-raisers and other supporters of former rival Sen. Hillary Clinton, who are angry over how she was treated during their bruising primary battle and are hesitating to back Sen. Obama. Some leading Clinton supporters are starting new Web sites or political action committees aimed at prodding Sen. Obama on issues or pressuring him to give Sen. Clinton a big role in the general-election campaign. People familiar with the matter say the effort involves dozens of the roughly 300 Clinton "Hillraisers," individuals who raised at least $100,000 [for Clinton's presidential campaign].

IN ORGANIZING, OBAMA LED WHILE FINDING HIS PLACE
(Serge Kovaleski, New York Times)
Mr. Obama’s three-year stretch as a grass-roots organizer has figured prominently, if not profoundly, in his own narrative of his life. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Obama called it “the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” an education that he said was “seared into my brain.”... In recent days, Mr. Obama has imbued those years with even greater significance, invoking them last week as inspiration for his plan to deliver social services through religious organizations... During that time, Mr. Obama found a home at the center of the country after spending most of his first 23 years in Hawaii and Indonesia. He also both lived and worked extensively for the first time in an African-American community. At a very local level he learned to bring people together around causes and to mobilize them with his words.

BARACK OBAMA'S APPLE PIE CAMPAIGN
(Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin, Politico)
The Democrat has started his general election campaign by aggressively counter-punching not his opponent but potentially lethal ghosts: whispers about his religion, his past and his patriotism, all wound uncomfortably around his mixed-race identity... To introduce Obama to those voters who are just beginning to tune in to the race, the campaign followed the family story spot with a second multi-state television ad featuring the country’s first African American major party nominee surrounded by, and even embracing, groups of blue-collar, workaday white Americans.  He’s matching his television blitz with campaign-trail appearances rife with Americana. Touching down in heavily-white communities in Missouri, Ohio, Colorado and North Dakota last week, Obama paid homage to patriotism, faith, service to the community and military service—every national touchstone beside baseball and apple pie.

GOP'S SUBURBAN ADVANTAGE FADING WITH TIME?
(Robert David Sullivan, Boston Globe)
For several decades, the Republican Party has thrived in fast-growing communities, first in the West and then in the South. In 2004, President Bush won 84 of the 100 counties with the greatest percentage increase in votes since the previous presidential election, doing especially well in the low-density "exurbs" of Atlanta, Dallas, and Nashville. In Georgia's Paulding County, the number of votes was up 67 percent (from 24,000 to 40,000), and Bush won by almost 3 to 1. Statistics like these reinforce the impression of the GOP as the party of the future, ready to take advantage of American migratory trends. So why is the Republican Party in danger of losing the White House? One reason is that while the GOP is popular in settlement suburbs, it seems to lose appeal when those suburbs mature and become more crowded.

SCRUTINY, OPPORTUNITY AWAITS NEXT PRESIDENTIAL KIDS
(Associated Press)
Young Tad Lincoln herded goats into a White House sitting room. Quentin Roosevelt rammed his wagon into a historic painting. John Kennedy Jr. had to be scooped out of a hiding place in his father's desk. Amy Carter famously brought a book to a state dinner. And teenager Susan Ford, in a mini-revolt, dodged the Secret Service for a brief taste of freedom on the streets of Washington. Malia Obama turned 10 last week, and her sister Sasha is 6. Should their father, Barack, win the election, they'd be the youngest kids in the White House since Amy Carter arrived at age 9. They, too, would become the subjects of anecdotes that wind up in history books. They'd have challenges that face few children. Their fashion faux pas, the first braces on their teeth, even their first boyfriends might be documented forever. Their parents' choice of school — public or private? — would be debated. They could even find themselves, like Chelsea Clinton at 13, the subject of an unkind reference on "Saturday Night Live" to her adolescent looks. But whether it's the Obama girls or the older children of John McCain — 16-year-old Bridget is the youngest of his seven — the next presidential progeny will also have an unparalleled view of history in the making, and worldly experiences other children can only dream of.

ROMNEY, MCCAIN'S 'LOGICAL CHOICE,' MUST OVERCOME PRIMARY ANIMUS
(Heidi Przybyla, Bloomberg News)
The prerequisites for John McCain's running mate are clear: a Washington outsider with solid economic credentials who isn't associated with President George W. Bush, can fill the vice-presidential attack-dog role, help win Western and Midwestern states and cut into Democrat Barack Obama's fundraising advantage. One candidate fits the bill: former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. The challenge would be in overcoming the animus that set in between Romney and the presumptive Republican nominee during the party's primaries...McCain's second-tier advisers have been arguing for Romney ``for a long time,'' said Vin Weber, who was Romney's policy chairman on the campaign. For the moment, though, ``I still don't see any evidence we have anyone'' in McCain's inner circle making the case.

THE OTHER WOMAN
(Walter Shapiro, Salon)
Perhaps more politically relevant than her gender, Sebelius as veep would accentuate Obama's professed vision of a post-partisan America... Aside from perhaps New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, it is hard to think of a political figure who operates in a more inclusive fashion than Sebelius. "It's the only way she can be an effective governor in a Republican state," says Mark Parkinson, a former GOP state chairman who abandoned his party to successfully run with Sebelius for lieutenant governor in 2006. Mike Hayden, a Republican governor in the 1980s who now serves in the Sebelius Cabinet, adds, "Kathleen does have this great ability to reach across the partisan divide."