A round-up of this morning's must-read stories--by guest Filterer Brian No.  

Political Meme of the Day #1: Obama finally starts to fight back on energy policy. But after flip-flops and political posturing by both candidates, are their plans any good?

MCCAIN AT NUCLEAR PLANT HIGHLIGHTS ENERGY ISSUE
(Mary Ann Giordano and Larry Rohter, New York Times)
Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, portrayed his support of nuclear energy as part of an “all-of-the-above approach” to addressing the nation’s energy needs at a time of $4-a-gallon gasoline. He called it “safe, efficient, inexpensive and obviously a vital ingredient in the future of the economy of our nation and in our mission to eliminate over time our dependence on foreign oil.”

OBAMA PUMPED UP OVER ATTACK ON HIS ENERGY STRATEGY
(Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times)
Obama pushed back hard Tuesday, accusing his rival's campaign of lying about the scope of his energy plan. The Democratic candidate has also called for developing renewable fuels, curbing dependence on foreign oil and increasing production of plug-in hybrid cars.

CRUDE CAMPAIGNING
(Ruth Marcus, Washington Post)
You could write the formula with mathematical precision. The higher the price of oil and the lower the number of days until the election, the shriller the rhetoric, the grander the promises and the dumber the policy. If this is the state of the discussion in August, what will October bring?

Political Meme of the Day #2: Why is Obama not doing better?

OBAMA STALLS IN PUBLIC POLLING
(David Paul Kuhn, Politico.com)
That gap between expectations and reality comes as Democrats enjoy the most favorable political winds since at least 1976. At least eight in ten Americans believe the nation is on the wrong track. The Republican president is historically unpopular. From stunning Democratic gains in party registration to the high levels of economic anxiety, Obama by most every measure should have a healthy lead. Yet in poll after poll, Obama conspicuously fails to cross the 50-percent threshold.

OBAMA MAY BE RUNNING OFF WITH TOO MANY METAPHORS
(George Will, Chicago Tribune)
But polls taken since his trip abroad do not indicate that Obama succeeded in altering the oddest aspect of this presidential campaign: Measured against his party's surging strength in every region and at every level, he is dramatically underperforming. Surely this fact is related to anxieties about his thin résumé regarding national security matters. But the fact also might be related to fatigue from too much of Obama's eloquence, which is beginning to sound formulaic and perfunctory.

OBAMA’S PITCH TO HIT
(Harold Meyerson, Washington Post)
It was one thing for Obama to lose the white working-class vote to Hillary Clinton, whose fundamental economic policies weren't all that different from his own. But to have as much trouble with that constituency against John McCain, even allowing for the reluctance of many white Americans to make a black man president, bespeaks Obama's ongoing difficulty in persuading voters that he's on their side in matters economic and that John McCain isn't.

OBAMA HASN’T CLOSED THE DEAL YET
(Clarence Page, RealClearPolitics.com)
Yet after running as much as nine points ahead of McCain in major polls, Obama's lead has mostly evaporated, especially in key Midwestern industrial swing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Why? I think a big reason is McCain's refusal to be scary or outrageous enough. He has maintained enough of his maverick image to resist Democratic efforts to re-brand him as Bush's third term.

Other must-reads:

BIG-DOLLAR DONORS ARE MAJOR FORCE IN OBAMA CAMPAIGN
(Michael Luo and Christopher Drew, New York Times)
In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less that have amounted to fully half of the $340 million he has collected so far. But records show that one-third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more: a total of $112 million, more than Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries, raised in contributions of that size.

BUNDLER COLLECTS FROM UNLIKELY DONORS
(Matthew Mosk, Washington Post)
Harry Sargeant III, a former naval officer and the owner of an oil-trading company that recently inked defense contracts potentially worth more than $1 billion, is the archetype of a modern presidential money man. The law forbids high-level supporters from writing huge checks, but with help from friends in the Middle East and the former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit -- who now serves as a consultant to his company -- Sargeant has raised more than $100,000 for three presidential candidates from a collection of ordinary people, several of whom professed little interest in the outcome of the election.

BARACK OBAMA’S LOST YEARS
(Stanley Kurtz, Weekly Standard)
Any rounded treatment of Obama's early political career has got to give prominence to the issue of race. Obama has recently made efforts to preemptively blunt discussion of the race issue, warning that his critics will highlight the fact that he is African American. Yet the question of race plays so large a role in Obama's own thought and action that it is all but impossible to discuss his political trajectory without acknowledging the extent to which it engrosses him.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories--by guest Filterer Brian No. 

Political Meme of the Day #1: Obama is on the defensive over energy policy and drilling, and he flip-flops and says the United States should tap its oil reserves. The McCain campaign continues to make fun of Obama’s tire gauge comment, even though Obama’s right.

BARACK OBAMA SHIFTS ON TAPPING NATIONAL OIL RESERVES
(Peter Nicholas and Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times)
Obama's reversal on tapping the national stockpile of crude oil comes just days after he said, for the first time, that he would agree to some offshore drilling as part of a broader energy-policy compromise with Republicans, including John McCain, who has supported additional drilling. Those shifts by Obama are indicative of the pressure that politicians of both parties -- but especially Democrats -- are under to develop specific, short-term energy proposals in the face of rising costs.

THE TIRE-GAUGE SOLUTION: NO JOKE
(Michael Grunwald, Time)
But who's really out of touch? The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right.

DRILL, DRILL, DRILL IS WORKING
(Lawrence Kudlow, RealClearPolitics.com)
The question of offshore drilling, along with expanded domestic energy production, has suddenly become the biggest political and economic wedge issue of this election. Is there a Republican tsunami in the making?

Political Meme of the Day #2: Obama’s race and identity are still an issue in the election.

THE UNAVOIDABLE ISSUE
(E.J. Dionne, Washington Post)
There is no doubt that two keys to this election are: How many white and Latino votes will Obama lose because of his race that a white Democrat would have won? And how much will African American turnout grow, given the opportunity to elect our nation's first black president?

WHO’S RAISING RACE?
(Eugene Robinson, Washington Post)
[Sen. Lindsay] Graham said on "Fox News Sunday" that "there's no doubt in my mind that what Senator Obama is trying to suggest -- that he's a victim of something." Graham later added: "We're not going to run a campaign like he did in the primary. Every time somebody brings up a challenge to who you are and what you believe, 'You're a racist.' That's not going to happen in this campaign." The key words are "victim" and "racist" -- which Obama did not say. Graham puts them in Obama's mouth because of their power to alienate.

WHERE’S THE LANDSLIDE?
(David Brooks, New York Times)
There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged. As a result, voters have trouble placing him in his context, understanding the roots and values in which he is ineluctably embedded.

Political Meme of the Day #3: Let McCain be McCain?

CHANGING LANES
(Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker)
How important is it for candidates to tell the truth? Throughout his long career in politics, McCain, who called his PAC Straight Talk America, has presented frankness as his fundamental virtue. The past few weeks have seen a change in McCain. He has hired new advisers, and with them he seems to have worked out a new approach. He is no longer telling the sorts of hard truths that people would prefer not to confront, or even half-truths that they might find vaguely discomfiting. Instead, he’s opted out of truth altogether.

MCCAIN’S PROBLEM ISN’T BUSH
(William McGurn, Wall Street Journal)
Allowing himself to look afraid of being in the president's company hurts him in two large ways. For one thing, it cuts against Mr. McCain's most attractive trait: his fearlessness. This is a man running as someone who stood up to his captors in Hanoi, who stood up to his own party, and who, as president, would be willing to stand up to America's enemies. For such a man to fear photo ops with the president broadcasts an insecurity that will only feed into the Obama campaign. And the press smells it.

From this week’s issue of the print NEWSWEEK:
WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, JOHN?
(Jonathan Alter, Newsweek)
McCain's zesty Theodore Roosevelt-style attacks on corporate greed and inspiring plans for expanding national service are gone, replaced by Karl Rove's playbook.

Miscellaneous Must-Reads:
G.O.P. DROPS IN VOTING ROLLS IN MANY STATES
(Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times)
While the implications of the changing landscape for Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain are far from clear, voting experts say the registration numbers may signal the beginning of a move away from Republicans that could affect local, state and national politics over several election cycles. Already, there has been a sharp reversal for Republicans in many statehouses and governors’ mansions.

ALASKANS FOR OBAMA: A RARE DEMOCRATIC PUSH IN THE LAST FRONTIER
(Karl Vick, Washington Post)
Conservative and quirky, Alaska last went for a Democratic presidential candidate 44 years ago. No nominee from either party has even visited since Richard Nixon's journey to glad-hand in Anchorage on the last weekend of the 1960 campaign, a stop that some argue cost him the razor-thin election. Obama, who often boasts of having visited the other 49 states, has yet to commit to a stop here. But his vibrant campaign operation here is stoking expectations and mounting the most prodigious presidential effort Alaska has seen.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories--by guest Filterer Brian No. 

MCCAIN TAKES A PAGE FROM CLINTON’S PLAYBOOK
(John Harwood, New York Times)
Mr. Obama has watched Senator John McCain pick up central strands of Mrs. Clinton’s approach, and amplify them. In exaggerated form, Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, has adopted her attitude toward Mr. Obama’s emergence (disdain), employed the same core argument against him (unproven and risky) and singled out his lingering electoral vulnerabilities (older voters, Rust Belt whites) in a contest where the Democrat’s race forms the backdrop. Two months after it began, Round 2 has yielded a similar result as in the Democratic primaries. Mr. Obama retains a lead in public opinion polls, but it has not been very big. Yet key elements of Mr. McCain’s offensive, and Mr. Obama’s response, may resonate differently than in the Obama-Clinton duel. The general election outcome may turn on which side better adapts to those differences.

OBAMA OFFERS SUPPORT FOR OFFSHORE DRILLING
(Amy Chozick, Wall Street Journal)
In the latest sign of a shift on a key issue, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Saturday he would support an expansion of offshore drilling as part of a broader bipartisan energy bill. Critics are branding this a flip-flop, but Sen. Obama is citing it as an example of a central tenet of his candidacy: a willingness to bridge divisions to address long-festering problems. On Saturday, Sen. Obama told reporters he "remains skeptical" of some of the drilling provisions in pending bipartisan legislation designed to lessen dependence on foreign oil and ramp up development of alternative fuel, but he said he would be willing to compromise... Republican rival John McCain has come down hard on Sen. Obama for opposing expanded drilling. The Arizona senator supports expanded drilling off the U.S. coastline as a way to drive down gas prices and break America's foreign-oil dependence. In an attempt to hold on to one of the issues that gives Sen. McCain a political edge, the McCain campaign says that Sen. Obama hasn't shifted his position but is using purposely vague language to appeal to a wider swath of voters.

OBAMA, MCCAIN FIND RACE ISSUE ISN’T EASILY DISCARDED
(Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times)
As this past week's debate over "the race card" illustrates, there is still no subject in American politics as fraught as the color of a candidate's skin. Angered by remarks Barack Obama made to an audience in rural Missouri, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who is white, accused the Illinois senator, who is black, of using race as wedge to win support. Democrats accused McCain of cynically turning things on their head; by crying foul, they claimed, McCain managed to put race front and center just as he was stepping up his personal attacks on Obama. Both candidates stand to gain -- and lose -- from the testy back-and-forth, underscoring just how incendiary, and complex, racial politics remain more than 200 years after vexing the first set of American politicians.

THE RACE ISSUE ISN’T GOING AWAY
(Juan Williams, Wall Street Journal)
The race issue is clearly not going away. And the key reason -- to be blunt -- is because there is no telling how many white voters are lying to pollsters when they say they plan to vote for a black man to be president. Still, it is possible to look elsewhere in the polling numbers to see where white voters acknowledge their racial feelings and get a truer measure of racism... Consider a recent Washington Post poll. Thirty percent of all voters admitted to racial prejudice, and more than a half of white voters categorized Mr. Obama as "risky" (two-thirds judged Mr. McCain the "safe" choice). Yet about 90% of whites said they would be "comfortable" with a black president. And about a third of white voters acknowledged they would not be "entirely comfortable" with an African-American president. Why the contradictory responses? My guess is that some whites are not telling the truth about their racial attitudes. A recent New York Times poll found that only 31% of white voters said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama. That compares to 83% of blacks with a favorable opinion. This is a huge, polarizing differential.

REROUTING MCCAIN’S BUS
(Howard Kurtz, Washington Post)
The captain of the Straight Talk Express is having a bumpier ride with journalists than when he ran for president eight years ago. The popular image of the campaign -- McCain bantering with national journalists in the back of his bus -- has, in reality, all but vanished. The traveling press is now routinely stiffed in favor of five-minute sit-downs with local reporters. At the same time, the Arizona senator is having trouble making news, or at least news that advances his campaign's goals, and when he does it is often reacting to the media hurricane that surrounds Barack Obama. In 2000, when top news executives were clamoring for a chance to ride the fabled bus, McCain would spend hours talking to reporters who would write one story a day. "Now, with each bus trip, everyone's filing a blog report, every little thing is picked up and off it goes," says Slate correspondent John Dickerson. "It certainly takes him off message."

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

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

MCCAIN CAMP SAYS OBAMA IS PLAYING 'RACE CARD'
(Michael Cooper and Michael Powell, New York Times)
With his rejoinder about playing “the race card,” Mr. Davis effectively assured that race would once again become an unavoidable issue as voters face an election in which, for the first time, one of the major parties’ nominees is African-American. And with its criticism, the McCain campaign was ensuring that Mr. Obama’s race — he is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas — would again be a factor in coverage of the presidential race. On Thursday, it took the spotlight from Mr. Obama when he had sought to attack Mr. McCain on energy issues. The tactic could cut both ways: it might tap into the qualms some white, working-class voters in crucial swing states may have about a black candidate, or it could ricochet back against the McCain campaign, which has been accused even by some fellow Republicans of engaging in overly negative campaigning in recent days. The remarks put Mr. Obama’s campaign, which has tried to keep him from being pigeonholed or defined by race, in a delicate position. He did not address the matter himself on Thursday, and his campaign gingerly tried to tamp down the issue, saying he did not believe that Mr. McCain had tried to use race as an issue.

RACE RETURNS:
Race Issue Moves to the Center of Campaign (Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith, Politico)
McCain aides say their goal is to pre-empt what they believe is Obama's effort to paint any conventional campaign attacks as race-based. Obama’s aim, in the view of the McCain camp: "to delegitimize any line of attack against him," said McCain aide Steve Schmidt. He said he saw that potential trap being sprung when Obama predicted in Missouri Wednesday that the GOP nominee would attack the Democrat because he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." "I don't [care] whether it helps or hurts us," Schmidt said. "A lie unresponded to becomes the truth."... To campaign watchers, in fact, Obama's warning Wednesday seemed less a direct attack on McCain than as part of a running effort to cast all attacks on Obama in the worst possible light: as products of ignorance at best and bigotry at worst. But Schmidt said McCain had learned the lesson of Clinton's campaign, which began by taking her and her husband's affinity with African-American voters for granted but wound up seeing days and weeks consumed by racially charged gaffes and allegations 

Say What? (New York Times Editorial Board)
The retort was, we must say, not only contemptible, but shrewd. It puts the sin for the racial attack not on those who made it, but on the victim of the attack. It also — and we wish this were coincidence, but we doubt it — conjurs up another loaded racial image. The phrase dealing the race card “from the bottom of the deck” entered the national lexicon during the O.J. Simpson saga. Robert Shapiro, one of Mr. Simpson’s lawyers, famously declared of himself, Johnny Cochran and the rest of the Simpson defense team, “Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck.” It’s ugly stuff. How about we leave Britney, Paris, and O.J. out of this — and have a presidential campaign?

Barack Lowers His Worth with Cheap 'Dollar' Shot (Charles Hurt, New York Post)
Barack Obama committed the worst blunder of his campaign by wrongly accusing President Bush, John McCain and other Republicans of trying to make voters fear him because he's not "like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." This racial calumny is completely unfair, diminishes his own campaign, and certainly is the worst possible way to win over those blue-collar white Democrats in Ohio and Pennsylvania who picked Hillary Rodham Clinton over him in the primary. And it's certainly not how he's gotten this far.

MCCAIN'S ATTACK STRATEGY IS UGLY BUT NOT STUPID
(Steve Kornacki, New York Observer)
The McCain of 2000 no longer exists, and thanks to issues like Iraq, couldn't exist even if his campaign made a conscious effort to resurrect him. Running a 2000-like campaign would preserve McCain's reputation and win him plenty of favorable post-election write-ups from his old media friends - but it can't win him the election. What can win him the election, as sad as it is to say, is the kind of campaign he is now resorting to. McCain's aides have privately told the press that they see the fall race as a referendum on Obama. They are right. This campaign is not about hordes of undecided voters weighing the pros and cons of McCain and Obama; it is about hordes of undecided voters who are inclined--both because of his party label and his personality--to vote for Obama, but who still have trouble imagining him as America's commander in chief. If Obama can satisfy their doubts, he will win going away--just as Ronald Reagan did in 1980, when he won the masses over in a debate a week before Election Day. If he can't, then those voters will default to McCain, the "safe" old warrior. And it will have little to do with whether or not they approved of the tone of his advertising.

THE CURIOUS MIND OF JOHN MCCAIN
(Robert G. Kaiser, Washington Post)
In his 2002 book, "Worth the Fighting For," John McCain offered this confession -- an acknowledgment of a restless mind: "Although I seem to tolerate introspection better the older I am, there are still too many claims on my attention to permit more than the briefest excursions down the path of self-awareness. When I am no longer busy with politics, and with my own ambitions, I hope to have more time to examine what I have done and failed to do with my career, and why." A telling observation, or so it seems, and refreshingly candid for a public figure. But the words are not John McCain's. They were written by his longtime aide Mark Salter, McCain's literary alter ego... Much of what goes on inside McCain's head is neither mysterious nor hidden. There is an elaborate record of the principles and beliefs that govern McCain's thinking about politics and policy in the five books he and Salter have written, scores of speeches they have collaborated on over nearly two decades, and countless interviews, including one last week for this article. That record reveals a complicated man whose approach to the world cannot be summed up in an aphorism or two. He is a striver and a combatant, often at war with himself, who has conducted a lifelong struggle "to prove to myself that I was the man I had always wanted to be," as he has written. Multiple influences have shaped his thinking, from his famous grandfather and father, both four-star Navy admirals, to his travels and his extensive reading of history and literature.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

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

AS A PROFESSOR, OBAMA ENTHRALLED STUDENTS AND PUZZLED FACULTY
(Jodi Kantor, New York Times)
The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count. At a school where economic analysis was all the rage, he taught rights, race and gender. Other faculty members dreamed of tenured positions; he turned them down. While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship. At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one moment and “The Godfather” the next. He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views. Mr. Obama, now the junior senator from Illinois and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spent 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Most aspiring politicians do not dwell in the halls of academia, and few promising young legal thinkers toil in state legislatures. Mr. Obama planted a foot in each, splitting his weeks between an elite law school and the far less rarefied atmosphere of the Illinois Senate. Before he outraised every other presidential primary candidate in American history, Mr. Obama marched students through the thickets of campaign finance law. Before he helped redraw his own State Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured. And before he posed what may be the ultimate test of racial equality — whether Americans will elect a black president — he led students through African-Americans’ long fight for equal status.

MCCAIN GOES NEGATIVE, WORRYING SOME IN THE GOP
(Michael Cooper, New York Times)
In recent days Senator John McCain has charged that Senator Barack Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” tarred him as “Dr. No” on energy policy and run advertisements calling him responsible for high gas prices. The old happy warrior side of Mr. McCain has been eclipsed a bit lately by a much more aggressive, and more negative, Mr. McCain who hammers Mr. Obama repeatedly on policy differences, experience and trustworthiness. By doing so, Mr. McCain is clearly trying to sow doubts about his younger opponent, and bring him down a peg or two. But some Republicans worry that by going negative so early, and initiating so many of the attacks himself rather than leaving them to others, Mr. McCain risks coming across as angry or partisan in a way that could turn off some independents who have been attracted by his calls for respectful campaigning. The drumbeat of attacks could also undermine his argument that he will champion a new brand of politics.

FIVE THINGS THE AUDACITY OF HOPE WORLD TOUR TAUGHT US ABOUT OBAMA
(John Heilemann, New York)
McCain’s annoyance with what he sees as the infatuation of the press with The One, as his campaign has dubbed Obama, has reached Hillary Clinton–esque proportions. His envy of Obama’s rock-star status is acute as well, and made all the more searing by the fact that he views his opponent as a lightweight, a line-cutter, a hypocrite, and a phony. But Obama’s voyage and the adulation it received seemed to push McCain over the edge and his campaign into a harshly negative new mode. Obama’s responses have been far from the kind of bare-knuckled rejoinders that some Democrats would like to see. (While abroad, he said he was “disappointed” that McCain had accused him of being willing to “lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”) Is it possible that McCain’s sheer awfulness as a candidate and the wanton ineptness of his operation has lulled Obama into thinking he’s got this thing in the bag? Fearful Democrats worry that it has. And they hope that his bounceless return from abroad will steel his spine for the war at home.

PRESIDENT OBAMA CONTINUES HECTIC VICTORY TOUR
(Dana Milbank, Washington Post)
Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee. Fresh from his presidential-style world tour, during which foreign leaders and American generals lined up to show him affection, Obama settled down to some presidential-style business in Washington yesterday. He ordered up a teleconference with the (current president's) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally...  Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." As he marches toward Inauguration Day (Election Day is but a milestone on that path), Obama's biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris. Some say the supremely confident Obama -- nearly 100 days from the election, he pronounces that "the odds of us winning are very good" -- has become a president-in-waiting. But in truth, he doesn't need to wait: He has already amassed the trappings of the office, without those pesky decisions.

THE UNTOUCHABLE
(Jack Shafer, Slate) 
You're welcome to believe otherwise, but I don't think the press has gone in the tank for Barack Obama. As long ago as March, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz demolished charges that the press was soft on Obama by cataloging the tough pieces published by reporters exhuming the candidate's past: his financial relationship with friend and fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who is now a convicted felon; his friendship with former Weather Undergrounder William Ayers; his casting of 130 "present" votes as an Illinois legislator; his nuclear energy compromise in the U.S. Senate, said to benefit a contributor; incendiary comments made by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; and more. To that list add the recent critical dispatches tarring Obama as a flip-flopper... What's unique about Obama and his candidacy is that almost none of the stuff the press throws at him sticks. Nor is the press alone in its inability to stick him. Hillary Clinton hurled rocks, knives, and acid at her rival even before the primaries (see this Jake Tapper piece from ABC News) and later upped the ante in desperation. She claimed that he was unprepared to serve as commander in chief and accused him of insulting gun owners and the religiously faithful. The eleventh-hour tactics may have won Clinton votes, but they failed to undermine Obama. You could call Obama the Teflon-coated candidate, but this would miss the fact that his slickness goes all the way to the core. What has gone unexplored until now is this: How did Barack Obama achieve superslipperiness without becoming greasy?

OBAMA HAS CASH TO ATTACK MCCAIN'S BASE
(Jeanne Cummings, Politico)
In nearly every presidential cycle, candidates throw a little money at a state to try to turn it into a fresh battleground. It almost never works. But Barack Obama believes his historic nomination gives him more of an opening to press such a strategy. And what sets him apart from his predecessors is that he may actually have the money to attack his rival’s base on a broader scale and in a more sustained way than any candidate before him. The process has already begun. The Illinois senator last month began airing ads and opening offices in Virginia, North Dakota, Colorado and a handful of other states that have voted Republican in recent cycles. Obama is supplementing those high-profile moves with a potentially higher-impact investment in ground troops who can recruit volunteers, knock on doors, register voters and create a buzz around the campaign with bumper stickers and yard signs. To appreciate the aggressiveness of Obama’s operation it’s worth taking a closer look at the jockeying in Georgia... Last month, more than 20 paid Obama staffers were toiling away in the back conference room of a partially renovated law office in downtown Atlanta. And now their numbers are growing as they prepare to launch a voter registration drive that could see hundreds of thousands of African-American and young voters added to the voting rolls by November...[Meanwhile] McCain hasn’t hired any full-time field staff in Georgia and he’s not running any commercials on television there.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

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

THE CAMPAIGN IS ALL ABOUT OBAMA
(Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen, Politico)
If you made a movie about the general election campaign so far, John McCain would be a supporting actor. Despite vulnerabilities that have kept the race closer in polls than most analysts expected--and McCain even jumped to a four-point lead among likely voters in a USA TODAY/Gallup poll released Monday--Barack Obama dominates the race by virtually any other measure. He is dictating the agenda and soaking up news coverage as McCain and his team scramble to react. “McCain is snakebit,” lamented one longtime Bush loyalist. On Sunday, New York Times columnist Frank Rich--no McCain fan admittedly--declared that Obama’s triumphant sweep through the Middle East and Europe had revealed him to be practically the “acting president.” Most political pros continue to believe the race remains within the GOP’s grasp. But two months of the five-month general election campaign are gone, and the McCain campaign – in a rerun of Hillary Clinton’s frustrations – are still searching for an effective formula for countering Obama’s appealing personality and fearsome political machine. Too often, GOP insiders grumble, McCain’s strategy seems simply reactive. On Sunday, Obama announced he’d be meeting with his economic advisers on Monday. On Monday morning, the McCain campaign announced a conference call with his economic advisers... “Tougher ads are in store for Obama this week,” according to a McCain source. “The campaign is committed to driving a sharper, more disciplined message contrast,” said an aide.

HOW BOXING EXPLAINS MCCAIN
(Michael Crowley, New Republic)
Boxing is a fitting obsession for McCain. Like the 71-year-old senator himself, the sport is a cultural throwback. A civilized way, dating to Ancient Greece, for one man to prove his strength over another, boxing was the great love of McCain's idol, the manly Teddy Roosevelt, who was partially blinded by it. But it also appeals to McCain's impish side--evoking the irascible Rat Pack style of Las Vegas he finds so appealing. (McCain is an unapologetic gambler: One acquaintance of mine tells of shooting craps past midnight with McCain in Vegas several years ago; McCain even loaned the guy's wife $50 to get her started.) In the Senate, McCain has sought to translate his love of boxing into policy. Initially, he was motivated by the grim lives of journeymen boxers, for whom he battled to win health care and pensions. "John has a real love for the sport, and it was evident," says the famed boxing commentator Bert Sugar, between drags on a cigar. "Of all the pressing problems, boxing wasn't one of them. And, yet, he devoted his time and saw it through."

BLUE-STATERS RUN THROUGH IT
(Douglas Belkin, Wall Street Journal)
While Montana's three electoral votes are hardly going to swing the election, the patterns here are taking root across the interior U.S. West, including in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. Only two Democrats have carried Montana since 1948. Bill Clinton's 1992 victory was made possible only because Ross Perot split the state's Republican vote. In 2004, George Bush won the state by 20 points. As late as this spring, the electorate seemed headed in the same direction. A pair of statewide polls showed that Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, held a comfortable lead over Sen. Barack Obama. But after four visits by Sen. Obama, an aggressive media campaign and some well-organized ground work, the Illinois Democrat now leads by five points, according to a July 1 Rasmussen poll. The campaign says it is opening six offices in the state this month. The reason for his surge lies in part with the migration of Democrat-leaning, college-educated transplants like Mr. Walseth and his wife, Elizabeth Darrow. As the rural Republican eastern plains lose population and political influence, thousands of blue-staters who began arriving here in the 1990s are reaching a critical mass. The effect is that Bozeman and several other larger towns in western Montana have become political battlegrounds.

KAINE IN 'SERIOUS TALKS' WITH OBAMA
(Michael D. Shear and Shailagh Murray, Washington Post)
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has told close associates that he has had "very serious" conversations with Sen. Barack Obama about joining the Democratic presidential ticket and has provided documents to the campaign as it combs through his background, according to several sources close to Kaine. Sens. Evan Bayh (Ind.) and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) are also being seriously vetted by the campaign staff, according to sources with knowledge of the process. Obama has revealed little about which way he is leaning. And despite rising anticipation that a decision is imminent, campaign officials said an announcement is likely in mid-August, shortly before the Democratic National Convention. Obama's top aides, David Plouffe and David Axelrod, huddled yesterday in the Washington office of Eric Holder, who along with Caroline Kennedy is vetting potential running mates. Although rumors have circulated about former military leaders and other nontraditional contenders, including Republicans, Obama's pool of prospects is heavy on longtime senators with foreign policy experience. Kaine and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius are the only state leaders believed to be under serious consideration, sources close to Obama said. Democrats who have discussed possible choices with campaign officials and have knowledge of the vetting process said others being considered include Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and former senator Sam Nunn (Ga.). Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Democratic Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.) are mentioned as long shots.

OBAMA-CLINTON TICKET IS SEEN AS UNLIKELY
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
When Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton abandoned her bid for the presidency and endorsed Senator Barack Obama in June, she made clear that she was interested in becoming his running mate, and Mr. Obama and his associates signaled respectfully that she would get full consideration. But there is mounting evidence that Mr. Obama’s interest in Mrs. Clinton for the post has faded considerably, if, in fact, she ever really was a strong contender to be on the ticket with him. In conversations, Mr. Obama’s advisers discuss Mrs. Clinton’s role at the Democratic convention next month in a way that suggests they are not thinking of her arriving in Denver as Mr. Obama’s running mate... The feeling goes both ways. Mrs. Clinton has told associates in recent days that she thinks there is little chance Mr. Obama will pick her and that she views the public pronouncements by some of Mr. Obama’s aides that she is under review as nothing more than a courtesy. She has not been asked to provide written documentation to the committee vetting the background of candidates for Mr. Obama. Although Mrs. Clinton probably needs less flyspecking than almost anyone else in the field — considering how long she has been in public life and how intensively her past has been examined — the silence from that corner is being taken by Mrs. Clinton’s advisers as evidence of where she stands on Mr. Obama’s vice presidential list.

HOW TO ROLL OUT A RUNNING MATE
(Jeanne Cummings, Politico)
As the two party conventions loom, Barack Obama and John McCain have a common wish: that their choice of a running mate shoves their rival out of the news, adds new complexity to the electoral map and brings a welcome spike in the polls. But both nominees-in-waiting should proceed with extraordinary care. Vice presidential picks, chosen poorly or rolled out improperly, also can quickly become public relations nightmares. The way Democratic strategist Tad Devine sees it, a running mate should have three moments: an announcement, a convention speech and a debate.  “The only other moment is when you screwed up,” says Devine, who’s had an inside seat at several vice presidential vetting processes and announcements. A look through history provides some do’s and don’ts for both McCain and Obama as they shrink their short lists and edge closer to naming their 2008 campaign trail best buds. 

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...
 

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

PLAYING INNOCENT ABROAD
(David Brooks, New York Times)
When I first heard this sort of radically optimistic speech in Iowa, I have to confess my American soul was stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet quintessentially American campaign. But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more... In Berlin, Obama made exactly one point with which it was possible to disagree. In the best paragraph of the speech, Obama called on Germans to send more troops to Afghanistan... Much of the rest of the speech fed the illusion that we could solve our problems if only people mystically come together. We should help Israelis and Palestinians unite. We should unite to prevent genocide in Darfur. We should unite so the Iranians won’t develop nukes... The odd thing is that Obama doesn’t really think this way. When he gets down to specific cases, he can be hard-headed. Last year, he spoke about his affinity for Reinhold Niebuhr, and their shared awareness that history is tragic and ironic and every political choice is tainted in some way. But he has grown accustomed to putting on this sort of saccharine show for the rock concert masses, and in Berlin his act jumped the shark. His words drift far from reality, and not only when talking about the Senate Banking Committee. His Berlin Victory Column treacle would have made Niebuhr sick to his stomach. Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn’t eloquence. It’s just Disney.

OBAMA'S PATH TO THE PRESIDENCY IS FAR FROM CLEAR
(Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times)
Even as his turn on the global stage hit an emotional peak Thursday with a speech before a cheering crowd of more than 200,000 in Germany, Barack Obama faced new evidence of stubborn election challenges back home. Fresh polls show that he has been unable to convert weeks of extensive media coverage into a widened lead. And some prominent Democrats whose support could boost his campaign are still not enthusiastic about his candidacy. Several new surveys show that Obama is in a tight race or even losing ground to Republican John McCain, both nationally and in two important swing states, Colorado and Minnesota. One new poll offered a possible explanation for his troubles: A minority of voters see Obama as a familiar figure with whom they can identify. Republicans are moving to exploit this vulnerability, trying to encourage unease among voters by building the impression that Obama's overseas trip and other actions show he has a sense of entitlement that suggests he believes the White House is already his.

OBAMA, VAGUE ON ISSUES, PLEASES CROWD IN EUROPE
(Steven Erlanger, New York Times)
For Senator Barack Obama, who came to Europe once in the last four years, making a stop in London on his way to Russia, the response of many Europeans to his potential presidency has been gratifying — emotional, responsive, replete with the sense of hope he seeks to engender about a more flexible, less ideological America. European governments and politicians are not so sure. On Thursday evening in a glittering Berlin, Mr. Obama delivered a tone poem to American and European ideals and shared history. But he was vague on crucial issues of trade, defense and foreign policy that currently divide Washington from Europe and are likely to continue to do so even if he becomes president — issues ranging from Russia, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to new refueling tankers and chlorinated chickens, the focus of an 11-year European ban on American poultry imports.

NO. 44 HAS SPOKEN
(Gerhard Spörl, Der Spiegel) 
It was a ton to absorb -- and what a stupendous ride through world history: the story of his own family, the Berlin Airlift, terrorists, poorly secured nuclear material, the polar caps, World War II, America's errors, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, freedom. It's amazing anyone could pack such a potpourri of issues into the space of a speech that lasted less than 30 minutes. So what sticks? That Barack Obama is a passionate politician who is fixated on -- and takes very seriously -- his desire for a better world. That he is an impressive speaker who knows how to casually draw his audience into his image of the world -- one who doesn't have any need to resort to the kind of cheap effects that tend to prompt the uproarious applause of an audience. That he is a typical American -- an idealist in the true spirit of the American success story who is now very casually making his claim to becoming something akin to the president of the world... Europe is witnessing the 44th president of the United States during this trip. Anyone who listens to him realizes that he is not only ambitious but will also make demands. In the inner circles of Angela Merkel's Chancellery, he is reportedly seen as a pleasant person, one who arouses curiosity. However, he is also certain to demand the help of the Germans, Brits and French in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's not going to let NATO shirk its duty -- and therein lie the perils of the engaging "we" and the catchy "Yes, we can." Otherwise all these hard-nosed Europeans will hope and pray that the future President Obama isn’t really all that serious about the saving the world of tomorrow, the polar caps, Darfur and the poppy harvest over in Afghanistan.

OBAMA ABROAD: WE GET THE PICTURE
(Howard Kurtz, Washington Post) 
After saying little in public during a weekend in Iraq and Afghanistan, Barack Obama met with traveling reporters near Jordan's Temple of Hercules, a gladiator standing his ground against the media hordes. But even as the likes of NBC's Andrea Mitchell and ABC's Jake Tapper rose to press the Democratic candidate on Tuesday, television viewers back home heard nothing but faint voices in the wind. The journalists weren't miked; only Obama's answers came through loud and clear. That may have been unintentional, but it underscored the degree to which Obama has controlled the message -- and, more important, the pictures -- during his exhaustively chronicled trek across the Middle East and Europe. Obama meeting the troops, meeting the generals, meeting prime ministers and kings, drawing a huge crowd in Berlin yesterday -- the images trump whatever journalists write and say. In short, though Obamapalooza was not quite the lovefest that some expected, news outlets provided a spotlight so bright that their own people were left in the shadows.