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

MAKING IT: HOW CHICAGO SHAPED OBAMA
(Ryan Lizza, New Yorker)
Obama likes to discuss his unusual childhood—his abandonment by his father and his upbringing by a sometimes single mother and his grandparents in Indonesia and Hawaii—and the three years in the nineteen-eighties when he worked as a community organizer in Chicago, periods of his life chronicled at length in his first memoir, “Dreams from My Father.” He occasionally refers to his time in the United States Senate, which he wrote about in his second memoir, “The Audacity of Hope.” But his life in Chicago from 1991 until his victorious Senate campaign is a lacuna in his autobiography. It is also the period that formed him as a politician. Some Obama supporters professed shock when, recently, he abandoned a pledge to stay within the public campaign-finance system if the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, agreed to do the same. Preckwinkle’s concern about Obama—that he is a pure political animal—suddenly became more widespread; commentators abruptly stopped using the words “callow” and “naïve.” Chicago is not Obama’s home town, but it’s where he chose to forge his identity. Several weeks ago, he moved many of the Democratic National Committee’s operations from Washington to Chicago, making the city the unofficial capital of the Democratic Party; his campaign headquarters are in an office building in the Loop, Chicago’s downtown business district. But Chicago, with its reputation as a center of vicious and corrupt politics, may also be the place that Obama needs to leave behind.

MORE: In Obama's Circle, Chicago Remains the Tie That Binds (Shailagh Murray, Washington Post)
For once, Barack Obama left his iPod and stack of news clips at his seat and worked the front cabin of his campaign's chartered plane, laughing and reminiscing with the people who know him best. The senator from Illinois does not typically travel with an entourage, instead spending his time on the plane reading, working or listening to music. But this was a special occasion -- the night last month when he was claiming the Democratic presidential nomination. Joining him and his wife, Michelle, for the flight from Chicago to St. Paul, Minn., were half a dozen of their closest friends, a biracial cross section of the city's business and professional elite... Some were mainly social friends from Hyde Park, their Chicago neighborhood. Some have played a major role in Obama's campaign... Together they constitute the core of Obama's inner circle, the friends he had before he became a senator and entertained thoughts of the presidency, and who he would bring with him in a sense if he ends up in the White House.

MCCAIN'S HILLARY PROBLEM
(John Heilemann, New York)
In ways large and small, strategic and tactical, temperamental and attitudinal, the McCain campaign strikes me as having been cut from the same cloth as Hillary Clinton’s. Same story with the candidates themselves, in particular when it comes to their jaundiced perceptions of their rival. For supporters of Barack Obama, this might seem cheery news, since those perceptions led Clinton time and again to misplay her hand. But general elections are very different from primaries—and there are reasons to worry that Clintonianism, taken to its logical (and gruesome) extreme, may serve McCain better than it did the real McCoy. That Clinton and McCain would run similar races might seem odd. Their ideological differences are severe, and no one sane would ever call Clinton a maverick or McCain a feminist. But it’s also true that they share a view of politics and policy... It was this conception of politics and the presidency, however, that got Hillary into so much trouble in her battle with Obama. And while McCain largely avoids the rhetorical traps she fell into—the laundry-listy rhetoric, the countless small-bore policy proposals—the thrust of his campaign is much the same as hers was: The emphasis on résumé, the willful avoidance of grappling with the desire for change so evident in the electorate, and, perhaps most problematic, the eschewal of big, bold, animating ideas and grand thematics.

OBAMA: MY PLAN FOR IRAQ
(Barack Obama, New York Times)
The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States... Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government. But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

OBAMA, SHAMAN
(Michael Knox Beran, City Journal)
In the patois of punditry, “charismatic” has come to mean little more than “like a rock star.” But the striking thing about the charismatic leader is the extent to which his followers regard him as a healer of wounds, an alleviator of pain. In this sense, surely, Senator Barack Obama is charismatic. The carefully knotted ties and the dark, conservatively tailored suits only accentuate the exoticness of his shamanism; he has entered the American psyche not as a hero but as a healer.The country, or much of it, has longed for such a figure, a man from the once-oppressed race whose rise to power will atone for the sins of slavery and racial stigmatization. But Obama’s rhetoric encompasses more than a promise of racial healing. He is not the first politician to argue that politics can redeem us, but in posing as the Adonis who will turn winter into spring, he revives one of the more pernicious political swindles: the belief that a charismatic leader can ordain a civic happy hour and give a people a sense of community that will make them feel less bad.

THE ENTHUSIASM GAP, PART II
(Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard)
This is McCain being McCain. He clearly believes that bipartisanship is among the highest virtues of political life. But it also reflects the campaign's strategic attempt to position McCain as a centrist in order to win the votes of independents and even some Democrats. There are risks to this strategy and the enthusiasm gap is chief among them. A Washington Post/ABC News poll last month found that nearly half of the liberals surveyed are enthusiastic about supporting Barack Obama, while only 13 percent of conservatives are enthusiastic about McCain. More generally, 91 percent of self-identified Obama supporters are "enthusiastic" about their candidate; 54 percent say they are "very enthusiastic." Seventy-three percent of such McCain supporters say they are "enthusiastic" about his candidacy, but only 17 percent say they are "very enthusiastic."... More troubling for the McCain campaign is that more than half of those who identified themselves as McCain backers--54 percent--say they are "less excited than usual" about their candidate. It is not surprising that conservatives are not warming to a candidate who likes to talk about climate change and government subsidies for displaced workers. But this coldness is increasingly alarming to some McCain backers. They believe that all of McCain's efforts to win over Democrats and independents can only pay off if he is able to get conservatives to turn out to vote for him in November.

NOT ALL DEMOCRATS WANT TO RIDE OBAMA'S COATTAILS
(June Kronholz, Wall Street Journal)
The Illinois senator is likely to spur voter turnout among African-Americans and college students in some districts where Democrats hope to pick up House seats now held by Republicans or to fend off Republican challenges. But other Democrats facing tough re-election campaigns could see Sen. Obama's politics and his weakness among working-class whites as a liability. "Some of these Democrats are trying to walk a fine line" between courting black voters and holding on to whites, said Nathan Gonzales of the Rothenberg Report, a nonpartisan political handicapper. Democratic candidates may embrace, ignore or run away from Sen. Obama, or perhaps some of each, he added. Meanwhile, vulnerable Republicans, many of whom are in closely divided or Democratic-leaning districts, could see John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, as an asset because of his appeal to independents. If the Arizona senator runs a competitive presidential race, he "could provide air cover for our candidates" in what could otherwise be a difficult year for Republicans, said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who heads the Republicans' House re-election campaign.

MCCAIN VERSUS THE EIGHT-YEAR ELECTORAL JINX
(Robert David Sullivan, Boston Globe)
President Bush has left presumptive GOP nominee John McCain with a lot of problems, but the biggest may be the weak 50.7 percent of the vote that Bush received when running for reelection. That's a problematic number because American political parties almost always lose support when trying to secure a third term in the White House. The last time that a party improved its vote percentage after two terms was in 1928, when Republican Herbert Hoover soundly beat Democrat Al Smith, the first Catholic to be nominated to the presidency. Maybe Barack Obama's status as another "first" will bring about another exception to the rule. Then again, Smith wasn't on the ballot during an unpopular war and a scary economy. Since 1928, there have been six elections in which one of the major parties was seeking a third consecutive term in the White House - three for each major party. Only two attempts were successful. Democrat Franklin Roosevelt won a third term in 1940, and Republican George H. W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan in 1988; in both cases, the vote was much closer than it had been in the previous election. Not so lucky were Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Gerald Ford in 1976, and Al Gore in 2000. In 24 states, the party seeking a third term lost ground in all six elections. These include Michigan, which the McCain campaign is targeting as its best chance to pick up a state won by John Kerry in 2004, and also the states of Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia, which the GOP is struggling to keep in its column this year.

MCCAIN TAKES A SOCIAL SECURITY RISK
(Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times)
It was a spectacular flop: a president making dozens of fruitless trips around the country to build support for a plan his own party's leadership refused to accept. But President Bush's failed push to privatize Social Security has not deterred John McCain from putting forward the same idea -- and from risking a similar political disaster. McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, spoke several times last week about changing how the popular retirement program is funded, at one point calling it a "disgrace" that younger workers are forced to pay for a plan that, in his view, is unlikely to benefit them when they retire. Democrats are gearing up to turn McCain's stand on Social Security, and his willingness to consider a privatization plan, into a key campaign issue. They say changing the program in that way would undermine retirees' benefits, and they hope to use the issue to harm the Arizona senator's support among a set of voters who tilt toward him -- seniors.

MCCAIN FINDS INSPIRATION IN ANOTHER GOP MAVERICK
(Jill Zuckman, Chicago Tribune)
At his Hidden Valley ranch near Sedona, Ariz., Sen. John McCain takes his guests for long hikes across the creek and up the hill, pointing out species of birds, plants and wildlife, and occasionally serving as medic to extract cactus thorns from his friends. The 67 bird species that populate the valley provide McCain with fodder for noting a black hawk's nest, a woodpecker's favorite post or a story about the time he watched a bird teach its baby to fly. In many ways, McCain's Arizona weekends are a reflection of himself, but also one of his favorite presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, a naturalist, taxidermist, hunter, explorer and father of what later became the National Park Service. "If you wanted to get some insight into John McCain, what kind of figures in history that he has a good view of, Roosevelt would be at the top," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.. "He understood that Teddy Roosevelt was a flawed man, but yeah, he admires his grit, determination, taking on the special interests, his foreign policy expertise. He's a real admirer of T.R."

CANDIDATES' TAX PLANS AGREE: MORE DEBT
(David M. Dickson, Washington Times)
The differences between the tax policies being promoted by Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are stark, but neither candidate's proposal tackles the nation's worsening fiscal problems, analysts say. If Congress fully adopts the next president's tax policies unrelated to health care, average federal taxes in 2009 for the middle fifth of the American population would decline by $1,042 under an Obama administration and by $319 under a McCain administration, according to an analysis of their plans by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC), a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. Likely Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, one of only two Republican senators to vote against both the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, would extend nearly all of the cuts beyond their 2010 expiration. His plan applies a 15 percent rate to estates worth more than $5 million. Meanwhile, with congressional approval, average federal taxes for the top one-tenth of 1 percent of the population, which includes households that earn at least $2.9 million, would rise by more than $700,000 next year if Mr. Obama becomes president and would fall by nearly $270,000 if Mr. McCain wins the election.

FLIP-FLOP-O-RAMA
David Broder: Obama's case is more challenging than the typical candidate's post-primary adjustment. For one thing, he is more opaque than the usual nominee. No one in recent decades has emerged as the party standard-bearer from so truncated a political career: four years in the United States Senate, during which he has yet to lead on any major domestic or foreign policy issue, preceded by largely anonymous service in the Illinois state Senate. There have been few occasions when Obama's professed beliefs can be tested against his action. And in the fight for the nomination, virtually no issues emerged on which Obama's stands were seriously challenged by his opponents. He won by convincing a narrow majority of Democratic voters that he could mobilize otherwise distrustful and alienated citizens with his promise to change Washington and to introduce a more open and less partisan brand of politics. Because his personal credibility was such a key to his success -- and remains so -- the changes now occurring in his positions have a significance far beyond themselves... Obama is making it hard for the Republicans to figure out how to attack him. The risk for him is if he also frustrates those voters' need to understand what makes him tick. They don't elect enigmas to the Oval Office.

Hendrik Hertzberg: Obama, it turns out, is a politician. In this respect, he resembles the forty-three Presidents he hopes to succeed, from the Father of His Country to the wayward son, Alpha George to Omega George. Winning a Presidential election doesn’t require being all things to all of the people all of the time, but it does require being some things to most of the people some of the time. It doesn’t require saying one thing and also saying its opposite, but it does require saying more or less the same thing in ways that are understood in different ways. They’re all politicians, yes—very much including Obama, as Ryan Lizza shows elsewhere in this issue. But that doesn’t mean they’re all the same.