A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.
MCCAIN TAKES AIM AT OBAMA'S CHARACTER
(Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin, Politico)
As Senator Barack Obama traveled overseas, the campaign against him
appeared to take a decisive new turn with Senator John McCain zeroing
in on his Democratic opponent’s character. In a year when polls show an
easy victory for a generic Democratic
candidate, McCain has until now been loathe to employ the tack many
strategists see as essential and which anonymous e-mailers and
commenters with no apparent links to his campaign have been practicing
since last summer: hitting Obama not on his record or his platform, but
on his values and person. The Democrat’s Achilles’ heel in this model
is an inchoate sense among
some voters that the new arrival on the national stage with the unusual
biography—and who’s the first black nominee from either party—isn’t
American enough. Prior to Obama’s trip overseas, though, McCain had
instead employed,
without appreciable effect, a more conventional critique of his
opponent as an ordinary politician, a “flip-flopper,” and, of course, a
liberal.
100 DAYS TO GO
(Susan Page, USA Today)
In the time before Nov. 4, running mates will be
chosen and platform skirmishes fought, economic reports released and as
many as one-third of votes cast early by absentee ballot and at
registrars' offices. Will more U.S. troops be pulled out of Iraq? Could
a so-called October surprise be sprung, by calculation or catastrophe,
that reshapes the campaign's close? Both campaigns are acutely conscious of the
passage of time. At Barack Obama's headquarters in Chicago, a countdown
calendar hangs just outside campaign manager David Plouffe's office.
The same count appears on white boards throughout John McCain's
headquarters in a Virginia suburb of Washington. The momentum and intensity of the campaign builds almost every day as
you approach the election," says Tad Devine, a strategist for Democrats
Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. "You spend a lot of time
planning for the events you know about, and you spend a lot of time
reacting to the events that just happen."
MR. PRESIDENT? NOT QUITE, BUT PRESIDENTIAL
(Mark Leibovich, New York Times)
Senator Barack Obama has stood before a lectern adorned with a faux
presidential seal. Senator John McCain recently began giving a radio
address every Saturday. Mr. Obama’s campaign plane has been nicknamed
O-Force One. (Obama-’08/President is stitched into the captain’s
chair.) Mr. McCain gave a speech in Columbus in May hypothetically
looking back on his first term in office. It
is unclear when the two presidential candidates will hold their first
state dinners, spend their first weekends at Camp David or welcome this
year’s N.B.A. champions, the Boston Celtics, to the Rose Garden. Oh,
wait, neither of these guys has been elected yet. It
can be easy to overlook this detail given that Mr. McCain of Arizona,
the presumptive Republican nominee, and Mr. Obama, of Illinois, his
Democratic counterpart, have been assuming the trappings and behaviors
of already-elected presidents. Candidates always strive to project an
image consistent with the office they are seeking. But in McCain vs.
Obama — the first general election matchup in 56 years that will not
include a sitting president or vice president — two senators with
minimal executive experience seem to be falling all over themselves to
playact the role of president.
FOREIGNERS
(Hendrik Hertzberg, New Yorker)
There has been much discussion of whether it will prove politically
advantageous for Obama to have addressed a mile-long crowd of two
hundred thousand happy Berliners in the golden early-evening sunlight.
Berliners are Germans, and Germans are foreigners, and since well
before John Kerry was demonized for knowing how to speak French it has
been axiomatic that heartland Americans don’t like foreigners piping up
about our elections, however much brainland Americans may disagree.
Obama gained nothing in the polls during his nearly flawless, arguably
triumphant grand tour. Still, after seven years during which, even
among our closest allies, contempt for Bush bled into resentment of the
country that returned him to office, one would have to be an awful
grouch not to be gratified by the sight of a sea of delighted Europeans
waving American flags instead of burning them and cheering an American
politician instead of demonstrating against one.
EMBRACED OVERSEAS, BUT TO WHAT EFFECT
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
By almost every measure, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's
overseas tour that concluded here Saturday was a clear success, with
meticulously planned and deftly executed events designed to beam back
images to the United States of a politician comfortable on the world
stage. What isn't measurable is whether it worked. Will a week of one-on-one
meetings with foreign officials, cheering crowds, favorable and
voluminous media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic and plain good
fortune on the debate over getting out of Iraq overcome the doubts he
faces at home about his readiness to be president? And if it doesn't,
what will?... Obama's assessment is that the payoff from one of the most ambitious
foreign trips ever undertaken by a presumptive nominee could come much
later. "The value to me of this trip is, hopefully, it gives voters a
sense that I can in fact -- and do -- operate effectively on the
international stage," he said. "That may not be decisive for the
average voter right now, given our economic troubles, but it's
knowledge they can store in the back of their minds for when they go
into the polling place later."
FOR OBAMA, HURDLES IN EXPANDING THE BLACK VOTE
(Alec MacGillis and Jennifer Agiesta, Washington Post)
At the heart of the Obama campaign's strategy is a national effort
to increase registration and turnout among the millions of
Democratic-inclined Americans who have not been voting, particularly
younger people and African Americans. The push began during the
primaries but expanded this month to a nationwide registration drive
led by 3,000 volunteers dispatched around the country. Gaining greater
African American support could well put Obama over the
top in states where Democrats have come close in the past two
elections, and could also help him retain the big swing states of
Pennsylvania and Michigan. If 95 percent of black voters support Obama
in November, in line with a recent Washington Post-ABC News
national poll, he can win Florida if he increases black turnout by 23
percent over 2004, assuming he performs at the same levels that
Democratic candidate John F. Kerry did with other voters that year.
Obama can win Nevada if he increases black turnout by 8 percent. Ohio
was so close in 2004 that if Obama wins 95 percent of the black vote,
more than Kerry did, he will win the state without a single extra
voter. But an increase in overall black turnout could help offset a
poorer performance among other voters. The push has also raised
Democrats' hopes of reclaiming Southern
states with large black populations, such as Georgia and North
Carolina, where low turnout among voters of all races has left much
more untapped potential than in traditionally competitive states such
as Ohio.
DEMOCRACY GROUP GIVES DONORS ACCESS TO MCCAIN
(Mike McIntire, New York Times)
Over the years, Mr. McCain has nurtured a reputation for bucking the
Republican establishment and criticizing the influence of special
interests in politics. But an examination of his leadership of the
[International Republican Institute, a democracy-building group he has
led for 15 years]— one of the least-chronicled aspects of his
political life — reveals an organization in many ways at odds with the
political outsider image that has become a touchstone of the McCain
campaign for president. Certainly the institute’s mission is
in keeping with Mr. McCain’s full-throated support for exporting
American democratic values. Yet the institute is also something of a
revolving door for lobbyists and out-of-power Republicans that offers
big donors a way of helping both the party and the institute’s
chairman, who is the only sitting member of Congress — and now
candidate for president — ever to head one of the democracy groups.
Operating
without the sort of limits placed on campaign fund-raising, the
institute under Mr. McCain has solicited millions of dollars for its
operations from some 560 defense contractors, lobbying firms, oil
companies and other corporations, many with issues before Senate
committees Mr. McCain was on.
CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...