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

FOR OBAMA, A FIRST STEP IS NOT A MISSTEP
(Richard A. Oppel, Jr., and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times)
The Iraqi government on Monday left little doubt that it favors a withdrawal plan for American combat troops similar to what Senator Barack Obama has proposed, providing Mr. Obama with a potentially powerful political boost on a day he spent in Iraq working to fortify his credibility as a wartime leader. After a day spent meeting Iraqi leaders and American military commanders, Mr. Obama seemed to have navigated one of the riskiest parts of a weeklong international trip without a noticeable hitch and to have gained a new opportunity to blunt attacks on his national security credentials by his Republican rival in the presidential race, Senator John McCain. Whether by chance or by design, the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq chose a day when Mr. Obama was in the country to provide its clearest statement yet about its views on the withdrawal of American troops. After a weekend of dispute about precisely what Mr. Maliki was suggesting, his spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told reporters in Baghdad, “We cannot give any timetables or dates, but the Iraqi government believes the end of 2010 is the appropriate time for the withdrawal.”

OBAMA'S UNPRECEDENTED TRIP
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
A veteran of former president Clinton's administration, someone who understands both politics and foreign policy, described this week's seven-nation trip as one of the four most important events for Obama between now and Election Day -- the others being his selection of a vice presidential running mate, his convention and his debates with McCain. What struck this person was the boldness of Obama's decision to spend more than a week abroad in the middle of a campaign. Not, of course, for the reasons Obama outlined, but no less an example of Obama's self-confidence. "This is a big-league move to directly address a concern that the American people are going to have" about his candidacy, he said. What is striking is how Obama's campaign differs from past Democratic campaigns. In earlier years, Democratic candidates couldn't wait to move off of foreign policy and onto domestic issues, aware that their party more or less owned the domestic debate, while Republicans generally held the high ground on national security. The more time they could spend focusing the contest on domestic issues, the better their chances of winning. That was true certainly for John F. Kerry against President Bush four years ago, and it's clear that the polls currently show that national security issues are McCain's one key area of strength against Obama. Obama's advisers believe the economy will dominate the fall campaign, but the candidate shows no indication that he will try to avoid engagement with McCain over foreign policy. The journey Obama began when he left Washington last Thursday is one wholly unique in the annals of presidential politics.

OBAMA'S IRAQ MISSION
(E.J. Dionne, Washington Post)
To win the presidency, Barack Obama needs only to battle John McCain to a tie on foreign policy and national security. That means Obama has no need for a great triumph during his trip this week to the Middle East and Europe. His goal is to look safe, sound and competent, and that's how he's playing things. More and more, 2008 is taking on the contours of 1980. Then, the country, desperate for change after the battering it felt it took during Jimmy Carter's term, was eager to vote for a new direction and a charismatic leader. But Ronald Reagan was inexperienced in foreign policy. Some of his past statements made swing voters worry that he might blow up the world -- or so Carter's strategists tried to get voters to think. The election stayed close until the final days. The key moment came in the campaign's single one-on-one debate. Carter may have prevailed on debating points but Reagan was the real winner because he came off as cool, calm and likable, and that was sufficient. In the week that followed, the bottom fell out on Carter. Obama is in an analogous situation. The country is at least as fed up with Bush as it was with Carter. Polls suggest that if Bush were on the ballot this year, Obama would sweep the country. The race is closer against McCain, who does not inspire the same rage and hatred Bush does. So Republicans hope that voters might yet find their way to voting their doubts about Obama.

A STRATEGY FOR MCCAIN
(Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review)
The good news for Republicans is that Obama can be beaten. The bad news is that the McCain campaign has embarked on a course that — although it has some of the right elements — seems likely to fail. McCain would be most comfortable running in accord with his particular notions of political virtue while emphasizing character, national security, and a few pet causes such as earmarks. If he wants to win, he has to leave his comfort zone. He should take a page from Hillary Clinton. She did not, of course, defeat Obama, but she road-tested a strategy that cost him support among crucial constituencies — and that strategy is even better suited to McCain’s general-election run than it was to her primary campaign... Once Clinton went after Obama in earnest, she came back. She surged on the strength of her “3 a.m. phone call” ad, which ran prior to the Ohio and Texas primaries and argued that she was better suited than the neophyte Obama to handle a crisis. And she rolled up her post-February wins on the basis of lunch-bucket appeals to working-class white and Hispanic voters. For a contemporary Democrat, Hillary ran a center-Right campaign; she talked of blowing Iran to smithereens, downed shots of Crown Royal, and appealed frankly to blue-collar whites. Many of these tactics had little substance, but they conveyed a sense of toughness that endeared Hillary to her voters and highlighted a vulnerability of the polished but aloof and fragile-seeming Obama.

MORE: Never Underestimate McCain, But... (Michael Grunwald, Time)
It was one thing when McCain was framing the election as a monumental decision of victory versus surrender; time horizon versus timetable is going to be a tougher sell. Meanwhile, Obama's campaign has been signing up thousands of new Democratic voters, and shoveling in cash it can use to introduce him to America. He could still foul up the debates, or make a monumental gaffe, or otherwise misplay his strong hand. It's still possible that something could happen — Castro's death? A Democratic scandal? — to shake up the dynamics of the race. In politics, anything's possible. That doesn't mean that anything's probable. The media will try to preserve the illusion of a toss-up; you'll keep seeing "Obama Leads, But Voters Have Concerns" headlines. But when Democrats are winning blood-red congressional districts in Mississippi and Louisiana, when the Republican president is down to 28 percent, when the economy is tanking and world affairs keep breaking Obama's way, it shouldn't be heresy to recognize that McCain needs an improbable series of breaks. Analysts get paid to analyze, and cable news has airtime to fill, so pundits have an incentive to make politics seem complicated. In the end, though, it's usually pretty simple. Everyone seems to agree that 2008 is a change election. Which of these guys looks like change?

IS THE MEDIA TRYING TO ELECT OBAMA?
(Dee Dee Myers, Vanity Fair)
It’s not surprising that voters, particularly those of the Republican persuasion, think the media is more or less in Obama’s pocket. A recent survey by Rasmussen found that 49 percent of the likely voters they talked to believed that reporters would favor Obama in their coverage, while just 14 percent said the same about McCain. Seventy-eight percent of Republicans thought the press would try and help Obama win, while only 21 percent of Democrats thought journalists were in bed with McCain. Complaints about bias are only exacerbated when the New York Times (the bête noire of the right) rejects an opinion piece written by McCain comparing his position on Iraq to Obama’s—just days after the Times ran a similar piece by Obama. Suspicions of pro-Obama bias began in the primaries. A Pew survey in late May and early June found that 37 percent of Americans believed that Obama received preferential coverage; only eight percent said the same about his principal opponent, Hillary Clinton. There are lot of “explanations” for the lopsided coverage: Obama is new and what’s new is “news.” As the first African-American to run a serious race, let alone win a major party’s nomination, Obama is running an historic campaign. Obama has created a “movement,” and Americans are simply more interested in him than in his opponents. Obama is running a smarter campaign, and he knows how to court media attention. It’s also true that intense media coverage is a double- edged sword: the attention is great when things are going well, but it can doom a candidate if and when things start to go badly. And so far, Obama has had way more good days than bad days. Each of those rationales is largely true—and somewhat less than satisfying.

MCCAIN'S MAVERICK SIDE: GRANDPA WOULD BE PROUD
(Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post)
Sometime around 1900, Archie Wright made his way from Mississippi to Indian country around present-day Muskogee, Okla., and proceeded to raise Cain: "Arch Wright Given Jail Sentence," read a headline in the Muskogee Times-Democrat in 1908. "Lots of Booze," the same paper reported six months later after deputy sheriffs raided Wright's house. That man, described in the local press at the time as a "well-known debonair, dead-game sport," was the maternal grandfather of Sen. John McCain. While much has been made of McCain's paternal lineage -- the upstanding admirals of the Navy -- less appears to be known about Arch Wright, who made a fortune on liquor, gambling and oil in Indian territory before relocating to Los Angeles with a sprawling clan in tow, including McCain's mother, Roberta Wright McCain. He died there in 1971, when McCain was being held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. A former McCain aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he continues to associate with the senator's staff, said McCain seldom spoke about his maternal grandfather. When he did allude to him, it was generally in the context of a scant summary of his mother's side of the family that included a respectful but cursory reference to Wright's success in the oil business.

OBAMA TO FACE SKEPTICISM DURING MIDEAST TRIP
(Sasha Issenberg, Boston Globe)
When he arrives in Israel today, Barack Obama will set off on the same type of dignitary circuit he has planned elsewhere on his foreign trip. But nowhere are he and his brand of charismatic internationalism likely to receive such a skeptical welcome. The difficulty Obama has encountered in trying to win over Israelis, whose attention to American politics revolves almost entirely around diplomatic and security policy toward the Middle East, magnifies a broader challenge that the presumptive Democratic nominee also faces at home. Despite indicating broad support for many of Obama's individual foreign-policy positions, polls have demonstrated American voters have far less confidence in his ability to serve as commander in chief than his Republican rival, John McCain... Neither candidate is particularly well known in Israel, according to analysts, but a smattering of polls have shown McCain leading Obama when Hebrew-speaking residents are given a matchup between the two or are asked which candidate they most trust. Polls taken during the Democratic primary season also indicated Obama trailing Hillary Clinton by considerable margins. (Obama led Clinton in one survey of Israeli Arabs this spring.) It is an unusual position for Obama, whose candidacy has engendered enthusiasm nearly everywhere else in the world where pollsters have tried to measure it.

MORE: Mideast Sees More of the Same if Obama is Elected (Michael Slackman and Isabel Kershner)
For what feels like forever, Israelis and their Arab neighbors have been hopelessly deadlocked on how to resolve the Palestinian crisis. But there is one point they may now agree on: If elected president, Senator Barack Obama will not fundamentally recalibrate America’s relationship with Israel, or the Arab world. From the religious center of Jerusalem to the rolling hills of Amman to the crowded streets of Cairo, dozens of interviews revealed a similar sentiment: the United States will ultimately support Israel over the Palestinians, no matter who the president is. That presumption promoted a degree of relief in Israel and resignation here in Jordan and in Israel’s other Arab neighbors. 

NETROOTS NATION RECKONS WITH LIFE AFTER THE REVOLUTION
(Jason Horowitz, New York Observer)
This year's convention marked the maturation of the Netroots. Their national convention between July 17 and 20 felt more like an assembly of middle-management professionals – say, dentists or data-entry technicians—than the science-fiction forum of years past, in which activists with names like OrangeClouds reveled in their collective role as thorn in the left flank of the Democratic Party. (It should be noted that OrangeClouds, who blogs about food issues, did attend again, and managed to extract an admission from Al Gore that he eats too much meat.) The convention attracted its share of marquee names... But the main question in the days leading up to the conference was how attendees would react to Obama, who has irked the liberal bloggers with what they perceive as his centrist creep. Again, the media build-up – despite assurances beforehand from conference-goers that they really like Obama—turned out to have been vastly overdone.