When former Texas senator and then-current John McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm said last week that America was a "nation of whiners" mired in a mere "mental recession" (prompting a predictable firestorm of controversy) the Republican nominee joked that his colleague "would be in serious consideration for Ambassador to Belarus" in a future administration-- adding "although I'm not sure the citizens of Minsk would welcome that." Now, it seems, Gramm will have plenty of time brush up on his Belarusian.

In a statement issued after last night's network news broadcasts--no better time for bad news than after dinner on Friday--Gramm announced that he was stepping down from his post as national co-chair for McCain. The reason: he didn't want to be a distraction. "It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country," he said. "That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain's ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country's problems, it hurts the country."

The move came after several days of confusion about exactly what role the off-message Gramm would play on McCain's campaign. Last weekend, two of McCain's other economic advisers, Doug Holtz-Eakin and Carly Fiorina, indicated that Gramm would no longer talk to the media or act as a surrogate on the candidate's behalf, with Holtz-Eakin going so far as to say that Gramm would stop advising McCain by cell phone as well. But spokesman Tucker Bounds insisted at the time that the campaign had not made "any substantive status change to his volunteer post on the campaign." That changed yesterday when McCain's team apparently decided that even retaining Gramm in a behind-the-scenes position wasn't worth the political costs--namely, continued attacks on McCain's economic empathy from Democratic rival Barack Obama. 

Gramm is the latest surrogate to succumb to what's become 2008's most potent political weapon: guilt by association. Previously, former Rep. Tom Loeffler, also from Texas, quit his McCain co-chair post after reports about his lobbying by NEWSWEEK's Michael Isikoff distracted from the campaign message; on the other side of the aisle, Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power was forced to tender her resignation after calling Hillary Clinton "a monster" in an off-the-record conversation with a reporter. 

Perhaps they can practice their Belarusian together. 
 

What follows is the pool report--a dispatch circulated among reporters who can't attend an event--from Obama's overnight trip to Afghanistan. It's written by John McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. The most newsworthy part is when Obama--clearly aware that Republicans want to portray him as presumptuous--makes sure to remind us that he's "going over there as a U.S. senator" and is "more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking." These reports should be coming in all week, and I'm considering posting as many as possible. I think they'll provide a nice, factual, behind-the-scenes look at the trip. Let me know if you're interested in reading more.

The motorcade left Sen. Obama’s home in Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood at 11:11 a.m. There was one Chicago Police Department patrol car, followed by two SUVs, a sedan and a press van. Riding in the press van were agent Jill, Sam, John McCormick of the Chicago Tribune and Glen Johnson of The Associated Press. The motorcade headed north on Lake Shore Drive to I-55 (Stevenson Expressway) and toward MDW. The CPD blocked traffic for our turn onto the western perimeter of the airfield, where we arrived at 11:31 a.m. Waiting on the tarmac was a Gulfstream III (G3) executive jet (tail number N366JA). We exited our respective vehicles at 11:34 a.m.
 
The crew was waiting outside for the senator’s arrival and a few photos with him near a wing. He was wearing tan slacks and a short black jacket. After fishing around in the back of one of the SUVs for his luggage (he seemed especially to be checking his suits inside a garment bag), he was on the bird by 11:36 a.m. Also getting on the plane were eight Secret Service agents and the two reporters. The senator briefly greeted us as we walked past his seat in the forward section. Seated near him was senior spokeswoman Linda Douglass, the only staff member on the flight.
 
After everyone found a seat on the crowded plane, the pilot announced that the flying time would be between 80 and 85 minutes. All seemed eager for him to start the engines, since the plane had been sitting under a hot sun and the cabin temperature was likely somewhere in the 90s. Sweat had begun to roll down the faces of some of the agents.“We’re just easing you into it,” Obama told his bodyguards, referring to the heat and the desert weather they would all be traveling to in the coming days.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...

John McCain sure knows how to say bon voyage. 

With Barack Obama packing his bags for next week's journey to Europe and the Middle East--where the entire U.S. political press corps will watch, dumbstruck, as hope and change and audaciousness spread unbridled o'er the land--the Arizona Republican this afternoon gave his rival a not-so-friendly parting gift: the first real negative ad of the 2008 general-election cycle. Called "Troop Funding," the blistering spot uses the Democrat's overseas trip to compare him unfavorably to McCain on national security and press the case that he's a no-good, yellow-bellied, flip-flopping opportunist.

The only problem: it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The ad accuses Obama of three offenses: he "never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan," even though he chairs the Senate foreign relations subcommittee tasked with overseeing military operations in that country; he "hasn't been to Iraq in years"; and he "vot[ed] against funding our troops." All of these, says an announcer, are "positions that helped him win his nomination"--and now that he has, "he's changing to help himself become president." So what's wrong here? For starters, none of these "positions" actually helped Obama win the Democratic nod. It's not like the party was looking for a troop-hating, Iraq-avoiding, hearing-skipping candidate and Obama happened to fit the bill. So the whole "he's changing to help himself" accusation isn't particularly convincing.

More importantly, while the individual complaints may sound damning when simplified and strung together, they quickly crumble upon closer examination--especially as contrasts with McCain. It's true that Obama never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan--but that's because Joe Biden, the chairman of the Foreign Relations committee, has insisted that hearings on this critical issue be held at the full committee level, and not at the subcommittee level. It's also true that Obama has only attended on Afghanistan-related Senate meeting over the past two years, as McCain has loudly noted elsewhere. Unfortunately, McCain's record--he's attended zero of his Armed Services committee's six hearings on the subject since 2006--is even worse. Sadly, that's what happens when you're running for president--the day job suffers. Neither Obama nor McCain should treat his opponent's Capitol Hill absences as especially unusual. Nor should voters.

Then there's the little issue of "vot[ing] against funding our troops." Sounds despicable, right? Unfortunately, it's just another example of the way Washington works. Obama did, in fact, vote against a 2007 war-funding bill. But it wasn't because he hates American soldiers. Instead, he was registering an objection to legislation that "lacked a timetable for troop withdrawal"--a position that arguably means he was more concerned about troop well-being, not less. Reasonable people can disagree over whether timetables are warranted. But portraying this as a vote "against the troops" is silly. It's also a game two can play. On March 29, 2007, McCain voted against H.R. 1591, an emergency spending bill designed to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and provide more than $1 billion to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Why? Because it included a timetable for troop withdrawal. Does than make him a anti-soldier? Not at all. But it wouldn't stop an opponent from characterizing his vote--unfairly--as such.

Finally, there's Iraq. This is probably McCain's most meaningful beef with Obama. Since May, the Arizonan, who visits every few months, has said that his rival, who hasn't visited since 2006, should return and assess the changing conditions in person. He's right. As my NEWSWEEK colleague Michael Hirsh noted earlier today, "the Democratic senator missed witnessing the sectarian violence that roiled Iraq for more a year, and he has not had a firsthand look at the surge's success even as he has continued to say he would withdraw troops within 16 months of his presidency." But there are two important caveats to consider. One, heavily chaperoned congressional travel doesn't always offer the most accurate (or revealing) view of a war zone. Take McCain's April 1, 2007 trip to Baghdad. At the time, McCain claimed that his stroll through an open-air market proved that people could now "walk freely" through the city. But it was later reported that the candidate wore a flak jacket and received protection from 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships during his promenade; snipers returned the next day and murdered a few Shiite merchants. (CNN even deemed the area too dangerous to visit without military escort.) Second, Obama is already planning do this summer what McCain has said he should do--that is, visit Iraq. This doesn't change the fact that he should've gone earlier. But it does instantly outdate the Republican's attack.

Ultimately, McCain is trying to frame Obama as a no* know-nothing foreign-policy novice maneuvering for maximum political gain. He may have a point. He may not. But by choosing to focus "Troop Funding" on matters of symbolism rather than substance, he doesn't really make it.

*D'oh.
 

Here's my NEWSWEEK colleague Michael Hirsh with a very astute take on Barack Obama's upcoming overseas adventure:

As Obama heads to Europe and the Mideast this coming week, he is embarking on what might be called his "Ich bin ein Commander" test. It may well be the decisive one of his candidacy, especially with so many media stars--including three network anchors--along for the ride. One major reason why Obama's opponent, John McCain, has managed so far to rise above the public's grim assessment of the Republican Party is that, for many voters, he has already passed this test. Even though Americans think by a two-to-one margin Obama would do more to improve the country's image abroad than McCain, according to the new Washington Post-ABC News survey, only 48 percent said the Democrat would make a good commander in chief compared to 72 percent for his Republican rival. And "head to head, McCain was judged as the one with greater knowledge of the world by more than 2 to 1," the Post reported.

McCain has rightly hammered away at Obama's failure to visit Afghanistan at all and not to have traveled to Iraq since January 2006. That means the Democratic senator missed witnessing the sectarian violence that roiled Iraq for more a year, and he has not had a firsthand look at the surge's success even as he has continued to say he would withdraw troops within 16 months of his presidency. A new McCain campaign video shows a series of devastating clips from Obama's appearances on "Meet the Press" and other shows in 2006 and 2007, one of which quotes him as saying things were "actually worsening" in Iraq after surge. "Now he says the surge is working," the video proclaims, and it then proceeds to feature clips of Obama later praising the results in Iraq. The video also shows Obama seeming to fudge on his pledge of immediate withdrawal from Iraq. In the hands of Republican researchers, Obama's signature campaign line--"Change we can believe in"--is starting to take on an ironic sting. The Washington Post-ABC poll also shows that the public is now divided between the two senators' views of how to deal with Iraq.

Obama aides protest that public opinion simply needs to catch up with the facts. And it is true that on several key foreign-policy issues, both McCain and the Bush administration--as well as conventional wisdom--have been moving toward Obama's position, rather than the other way around. Obama was the first major candidate to call for a swift diversion of U.S. troops to Afghanistan, and now both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, have echoed those views. McCain himself, who had called Iraq the central front in the war on terror in the early months of his campaign, this week announced that he would send an additional three brigades to Afghanistan (one-upping Obama,who has called for two brigades). Obama has also consistently said--often to hoots of criticism from both Hillary Clinton and McCain for his supposed naiveté--that he would negotiate direcly with Iran over its nuclear program. Now the Bush administration is sending, for the first time, an envoy to the talks with Tehran taking place in Geneva... The administration is also talking about opening a special interests office in Tehran. And on Pakistan, Obama has long called for greater humanitarian aid to help that country wean itself from extremism. Now, in a bipartisan effort, Sens. Richard Lugar and Joseph Biden have sponsored a bill that would authorize $7.5 billion over five years in aid for building schools, roads, clinics and other development projects. All that should be proof enough, says a top Obama adviser, that "the threshold question is whether you have the policies and the judgment" to be commander in chief.

Still, reality doesn't always catch up with perception in time for an election. And despite survey numbers that consistently show Americans more concerned about the economy and domestic issues than Iraq and other international issues, the commander-in-chief test is often the decisive one when it's time to enter the voting booth...

The warm embrace that Obama will receive on his overseas trip is sure to be a boost, coming at a time when people are desperate for a new optimism about the perception of America in the world. "What will help him is that in contrast to the very icy response that Bush gets, Obama's going to be greeted as some kind of Second Coming," says Dallek. But if he stumbles--especially with such high expectations--he could end up looking like an innocent abroad, which would produce precisely the opposite effect Obama is seeking. With so much to prove, there is also the danger of overreaching. The Democratic candidate, for example, had expressed interest in speaking at the Brandenberg Gate near the site of the old Berlin Wall--the venue of Ronald Reagan's famous 1987 exhortation to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." (JFK's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech took place in another part of the city.) But German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed doubts about an Obama appearance, reminding everyone that this was principally a political, not a diplomatic, visit by a man who is not yet president. At a time when the Republicans are deriding Obama as a political changeling, this little contretemps was not a good way to start off his foreign tour.

READ THE REST HERE. 

 
Spotted by NEWSWEEK's own Holly Bailey in John McCain's seat on board his campaign plane Thursday afternoon: "The Return of History and the End of Dreams" by Robert Kagan, neoconservative thinker and informal McCain adviser. 

In case you're curious, Kagan is "a hate figure for large sections of the left... [who] has been blamed for many things, prominent among them being one of the intellectual authors and cheerleaders for the US-led war in Iraq." His slim volume is essentially an extended essay on how "autocracy is making a comeback" and how "the new era, rather than being a time of 'universal values,' will be one of growing tensions and sometimes confrontation between the forces of democracy and the forces of autocracy." Here's how New York Times chief Washington correspondent David E. Sanger summarized Kagan's argument in his recent review: "The cold war may be over, but anyone who thinks the result was really 'the end of history' — a consensus that liberal democracy is the future — should take another look." Like his fellow neocons, Kagan boasts "an untrammeled faith in democracy as an engine of peace," so his prescription for dealing with resurgent autocracies in "a world where the United Nations Security Council is 'hopelessly paralyzed' and NATO is happiest parachuting into territory where there is little chance of hearing gunfire," as Sanger puts it, is a something called a "league of democracies."

If you've been following the campaign at all, this should sound familiar. On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy in Los Angeles that was billed as his most comprehensive statement on the subject. The centerpiece? A league of democracies. In his address, McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia and exclude China from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries, and take in both India and Brazil, creating a group that would, in the words of my NEWSWEEK colleague Fareed Zakaria, "presumably play the role that the United Nations now does, except that all nondemocracies would be cast outside the pale." Fareed, for one, is not a fan. Calling the McCain/Kagan proposal "the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years," he questioned how the League of Democracies would fight terrorism while excluding countries like Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Singapore; secure loose nukes without Russia's cooperation; and coordinate problems of the emerging global economy by putting China on the sidelines.

Maybe you disagree. That's fine. The point is, Kagan is "one of the few foreign policy intellectuals that [McCain] seems to respect." So much so, in fact, that the senator now seems to be rereading "The Return of History." (Judging by his effusive blurb on the book's back flap--"important, timely, superbly-written"--he has already read it at least once.) As the political press spends its newsless summer obsessing over cartoons and "nuts" and Obama's excessive exercising, it'd probably benefit every serious voter--that is, every voter serious enough to wonder how a President McCain would alter American foreign policy--to crack its cover as well.
 

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

PROMISES TO KEEP
(Ashley Johnson, National Journal)
As voters assess the candidates' competing visions, they must also weigh how likely either man would be to follow through on his promises. If history is any guide, the answer is "very." "There's this myth that politicians will say anything to get elected, but that generally is not the case," said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. "They take their public statements seriously. And they know they're going to be held accountable by the media and the opposition." In studying party platforms in presidential elections from 1944 to 1976, Pomper found that presidents converted about 70 percent of their party's promises into policy. He said that track record is "pretty good," considering that about half of U.S. marriages end in divorce--a broken vow. Jeff Fishel, a professor emeritus of government at American University, reached a similar conclusion in his study of presidential performance, published in the 1985 book Presidents & Promises. Fishel tracked campaign pledges from John F. Kennedy through Ronald Reagan and determined that presidents followed through about 66 percent of the time.

MCCAIN'S STRAIGHT TALK SPINS WHEELS
(Stephen Dinan, Washington Times)
At times it appears Sen. John McCain's Straight Talk Express should stop and ask for directions. From signature issues such as immigration and climate change to tax cuts, the presumed Republican presidential nominee sometimes just seems lost as to his own record and his stance on hot-button social issues. After Mr. McCain said he opposed child adoptions to gay and lesbian couples, his campaign clarified that he wasn't making policy and would leave the issue to the states. In the past week, the candidate was unable to say whether he thought health care plans that cover drugs to treat impotency also should cover contraceptives. Mr. McCain voted against such a proposal in 2005. For a candidate who delights in telling audiences that it's time for "a little straight talk," he has given his opponents chances to question that reputation... The problem, said Michael McKenna, a Republican strategist who works on climate change issues, is that Mr. McCain's campaign doesn't prepare him well and that he stakes out positions for political reasons.

A CAST OF 300 ADVISES OBAMA ON FOREIGN POLICY
(Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times)
Every day around 8 a.m., foreign policy aides at Senator Barack Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters send him two e-mails: a briefing on major world developments over the previous 24 hours and a set of questions, accompanied by suggested answers, that the candidate is likely to be asked about international relations during the day... Behind the e-mail messages is a tight-knit group of aides supported by a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department, to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters... [One] person who has contributed outside advice is former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, whom Mr. Obama has been wooing. Mr. Powell, a Republican, has a friendship of decades with Mr. McCain, but friends say he has felt excluded from Mr. McCain’s foreign policy operation and was impressed when Mr. Obama called on him in June.

THE OBAMA ROADSHOW
(John Dickerson, Slate)
The anchors are a big coup for Obama as he heads to Europe, the Middle East, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They confer instant legitimacy. McCain, like Hillary Clinton before him, is arguing that Obama isn't qualified to be commander in chief, but the networks are treating him like he's already got the job. Each one will get an interview on a different night, which means Obama stands to control at least three days of news coverage in a campaign in which candidates are lucky if they can shape a few hours. The rest of the press hoard following Obama and the expected adoring crowds of cheering Europeans will only enhance the presidential tableau... Because of the other factors that favor him—and his edge on economic issues, which voters say worry them the most—he won't have to convince voters that he is better than McCain on the commander-international front. Instead, it should be enough to show that he is sufficiently qualified to handle the job. If enough voters feel safe with him, they can feel free to embrace the other reasons they like him. At the same time, the trip poses big risks.

HYSTERIA ALERT
(Gerard Baker, London Times)
There is something else in the enthusiasm for the Illinois senator that should not be lightly disdained by Americans, even those of a conservative mind. As even his opponent, John McCain, graciously put it this week, it suggests there is still something about America that can inspire the rest of the world. I've never really bought the argument that the hostility of the past eight years was simply anti-Bush, rather than, anti-American sentiment. And I still don't believe it. What people dislike about President Bush is what they think they know about America - its ignorance, its arrogance, its narrow-mindedness - all caricatures duly fed by the media coverage of the country and its culture and its politics. But there was, it's true, always the other side to the ambivalence of the world's thoughts about America. The rise of Senator Obama is a reminder of what the rest of the world still admires - sometimes very grudgingly - about America: a constant capacity to renew itself.  And when you think about it, if, as seems quite likely, America under the next president is going to proceed in a direction that is not markedly different from what it has done in the past few years, is it really such a bad thing if the world actually quite likes the man leading it?

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

As I read Michael Crowley's excellent profile of McCain assistant, speechwriter and all-around alter ego Mark Salter in the New Republic this morning, I was struck by one section in particular. Frustrated by constant criticism of his boss's oratorical abilities, Salter, Crowley reports, is retreating to his summer cottage in Maine to craft the senator's convention speech--a "task fellow McCainiacs acknowledge will be critical." His plan? To contrast McCain's moments of self-sacrifice, "as when he refused early release from captivity in Vietnam or challenged his own party over campaign finance reform"--Crowley's words, not Salter's--with the "selfishness" of "self-interested" political partisans like Obama, who risk "nothing of substance in their lives" as they flit through a "narcissistic world of Facebook and YouTube and Scarlett Johansson."

Facebook? YouTube? Scarlett? It's almost as if, according to Crowley, Salter sees Obama as--heart be still--a millennial.

I happen to agree. Back in February, I wrote a long feature for the dead-tree edition of NEWSWEEK called "He's One of Us Now" that was basically a reported essay on why Obama is " the first millennial to run for president." Given that Obama was born in 1961 and the millennial (or Generation Y) birth years started around 1979 and ended around 1995, a handful of readers disagreed with my analysis. He's a "late boomer" said one. He belongs to "Generation Jones" said another. Gen X has plenty of proponents, too. But my point in the piece wasn't to alter the space-time continuum by suggesting that Obama is a millennial; obviously he's too old for that. Instead it was, as I wrote then, to show "how fully and seamlessly he embodies the attitudes, aspirations and shortcomings of the generation that's rallied around him." (Necessary caveat: Summing up an entire generation with a few broad brush strokes is always hazardous, especially in politics. But that doesn't mean it can't be revealing.) In other words, I wanted to argue that Obama, the political phenomenon, belongs to Generation Y--even if he belongs to another generation by birth. The question then was whether that would be a good thing. Apparently, it still is.

Salter, of course, would say no, and it's not hard to see why. Weaned on a sugary self-esteem diet, my peers and I are generally viewed as a vain generation with an insatiable appetite for self-expression—and plenty of places (Facebook, MySpace, blogs, AIM, reality TV, etc.) to express ourselves. That look-at-me posture seems alien to older Americans, which is why members of McCain's entourage privately refer to the prone-to-preening Obama as "The One." The more pervasive product of our meritocratic upbringings, however, is an instinct for goal-oriented, self-improving, resume-building professionalism that shapes every aspect of our lives. "They're not trying to buck the system," reported David Brooks in his influential 2001 essay "The Organization Kid." "They're trying to climb it, and they are streamlined for ascent." That neatly summarizes Obama's rise. As Ryan Lizza writes in this week's New Yorker, "perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them." Lizza continues:

When he was a community organizer, he channelled his work through Chicago’s churches, because they were the main bases of power on the South Side. He was an agnostic when he started, and the work led him to become a practicing Christian. At Harvard, he won the presidency of the Law Review by appealing to the conservatives on the selection panel. In Springfield, rather than challenge the Old Guard Democratic leaders, Obama built a mutually beneficial relationship with them. “You have the power to make a United States senator,” he told Emil Jones in 2003. In his downtime, he played poker with lobbyists and Republican lawmakers. In Washington, he has been a cautious senator and, when he arrived, made a point of not defining himself as an opponent of the Iraq war... He has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist.

It makes sense, of course, that Salter would characterize this sort of maneuvering as "selfish" and risk-free and seek to contrast it with McCain's moments of maverick defiance and "sacrifice." That's politics.

But it's also pretty one-sided take on Generation Y--and Obama. *According to Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, authors of "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics," millennials may not be "confrontational or combative, the way Boomers (whose generational mantra was 'Don't trust anyone over 30') have been." But they do belong to what social scientist William Strauss calls a "civic generation," drawn instead to issues of "community, politics and deeds, whereas the boomers focused on issues of self, culture and morals." Reacting against the excesses of their parents—especially efforts to advance moral causes through partisan politics—they prefer to address problems non-ideologically, by reforming institutions from within. They're team players, say Winograd and Hais, conditioned through constant social interaction (often online) to "find consensus, 'win-win' solutions to any problem." They distrust traditional channels of information and prefer to learn from peers (again, often online). They are diverse. And after George W. Bush, they believe, as Obama youth-vote director Hans Riemer told me earlier this year, "that it matters who's running the government—and that government is a powerful way to make this country a better place."* All of this is consistent with Obama's "post-partisan" character--and his frequent calls to stop "re-litigating sex, drugs, rock and roll [and] Vietnam." Paired with his political instincts, in fact, it's probably what would make him an effective president. There's actually value in the millennial worldview.

Ultimately, I don't really believe that Salter is setting out to declare generational warfare on millennials. He probably doesn't know (or care) what a millennial is. But that's part of the problem with McCain's current line of attack. Last week, the campaign released an ad called "The Summer of Love" that opened with stock late-Sixties footage of goateed protesters, flamboyant queens and nearly naked longhairs making out in a muddy field. The message: while McCain, a POW at the time, stands for service and selflessness, his rival for the White House represents "hope," "change," narcissism and "beautiful words [that] cannot make our lives better"--just like those dirty hippies. Compared to McCain, it seems, every generation born after World War II is the same to Salter and Co.: petty, selfish, narcissistic. Scarlett Johansson? Janis Joplin? What's the difference? Yes, McCain is a war hero and an honorable public servant. But emphasizing those qualities in broad generational terms--i.e., "traditional" values vs. whatever came next--doesn't make for particularly good politics. It's the "when I was your age" dilemma. Besides reminding America that the senator belongs to a bygone era, such a strategy implicitly belittles anyone younger than the candidate himself. And as McCain knows all too well, that category happens to include the vast majority of voters.

*Adapted from "He's One of Us Now."

UPDATE, July 18: An interesting "rebuttal" of sorts from David Brooks:

The next few years will be an age of government activism. You may think, therefore, that this situation is ripe for Democratic dominance... Yet, historically, periods of great governmental change have often been periods of conservative rule. It’s as if voters understand that they need big changes, but they want those changes planned and enacted by leaders who will restrain the pace of change and prevent radical excess... John McCain’s challenge is to recreate this model. He will never get as many cheers in Germany as Barack Obama, but for a century his family has embodied American heroism. He will never seem as young and forward-leaning as his opponent, but he did have his values formed in an age that people now look back to with respect... If McCain is going to win this election, it will because he can communicate an essential truth — that people in a great and successful nation do not want change for its own sake. But they do realize that it’s only through careful reform that they can preserve what they and their ancestors have so laboriously built.
 

Photo via SI 

Was it the Bloomin' Onion that did it?

Known to reporters on the trail as an workoutaholic who rarely goes 24 hours without hitting a treadmill, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made a strong bid yesterday for Exerciser-in-Chief -- or at least Post-Outback-Self-Flagellator-in-Chief --by making three separate stops at two Chicago gyms in the course of a single day. As ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports, the presumptive nominee started his Tuesday with a short morning session at the apartment building of friend and longtime aide Mike Signator, then flew to Indiana for a campaign event and a round of local TV interviews. When he returned home to Illinois, Obama again visited Signator's gym, then went home briefly before lighting out for the East Bank Club, a massive downtown facility where he regularly plays basketball. All told, Obama spent 98 minutes campaigning--and 188 minutes pumping iron.

Or did he? That's the question AP reporter Glen Johnson asked Obama spokesman Bill Burton this morning after reporters trailing the Illinois senator noticed that he displayed "a distinct lack of visible sweat" throughout the day and even arrived at the East Bank Club "dressed casually as if going out to dinner, wearing slacks, a blue blazer and flip-flops"--observations that apparently sparked speculation "about whether he was actually exercising or using the gym visits as cover for conducting vice presidential vetting or interviews." (Yes, candidates actually do stuff like this.) Burton's terse email response--"Working out"--was pretty clear. But in case anyone was still suspicious, Johnson--in what's easily the sentence of the day--provided the American people with a crucial piece of evidence that proves, once and for all, why they should take Burton's word for it. As "some of the photographers who regularly accompany Obama [told the AP]," he writes, "even when he shot hoops earlier this year with members of the University of North Carolina varsity men's basketball team, they didn't see Obama sweat." 

You heard it here first, folks: the Obamacle does not secrete water and chlorides through his epidermis. He has no need for thermoregulation. Ever. Basketball. Vice presidential interviews. Whatever. He's like a walking block of ice. That never melts. Or a giant stick of antiperspirant. The metaphorical possibilities are endless.

No word yet from the Obama press shop whether the senator will now be conducting all of his workouts in business casual attire. You know, because he can.
 

By Holly Bailey 

With word that the three network news anchors will be joining Barack Obama on his trip overseas next week, the New York Times today raises the question of whether John McCain has been given short shrift when it comes to media coverage. It's been a festering complaint among McCain's senior aides, who haven't been shy about telling reporters (often down to the minute) how much time McCain has received on the evening news versus Obama. The Times correctly notes that the network anchors didn't travel with McCain on his last trip to Iraq in March, which also took him throughout the Middle East and Europe.

But there's a big difference between McCain's trip and the one Obama will embark on next week to Europe and the Middle East. In what could be interpreted now as a possible strategic misstep, the McCain campaign chose not to take reporters along for the ride, forcing media outlets who wanted to cover the newly elected GOP nominee to travel on their own without any guarantee of getting anywhere near the senator. The small group of scribes who made the trek (Newsweek chose not to) faced a logistical nightmare, from arranging last-minute foreign visas to struggling to keep up with McCain as they flew commercially from stop to stop. (McCain traveled by a military aircraft.) In contrast, the Obama campaign is inviting reporters on its tour, handling all the logistics--including transportation--for what will certainly be a much larger press corps than usual.

Why didn't McCain take reporters on his first overseas visit since clinching the nomination? For one, McCain was on official Senate travel, and aides rightly worried about an onslaught of stories questioning whether he was improperly using his Senate office to benefit his presidential campaign. It was also a campaign in transition, and they worried they didn't have the manpower logistically to handle a large press corps on an overseas swing. The Arizona senator did do several media interviews while abroad, including a pre-arranged sit-down with CNN's John King in Saddam Hussein's old palace in Baghdad. And some of the campaign beat regulars were on hand when McCain made a big time gaffe, confusing Sunnis and Shiites. It made headlines back home, but as First Read notes, it didn't create nearly the stir it would have had Brian Williams, Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson been reported their evening newscast from the scene.

Still, McCain aides were disappointed that the senator's trip didn't generate more coverage back home--headlines they hoped would highlight McCain's foreign policy expertise. Indeed, some notable moments of McCain's trip went largely unnoticed back in the States, including a made-for-campaign moment of pleasantly surprised tourists chanting "Mac is Back! Mac is Back!" as the senator arrived at a Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. In advance of Obama's trip, McCain aides have been critical of what they see as a double standard. This morning,McCain communication director Jill Hazelbaker called the Democratic nominee's jaunt a "first-of-its-kind campaign rally overseas." (On his bus this afternoon in Kansas City, McCain said he didn't agree with Hazelbaker's remarks and told reporters he would "talk to her.") Yet mixed with that criticism must be a degree of disappointment at what McCain's March trip could have been.

 UPDATE, 5:45 p.m.: Shortly after arriving in Michigan for a fundraiser, McCain went before reporters and clarified the remarks he made earlier this afternoon about Obama's overseas trip. McCain said he had been talking about Obama's trip to Iraq and Afghanistan-not the other stops on his tour-when he said he didn't think the visit was political in nature. "What Sen. Obama does in the other countries, whether political rallies or not, obviously would then give them a political flavor to say the least," McCain said.

The campaign organized the impromptu press conference after a quick campaign stop at Pronto Pup, a corn dog shop on the shores of White Lake in Western Michigan. As McCain spoke, Nicolle Wallace, a former White House aide who recently joined the campaign as an adviser, stood a few feet away, holding her cell phone toward McCain so that someone on the other end could hear. When McCain moved on to other subjects, Wallace walked away and began talking into the phone.

"If he has political rallies in other places, then obviously it's a political trip," McCain said. "Apparently it's gonna be if he is going to have a rally in Germany at the Brandenberg Gate, which is what is being publicly stated. Of course, if you have political rallies then it's a political event."
 

Call it a blessing in disguise--or a very smart bit of strategery.

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal published a story titled "McCain Camp Pegs Total War Chest at $400 Million." The big news, however, had nothing to do with the Republican nominee. According to WSJ reporters Christopher Cooper and Susan Davis--who claimed to have a source close to the campaign--Barack Obama was "expected to report that he had raised little more than $30 million in June." Given that the Illinois senator had raked in $55 million in February and nearly $300 million during the 16-month primary campaign, wrote Cooper and Davis, this total was "underwhelming"--the result, they added, of reluctance among Hillary Clinton's big-money people to fund her former foe and Obama's own "shifts to the center," which had dampened the ardor of his small-donor base.

Here at Stumper headquarters, we joined the choir, comparing the Democrat's cash on hand--his campaign coffers plus the DNC war chest--unfavorably with McCain and the RNC, who, thanks to aggressive joint efforts to raise as much private money as possible before the Arizonan's public financing kicks in, had $102.6 million remaining at the end of June. (That would be more than double Obama's May bank balance.) "The real story of this year's money race," we wrote, "[is that] it's much more competitive than anyone expected." Even when Obama spokesman Dan Pfieffer told reporters that the WSJ number was "way off the mark," we responded with skepticism. "Unless Obama and DNC raked in a combined total in the neighborhood of $70 million," we wrote, noting that the DNC had raised a mere $4 million in May, "the Republicans still have more cash on hand."

Turns out the Democrats did exactly that. This morning, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe announced in an email to supporters that his boss had netted an eye-popping $52 million in June, boosting his available cash balance to $72 million. Meanwhile, DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney revealed that the national party raked in more than $22 million, leaving them with $20 million in the vault. Combined, that gives the Democrats a cash-on-hand total of $92 million--a measly $3 million short of the GOP's current $95 million war chest. In retrospect, this should've seemed inevitable--of course a new opponent would energize Obama's donors, and of course the DNC's haul would grow as Democratic fat-cats finally start to funnel their $28,500 checks through the party. But the WSJ report had the predictable effect of lowering the press's astronomical expectations, so that what once looked obvious now looks surprising. Hence excitable headlines like "Obama Outraises McCain 2-to1"--and another news cycle dominated by the Democrat. It's almost as if David Axelrod was the one whispering "$30 million" in Cooper's ear.

That said, it's worth noting that the basic contours of the cash contest haven't changed: Obama is breaking records and McCain is holding his own. Two numbers tell the entire Obama story: $2 million and $68. The latter is the average size of a contribution to the Obama campaign in June. The amazing thing is that it's about $30 lower than the average contribution in May, April or March. This indicates that the senator attracted a massive number of new $5, $10, $20 donors once the primaries ended--presumably from the ranks of devoted Dems who had (until then) supported Hillary Clinton. Going forward, the sustained growth of this small-sum base is by far Obama's biggest advantage over McCain, who's relying mostly on big-money people to max out and move along.

Same goes for the $2 million--i.e., the meager amount Obama banked last month for the general election. At first, the sum is misleading; you'd think Obama would want to save as much as possible for the final leg of the race.* But because there's a $2,300 cap on what an individual supporters can give in the primaries and a separate $2,300 limit on general-election contributions--not to mention the fact that primary cash "rolls over" into the general-election account--all this means is that very few of Obama's nearly two million donors have reached even that initial $2,300 ceiling (otherwise, more of them would be giving to the fall fund). Ultimately, Obama could raise more than $250 million by Election Day if he continues at this pace--and judging by his expanding pool of small donors, he will.

Still, that doesn't mean McCain is the slouch most pundits expected him to be. Because the senator opted into the public financing system, he'll receive a lump sum of $84.1 million in taxpayer money (or $42 million per month) after the Republican convention, plus about $100 million of assistance from the comparatively rich RNC. Combined with his expected pre-convention tally of $60 million, that comes to about $250 million as well. Which is plenty of dough to spread around. The big benefit for McCain, of course, is that public financing frees him up to focus the final leg of his campaign on voters instead of donors. Obama, meanwhile, must keep posting $50-million months from now through November 4--even detouring from the trail if necessary. In other words, Obama's June was very, very impressive. But anything less would've been unacceptable.