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

THE AUDACITY OF LISTENING
(Gail Collins, New York Times)
I know, I know. You’re upset. You think the guy you fell in love with last spring is spending the summer flip-flopping his way to the right. Drifting to the center. Going all moderate on you. So you’re withholding the love. Also possibly the money. I feel your pain. I just don’t know what candidate you’re talking about... If you look at the political fights [Obama]’s picked throughout his political career, the main theme is not any ideology. It’s that he hates stupidity. “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war,” he said in 2002 in his big speech against the invasion of Iraq. He did not, you will notice, say he was against unilateral military action or pre-emptive attacks or nation-building. He was antidumb. Most of the things Obama’s taken heat for saying this summer fall into these two familiar patterns — attempts to find a rational common ground on controversial issues and dumb-avoidance. On the common-ground front, he’s called for giving more federal money to religious groups that run social programs, but only if the services they offer are secular. People can have guns for hunting and protection, but we should crack down on unscrupulous gun sellers. Putting some restrictions on the government’s ability to wiretap is better than nothing, even though he would rather have gone further. Dumb-avoidance would include his opposing the gas-tax holiday, backtracking on the anti-Nafta pandering he did during the primary and acknowledging that if one is planning to go all the way to Iraq to talk to the generals, one should actually pay attention to what the generals say.

OBAMA'S IDEOLOGY PROVING DIFFICULT TO PINPOINT
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama put himself on the opposite side of his party's leadership in the Senate yesterday by reversing course to support a compromise intelligence surveillance bill. His vote was the most dramatic in a series of moves toward the middle that have focused new attention on where he stands and where he would take the country... One factor in Obama's success has been his ability to confound both left and right. But while that may be a measure of a skillful politician determined to win a general election, it has left unanswered important questions about his core principles and his presidential priorities. How well he answers them over the coming months will determine the outcome of his race against Republican Sen. John McCain.  

DEMOCRATS TAKE OBAMA SHIFT IN STRIDE
(Michael Finnegan and Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times)
As Barack Obama moves to broaden his appeal beyond loyal Democrats, a chorus of anger and disappointment has arisen from the left. But those voices are a distinct minority because the party has a more pressing concern: winning in November. On Wednesday, Obama again bucked his liberal allies, voting in the Senate to give legal immunity to phone companies that took part in warrantless wiretapping after the Sept. 11 attacks. Critics chided Obama for the vote -- which put him crossways with dozens of Democratic colleagues, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. he vote, a reversal of an earlier pledge, was Obama's latest perceived step away from his party's base on a range of issues, among them the death penalty, gun control and taxpayer money for religious groups. Reaction has been swift and -- aside from the blogosphere and some newspaper columnists -- notably mild. "We're willing to work through this period," said Richard Parker, president of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, one of the party's most enduring advocacy groups. In the long run, he said, the organization's "serious concerns" about Obama are far outweighed by its disagreements with Republican John McCain.

BARACK'S BRILLIANT GROUND GAME
(Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal)
Mr. Obama's people admit they want to sucker Mr. McCain into spending money. To be successful, a bluff must be credible. In places like Nebraska and North Dakota, Mr. Obama can't rely on local issues – like Mr. Bush did with coal in West Virginia in 2000 – to unexpectedly win a critical state. Organization alone won't suffice. And putting Obama dollars into Texas, for example, to help win five state House seats may simply cause Texan Republicans – not Mr. McCain – to raise money and work harder to counter. Democrats don't have the same large volunteer pool the GOP does with its Federated GOP Women, College and Young Republicans, and local party committees. In the primaries, Mr. Obama instead moved hordes of volunteers from state to state. It was a brilliant tactic, but Nov. 4 is different. The volunteers adequate for primaries held over five months will simply not be enough to compete in 51 separate elections (all 50 states plus the District of Columbia) all on one day. Mr. Obama's biggest problem is that when it comes to substance, he's following the playbook of a Republican other than George W. Bush. In 2000, Mr. Bush won the general election on the same themes and positions as in the primaries, including compassionate conservatism, the faith-based initiative, tax cuts and Social Security reform. There was no repudiation of past positions, no chameleon-like shifts in positions. Instead of consistency, Mr. Obama has followed Richard Nixon's advice, to cater to his party's extreme in the primaries and then move aggressively to the middle for the fall.

SIX TYPES OF VOTERS WILL DECIDE THE ELECTION
(Susan Page, USA Today)
Obama dominates the two most energized groups of voters, 44% of the electorate combined, who are focused on a range of issues and say they won't change their choice of candidate between now and November. McCain's strongholds are two groups of voters at the other end of the spectrum, 28% of the electorate in all, who are skeptical that the election results will make any difference in their lives and are less enthusiastic about voting than usual. A cluster of more upbeat GOP-leaning voters remains in the middle and up for grabs. In all, 67% of Obama supporters say they're more excited than usual about voting, compared with 31% of McCain backers. A 54% majority of McCain voters report being less excited than usual. Political strategists who have run national campaigns say that enthusiasm gap underscores an uphill climb ahead for McCain — and reflects a risk for Obama. Everything is harder when your backers are downbeat, says Tony Fabrizio, the pollster for Republican Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, which struggled to generate voter excitement.

CARLY FIORINA'S FUZZY MCCAIN-SPEAK
(Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times)
Carly Fiorina is one of John McCain's chief surrogates, talking him up particularly to that key target group, women. But Fiorina, ousted as chief of Hewlett-Packard in 2005, is not above rounding the edges on straight talk. On Monday, as she discussed healthcare, Fiorina veered from a discussion of Viagra -- never a good idea for a campaign surrogate -- and seemed to stake out a new stance for McCain."Let me give you a real, live example, which I've been hearing a lot about from women. There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won't cover birth control medication. Those women would like a choice," she said. But as the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America was happy to point out, McCain twice voted against measures that would have required insurance companies to cover birth control -- in 2003 and 2005. The Republican said Wednesday that he did not recall those votes. "It's something that I had not thought much about," he added. A campaign aide who refused to speak by name said the Arizona senator opposed all mandates. It is not the first time that Fiorina has taken some license with McCain's positions.

MCCAIN ADVISER SALTER WRITES, SPEAKS AND FIGHTS FOR CANDIDATE
(Edwin Chen, Bloomberg News)
John McCain has run for president twice, gone through four campaign managers, written five books and delivered hundreds of speeches. The one constant: Mark Salter, the Arizona senator's longtime aide and alter ego. Salter, 53, is his most trusted adviser, traveling companion, image-shaper, sounding board, wordsmith and defender. He weighs in on almost every campaign decision, and in McCain's absence, even speaks for the presumptive Republican nominee. "He's like a brother,'' said McCain, 71. "There's no one closer to me in my life, besides my wife and kids.'' No president or potential president has had such a close relationship with an aide since John F. Kennedy relied on the counsel of his brother Robert Kennedy and speechwriter Theodore Sorensen, said Fred I. Greenstein, a historian at Princeton University in New Jersey. Salter can read McCain's moods -- and anticipate his reactions and needs -- more keenly than anyone, allowing him to survive two shakeups of the campaign staff within a year.

WHAT ABOUT BOB? GOP MUM ON BARR
(Ben Adler, Politico)
If Republicans are worried about the third-party presidential candidacy of former GOP Rep. Bob Barr and the possibility that he could win enough votes to affect the outcome in several states, they aren’t showing it. At present there are no plans to follow the time-honored method of dealing with pesky third-party candidates by seeking to knock Barr off various state ballots. Indeed, when asked for comment about the Barr campaign, John McCain’s campaign flat out declined to offer one. Underscoring that indifferent approach, the Republican National Committee offered this response when asked about the former conservative congressman from Georgia. “We’re confident that McCain’s record of putting the country before politics will appeal to voters of all walks of life,” said RNC spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson. “Right now, we’re focused on John McCain’s message.” The GOP strategy toward the Libertarian Party nominee presents a stark contrast to 2004, when Democrats aggressively challenged left-leaning independent candidate Ralph Nader’s ballot petitions in order to remove him from the ballot in places where he might siphon critical votes from nominee John Kerry.

AMERICA GETS TO KNOW OBAMA, AND VICE VERSA
(Jeff Zeleny, New York Times)
Senator Barack Obama marveled at the view here in Big Sky Country. He discovered that the gumbo in New Orleans was far tastier than in Chicago. And he was pleasantly surprised that he loved Austin, Tex., and its music — but who doesn’t? The presidential campaign has not only given the country a chance to meet Mr. Obama. It has also given Mr. Obama a chance to meet the country, taking him to large swaths of the United States that he has never seen before. Since his political rise began less than four years ago, he has visited New Orleans, toured parts of the Great Plains and traveled across the South — all for the first time. He made a nighttime stop to Mount Rushmore, paid his respects at the grave of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and dropped by the home of President Harry S. Truman. Not since he was 11, when he traveled through a handful of states with his mother, grandmother and sister — by Greyhound bus, train and an occasional rental car — has Mr. Obama seen this much of America. Having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia and spending much of his adult life in large cities, Mr. Obama, 46, is now acquainting himself more deeply with his country and finds himself unusually surprised by some of his findings.

COULD THE CONVENTION HURT OBAMA?
(Steven Stark, Boston Phoenix)
In the modern age, America's major-party conventions are love fests, feting their preselected nominees. But that may not be the case this year for Barack Obama, which means the Democratic Convention even has the potential to derail his chances for victory in November. The press has been slow to notice the potential trouble ahead, but the Obama camp has not. In the past week, the media has rather dutifully reported that the key final night of the Democratic convention (Thursday, August 28) -- the night Obama will give his all-important acceptance speech -- will be moved out of the convention hall and into a stadium. The story being spun is that the Obama team wanted to share its Thursday-night magic moment with the masses, and take a page from the playbook of John F. Kennedy, who pulled a similar move when he accepted his nomination in 1960 in an outdoor venue. In truth, the Kennedy homage likely had little to do with the decision. Before the change, Obama was scheduled to give his speech in a hall half full of hardcore Hillary Clinton supporters who don't particularly like him. So odds are that Obama was looking for a larger venue in which Clinton's supporters would be only a small portion of the crowd. If things had gone ahead as scheduled, Obama might well have given a stirring address, only to have it met with indifference on the floor -- and that would be too big a story for the media to downplay. Already, even under the best of circumstances, the first three days of the Democratic National Convention aren't going to give Obama the boost he'd like.

WEARING OUT THE BRAND
(Todd Domke, Boston Globe)
Are you tired of the word "brand"? Political pundits apparently love it. "Barack Obama is three things you want in a brand. New, different, and attractive." "John McCain has a strong brand identity as being a maverick." "Obama and his senior advisers crafted a strategy to fit the Obama brand." "McCain's out there working on his brand: I'm a different kind of Republican." Even many journalists who are jargon-wary, fad-wary, and capitalism-wary find the B word irresistible. Yet the candidate-as-brand idea demeans the candidates and the voters. As Democratic presidential nominee Adlai E. Stevenson said in 1956, "The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal . . . is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process." Brand is the identity of a company or product, symbolized by its logo and slogan. Talking about a candidate's brand - rather than reputation or record - implies that the candidate is a packaged product and voters are mere consumers... Perhaps TV reporters have so rationalized how marketing has turned broadcast news into "infotainment" that they like to feel that candidates are in show business too. Maybe they view would-be presidents as fellow Teleprompter-readers, not real leaders. Regardless, to have a well-informed electorate we need journalists to act as professional skeptics, not cynics. Many voters are already cynical about the democratic process. When they hear reporters criticize a candidate for "not staying on message," instead of reporters urging candidates to open up and be less scripted, how can voters not feel that something's wrong with the process?