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

THE AMAZINGLY SUPERFICIAL RACE
(Noam Scheiber, New Republic)
This past week has brought endless chatter about all the potential pitfalls and opportunities Obama faces. For the life of me, I'm having trouble identifying the former. Yes, a gaffe would be damaging amid all the glare. But so much more damaging than a gaffe at home? It's not like Obama's comments on the campaign trail don't already attract incredible scrutiny here and abroad... More to the point, there won't be many opportunities for gaffes. Gaffes generally require a modicum of spontaneity. And the Obama expedition, far more so than the typical campaign appearance, is being stage managed to the extreme. Obama will be hauled in and out of meetings, as he was this weekend in Iraq and Afghanistan; he will wave alongside foreign leaders; he will pose before iconic vistas. But the words will be kept to a minimum, and when they're offered, they will most likely be offered to American reporters--like the three network news anchors all scrambling for face time. "It's not a knowledge quiz. It's more visceral than that," Richard Haass, a top former Bush State Department official told Time last week. "Americans need to have a sense that this person can hold his own." Translation: These trips are about atmospherics, with the foreign locales serving as sophisticated props.

MORE: Obama Asserts His Americanness (Ben Smith, Politico)
Barack Obama will appear this week before the American public in a new role: as an American abroad. And he's putting the stress squarely on "American." In a presidential campaign where the Democrat faces an especially intense variation of a familiar Republican assault — that he is, in some sense, not "one of us," the trip abroad represents an opportunity for Obama to assert that he is, rather, not one of them. 

THE BLAIR EFFECT: HERO ABROAD, LIABILITY AT HOME
(Sarah Baxter, London Times)
If Britain and Europe could vote, he would win the White House in a landslide. A poll in The Guardian last week showed that Obama would trounce John McCain, his Republican rival, in Britain by a margin of five votes to one. France and Germany are even more ardent members of Obamaland. Obama has been called the “black Kennedy” by a Berlin newspaper. Der Spiegel has run a cover feature on “The Messiah factor . . . and the yearning for a new America”. Le Monde has proclaimed, “Obamamania has spread to France”. Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European studies at Oxford, has compared the phenomenon with Dianamania. In America, however, Obama is struggling to convince voters that he is The Chosen One. While he is supported abroad by almost everybody from French communists to German greens and plenty of British conservatives, his victory at home is far from assured.

MCCAIN IS ODD MAN OUT ON 'TIME HORIZON'
(David Paul Kuhn, Politico)
It may not sway many voters, but on Friday, as Barack Obama embarked on an extended trip abroad intended in large part to relieve concerns about his commander in chief bona fides, the terms of debate on Iraq began a dramatic shift that appears to favor his candidacy. President Bush, who’d been opposed to any timetable for removing American forces from Iraq, reached an agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to set a “general time horizon” for a withdrawal.  “It’s a devastating blow to the McCain campaign — not just that Maliki moved to Obama’s position but that Bush did as well,” said Richard Holbrooke, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations for the Clinton administration. Saturday, the shift continued when the German magazine Der Spiegel ran an interview with Maliki in which he called for U.S. troops to withdraw “as soon as possible, as far as we're concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.” (While a spokesperson for Maliki later claimed the prime minister’s comments "were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately,” Der Spiegel stood by its report and The New York Times late last night verified the translation’s accuracy.)  For the first time in the national security debate, Obama’s advisers believe that McCain has been placed on the defensive, since his reluctance to support a “time horizon” now differs not only with the position of his Democratic opponent but also with those of the White House and the Iraqi prime minister. 

MORE: News in Hot Spots Appears to Aid Obama (Jonathan Martin, Politico)
Barack Obama's long-awaited and much-hyped trip overseas, in large part intended to overcome a perception that he’s not up to the job of commander-in-chief, seems to have come at the perfect time as recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran have played into his message. Afghanistan, which Obama has long said should be the central front in the battle against Islamic extremism, returned to the front pages last week when militants breached a compound and killed nine U.S. soldiers, adding heft to reports over the last several months that the Taliban is resurgent there. Then, in a reversal, the Bush administration sent Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William J. Burns, the third-ranking official in the State Department, to Switzerland this weekend for a formal meeting with Iranian officials and representatives from other countries about Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The meeting was, the New York Times noted, “the highest-level session between the countries during the Bush administration.” But it’s Iraq where Obama got perhaps his most significant bon voyage gift. 

AFTER 2000, MCCAIN LEARNED TO WORK LEVERS OF POWER
(David D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times)
Previously a marginal player better known for heckling the Senate than for influencing it, Mr. McCain returned from the 2000 campaign with a new national reputation and a new political sophistication. Over the next eight years, he mastered the art of political triangulation — variously teaming up with Mr. Lott against the president or the new Republican leaders, with Democrats against Republicans, and with the president against the Democrats — to become perhaps the chamber’s most influential member... To partisans on either side, Mr. McCain’s path could be puzzling, even infuriating. On the defining issue of the Iraq war, he hammered both sides: the White House for its execution of the conflict and the Democrats for their opposition. On immigration, he joined the Democrats and the White House to battle his own party. And to the Republican leaders, he was a serial turncoat on other domestic matters, marching at the head of a Democratic column into fights over tax cuts, campaign finance restrictions, Alaskan oil drilling, access to generic drugs, gun-show sales, pollution caps, the 9/11 commission and the use of torture.

OBAMA'S WAR ZONE GUIDES
(Karen Tumulty, Time) 
Few know better than Jack Reed how to get beyond the customary Green Zone briefings that visiting VIPs typically get in Iraq. The Rhode Island Senator, a West Point grad and former Army Ranger who now is one of the senior Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been to Iraq 11 times, typically traveling without an entourage into battle zones, where he can talk more frankly to the grunts and mid-level officers. None other than presumptive G.O.P. nominee John McCain told the Providence Journal in 2005: "Jack travels to Iraq, he has friends in Iraq, and because of his many connections, Jack sees things in Iraq that a lot of us don't get to see." So it was no surprise that Obama reached out to Reed again last month, as he was beginning to plan a return trip to Iraq — this time as the presumptive Democratic nominee, running on a promise to get the troops out. Reed and another Army veteran — Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who received two Purple Hearts in Vietnam — will accompany Obama, not only to Iraq, but also to Afghanistan, where Obama has pledged to intensify the military effort.

MCCAIN AND OBAMA AGREE TO ATTEND MEGACHURCH FORUM
(Jim Rutenberg, New York Times)
It has taken a man of God, perhaps, to do what nobody else has been able to do since the general election season began: Get Barack Obama and John McCain together on the same stage before their party conventions later this summer. The Rev. Rick Warren has persuaded the candidates to attend a forum at his Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, Calif., on Aug. 16. In an interview, Mr. Warren said over the weekend that the presidential candidates would appear together for a moment but that he would interview them in succession at his megachurch... The forum still falls short of the kind of face-to-face, town-hall-style debates that Mr. McCain, of Arizona, has called for this summer before formal debates scheduled for this fall. Mr. Warren, the author of the best-selling book “The Purpose-Driven Life,” said he had called each man personally to invite him to his event, which will focus on how they make decisions and on some of Mr. Warren’s main areas of focus, like AIDS, poverty and the environment.

NUCLEAR POWER A THORNY ISSUE FOR CANDIDATES
(David Kestenbaum, NPR)
Nuclear power doesn't usually make for an applause line in a stump speech, but it has come up on the campaign trail. Both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain see it as a way to combat climate change, though they've sometimes chosen their words with care. Of the two, McCain is the most comfortable with the topic. As a Navy pilot, he landed on aircraft carriers, which today are essentially floating nuclear-powered cities. McCain calls nuclear "one of the cleanest, safest and most reliable energy sources on Earth." "If we want to arrest global warming, then nuclear energy is a powerful, powerful ally in that cause," he said in a May speech. McCain's enthusiasm for nuclear has put him in unusual territory for a Republican: He's been praising the French, who generate 80 percent of their power from nuclear. Obama's position is also somewhat unusual for a Democrat: He thinks nuclear power might be a good idea. The question came up during an early Democratic primary debate.

CLOSED MOUTHS, BUT OPEN TRYOUTS TO MAKE THE TEAM
(Adam Nagourney and Patrick Healy, New York Times)
For all the lengths Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have gone to in keeping their hunt for a vice president under wraps, their deliberations are in some ways being conducted in plain sight. There was Mr. McCain appearing yet again with Mitt Romney, his former rival for the Republican nomination and a frequently mentioned possibility for the No. 2 spot, in Detroit on Friday. In Indiana last week, Mr. Obama appeared with two of the more speculated-about names on Democratic lists, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia. Mr. McCain walked down the steps of his chartered airplane in Minneapolis the other day to find Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota ready to introduce him to waiting dignitaries in front of a phalanx of cameras. On his trip to Afghanistan this weekend, Mr. Obama was accompanied by two senators whose foreign policy acumen and similar positions on the war make them intriguing long shots: Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska. This is not, aides to both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama were quick to say, the kind of vice-presidential Off Broadway run-throughs that some past candidates — think Walter F. Mondale in 1984 — have forced potential running mates to endure. But it is indeed calculated and does provide a chance for the candidates and their aides to assess how they and their prospective running mates look as a ticket, in the newspaper photographs and television images these events are producing.

BARACK WHO?
(Dan Eggen, Washington Post)
President Bush was asked twice last week about Sen. Barack Obama. In response, Bush never used the Democratic presidential candidate's name. As it turns out, Bush has uttered Obama's name only a handful of times since the senator from Illinois began running for the White House last year, according to a review of his public statements and appearances by Washington Post researcher Madonna Lebling. The last prominent reference came during a joke at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in April, when Bush quipped that "Senator Obama" was unable to attend because he was "at church." It was a reference to the candidate's troubles with his controversial former minister. During a fundraising speech in Michigan last month, Bush launched a detailed attack on Obama's policies -- but never uttered his name during the 20-minute address. Then at a news conference Tuesday, Bush responded to a reporter's question about Obama's plans for a Middle East trip by referring to "whoever goes there" and "whatever elected official goes there." Asked later about Obama's criticism of his Iraq policy, Bush said he is "loath to respond to a particular presidential candidate," and then responded without using the Democrat's name.

RISING VALUE OF A VOTE IN A STRUGGLING ECONOMY
(John Harwood, New York Times)
Senator Barack Obama is commanding headlines this week from Baghdad to Berlin. But the central front in his war for the White House with Senator John McCain remains communities back home like Warren, Mich.; Columbus, Ohio; and Wilkes-Barre, Pa... That provides an opening for Mr. McCain on the economy in his most important electoral targets. Mr. McCain has placed top priority on holding Ohio and reversing Democrats’ 2004 victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, whose combined 42 electoral votes exceed those of Mr. Obama’s critical red-state targets of Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and Virginia. “It’s not whether he wins or loses the issue nationally, it’s whether he wins it in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania,” Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster, said of the economy. That’s the turf Mr. McCain aims to occupy while Mr. Obama travels. Indeed, Mr. McCain’s strategists are seeking to leverage the extraordinary spectacle of Mr. Obama’s trip to their benefit. While the young Democrat draws rock-star attention, the veteran Republican will appear in small venues like grocery and hardware stores meant to convey his familiarity with average Americans’ economic struggles.

A TOP OBAMA FUNDRAISER HAD TIES TO FAILED BANK
(John R. Emshwiller, Wall Street Journal)
For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire. Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family's 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama's national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her -- and perhaps to the campaign. Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices.