Picking a vice president is obviously Barack Obama's decision to make. He must be comfortable with who he picks. Comfort level between a president and vice president may be the most important factor of all.

So I can only offer my argument, based on some facts and subjective impressions, as to why I believe it would be in Sen. Obama's personal and political interest to select Hillary Rodham Clinton as his vice presidential running mate. Not just to enhance his chances of winning -- but, more important, to help him be a more effective president.

This is not a criticism of other candidates. This is simply a fact -- a product of Sen. Clinton's nearly 18-month national campaign in all 50 states and the 18 million votes she won. The result was a dramatic increase in her favorable ratings across the spectrum, even among some of her most conservative critics.

In late June, polls conducted by The Wall Street Journal/NBC and Fox/Opinion Dynamics -- using entirely different samples -- both showed Sen. Clinton giving Sen. Obama a +3% bump, pushing him over 51% for the first time, when the two of them were paired against Sen. McCain and Gov. Romney.

Most recently, in nationwide polling on July 22-23, a Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll showed a more dramatic bump of +8% with Sen. Clinton as Sen. Obama's vice presidential running mate. In a head-on match, it was Sen. Obama 41% to Sen. McCain's 40% (this was before the intense media coverage of his European trip). But with exactly the same sample, when all voters were presented with the choice of an Obama-Clinton ticket vs. McCain-Romney, the results were Obama-Clinton, 48% (+7%), and McCain-Romney 39% (-1%).

Can Sen. Obama win without Sen. Clinton on the ticket? Yes he can. Majorities favor his views on most of the economic issues. And his European trip was virtually flawless, demonstrating that he can walk, talk and act like a president in foreign affairs and with foreign leaders.

However, with Sen. Clinton on the ticket, I do not believe Sen. Obama can lose. She adds important strength to Sen. Obama's in the key constituencies of women, blue-collar workers and senior citizens. And, thus, she could tip the balance in such key border states as West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas (not apparently in play for Sen. Obama as of now), as well as in the key battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida.

So, considering this data, why not pick Sen. Clinton? Here are the three most repeated negatives that seem to concern sincere supporters of Sen. Obama the most:

- Sen. Clinton is polarizing and will rev up the Republican base.

In fact, the data proves the reverse is true: Sen. Clinton has little or no effect on Republican preferences in a race against Sen. McCain -- and she helps Sen. Obama significantly among Democrats.

According to the July 22-23 Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll, in an Obama-McCain head-on match-up, Sen. Obama gets just 74% of the Democrats and 6% of the Republicans. With Sen. Clinton as his running mate vs. a McCain-Romney ticket, Sen. Obama's Democratic vote goes up to 86% -- a significant 12% increase. As for Republican voters, rather than getting "revved up" because of Hillary's presence on the ticket, there was no effect at all: The Obama-Clinton ticket gains 3% (from 6% to 9% among Republicans), whereas McCain-Romney gains the same 3% (from 82% to 85%).

So what about independents? An Obama-Clinton ticket appears to gain some strength in this critical swing-voter group. With an Obama-McCain head-on contest, independents are evenly divided, 32%-30%, with Sen. Obama over Sen. McCain. But with an Obama-Clinton ticket vs. a McCain-Romney ticket, the independents favor Obama-Clinton 38%-30% -- a statistically significant 6% increase in a crucial voter group.

- Choosing Sen. Clinton would be counter to the Obama message of "new politics" and change.

The simple answer: How can choosing the first woman vice president in the history of the United States be a choice for the status quo? How can choosing someone who can help the future President Obama bring to America its first affordable and effective national health insurance system reinforce the status quo rather than change? The answer is: Older doesn't mean status quo. Hillary Clinton is a change agent and always has been throughout her public career. Barack Obama selecting her as the first female vice president would reinforce his change message, not detract from it.

- She would not be a team player, and her husband would be a distraction or worse in an Obama White House.

The answer here comes down to knowing Hillary and Bill Clinton as real people, not as cartoon characters. No one who knows either one of them believes there is a shred of truth to this widely held misperception.

Hillary Clinton is the ultimate team player and I have no doubt she would be an invaluable vice president. She knows from firsthand experience the importance of a supportive and involved vice president.

I am certain of this -- not just because of my personal friendship with her over 39-plus years, in the best of times and in the worst of times. But also I know -- and I believe even her critics would agree -- that she is first and foremost a dedicated public servant. And she would do everything, everything, to help her president succeed because by doing so the nation and the American people would benefit. As long as I've known her, that has always been her life's driving goal: public service to help people.

So what about Bill Clinton? Well, what about him? He loves his wife, he loves his country, and he would be 100% dedicated to helping a President Obama in any way the president wished. If that means being quiet and not distracting from the messages or issues the Obama White House is focusing on, Bill Clinton will do whatever it takes to be helpful.

Of course having a former president as the spouse of the vice president in the White House, much less someone with the intellectual power and star quality of Bill Clinton, will be a challenge to a President Obama and his White House. Few can deny that. But the last time I looked, Sen. Obama does pretty well dealing with challenges, even those his closest friends and confidantes are worried about.

In the final analysis, to repeat, this is Sen. Obama's personal and political decision and he must be comfortable with the choice. I respect that. I honor that. These are my best arguments that it is in his political interest and his future administration's interest to have Hillary Clinton by his side on the ticket as vice president -- as a cheerleader and articulate supporter, as a candid adviser, and as a friend inside the White House with eight years of frontline experience of what it's like.

Now it's up to Sen. Obama. Whatever his decision, I will support it.

By LANNY J. DAVIS, The Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2008

The Republican National Committee began an anti-Obama Web site called "Audacity Watch," a play on the title of Mr. Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope." And, in a concerted volley of television interviews, news releases and e-mail, campaign representatives attacked him on a wide range of issues, including tax policies and energy proposals.

The moves are the McCain campaign's most full-throttled effort to define Mr. Obama negatively, on its own terms, by creating a narrative intended to turn the public off to an opponent.

Although Mr. Obama has been under an intense public spotlight for the last year, he is still relatively new on the national scene, and polls indicate that for all the enthusiasm he has generated among his supporters, many voters still have questions about him, providing Republicans an opening to shape his image in critical groups like white working-class voters between now and Election Day.

Mr. McCain's campaign is now under the leadership of members of President Bush's re-election campaign, including Steve Schmidt, the czar of the Bush war room that relentlessly painted his opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as effete, elite, and equivocal through a daily blitz of sound bites and Web videos that were carefully coordinated with Mr. Bush's television advertisements.

The run of attacks against Mr. Obama over the last couple of weeks have been strikingly reminiscent of that drive, including the Bush team's tactics of seeking to make campaigns referendums on its opponents - not a choice between two candidates - and attacking the opponent's perceived strengths head-on. Central to the latest McCain drive is an attempt to use against Mr. Obama the huge crowds and excitement he has drawn, including on his foreign trip last week, by promoting a view of him as more interested in attention and adulation than in solving the problems facing American families.

"I would say that it is beyond dispute that he has become the biggest celebrity in the world," Mr. Schmidt said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. "The question that we are posing to the American people is this: 'Is he ready to lead yet?' And the answer to the question that we will offer to the American people is: 'No he is not.' "

Mr. McCain's more focused assault comes after one of his worst weeks of the general election campaign, when he seemed to fumble for a consistent, overarching critique of Mr. Obama, who winged around the Middle East and Europe. Mr. McCain's advisers continue to look for ways to bring more discipline to his message, and are being urged by some supporters to cut back the frequency of his question-and-answer sessions with reporters, a staple of his campaign but one that occasionally yields unscripted moments, misstatements and off-the-cuff pronouncements that divert attention from the themes he is trying to promote.

The intensity of the recent drive - which has included some assertions from the McCain campaign that have been widely dismissed as misleading - has surprised even some allies of Mr. McCain, who has frequently spoken about the need for civility in politics. The sentiment seeped onto television on Wednesday with Andrea Tantaros, a Republican strategist, saying on MSNBC that the use of Ms. Hilton in Mr. McCain's commercial was "absurd and juvenile," and that he should spend more time promoting his own agenda.

Mr. Obama's campaign seized on those concerns, trying to turn the tables by portraying Mr. McCain as cranky and negative. The Democratic National Committee called Mr. McCain "McNasty." Late Wednesday Mr. Obama released a counter advertisement citing editorials critical of Mr. McCain's latest volley of attacks and featuring an announcer who says, "John McCain, Same old politics, same failed policies."

Asked by reporters about Mr. McCain's new advertisement, Mr. Obama said, "I do notice that he doesn't seem to have anything to say very positive about himself."

Mr. Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, said that Mr. McCain's strategy to define Mr. Obama negatively in voters' minds, while similar to one that successfully worked against Mr. Kerry, would not work this year.

"When people are struggling, when they're trying to pay their bills, when they're concerned about their fundamental security, I don't think they have much tolerance for Britney Spears and Paris Hilton," Mr. Axelrod said. "I think they understand times are more serious than that, and they thought John McCain was, too."

Mr. Schmidt, whom Mr. McCain placed in charge of day-to-day operations this month, specialized during the 2004 campaign in seizing on opportunities - think windsurfing; seemingly contradictory votes on Iraq policy - to paint Mr. Kerry negatively.

Seeking similar openings, the campaign seized on Mr. Obama's decision to skip a visit with wounded United States troops in Germany. (The McCain campaign said Mr. Obama canceled because he could not take the news media with him to the hospital, an assertion denied by the Obama campaign and undercut by the accounts of reporters.)

The new focus has been welcomed by some Republicans. "They're now in a position of driving news as opposed to reacting to it," said Brian Jones, a former aide to Mr. McCain.

But some fear a backlash. And Mr. McCain does not like to follow a script. People who know him said that it may be a challenge to apply the Bush model - strict adherence to the message of the day by the candidate combined with a relentless drive to define the opponent negatively - to a campaign not known so far for discipline or consistency.

"It could be the Coca-Cola strategy of marketing that they're trying to apply to Dr Pepper," said John Weaver, a former chief strategist for Mr. McCain.

Republican anger over the Iraq war and the economy has left some advisers to Mr. Obama hopeful that they can capture pockets of Republican votes on Election Day in states like Alaska, Indiana, Montana, North Dakota and Virginia. Advisers also said they had recently begun emphasizing Mr. Obama's ties to Republicans as a way to make undecided independent voters more comfortable with him.

In recent weeks, Obama aides have met with Republican leaders in crucial states to strategize about wooing undecided voters. The campaign is considering inviting Republicans to speak at the Democratic convention. Obama aides pointed to a defense by Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, a critic of the war, after Senator John McCain's campaign ran an advertisement attacking Mr. Obama. And they have tapped sympathetic Republican brand names like Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of the former president, to reach out to party members.

Obama advisers say support from Republican voters could be critical if Mr. McCain makes gains in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two states recent Democratic presidential nominees have carried but where Mr. Obama is struggling among working-class white voters.

Based on recent polls, as well as interviews with Obama advisers, Republican voters are not moving to Mr. Obama at a greater pace than they moved to Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004. In the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted this month, 9 percent of Republicans said they would vote for Mr. Obama if the election were held today; at the same point in 2004, 6 percent said they would have supported Mr. Kerry, a statistically insignificant difference.

But analysts also note that sizable numbers of voters who typically support Republicans - or were solidly behind President Bush at this point in 2000 and 2004 - remain undecided about Mr. McCain.

"There aren't a lot of people on the Republican side who are saying yes to Obama - though there are more of them," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. "But uncertainty about McCain raises the possibility of Republican defections down the road."

The Obama campaign is not overstating its expectations about Republican support. Aides are concentrating organizing and polling on independents and Democrats, and are working to leverage two potential advantages this year: increased Democratic voter registration and black voters energized by the prospect of the first African-American nominee.

Yet advisers say that Mr. Obama's emphatic message that he is not a partisan politician - combined with the unpopularity of President Bush and some qualms about Mr. McCain's positions, temperament and age - may attract disaffected Republicans.

"Obama seems like a leader who can deal with challenges that are highly complex, nuanced and interconnected," Ms. Eisenhower said, "and he has the language and communication skills and temperament to engage a set of world leaders who are his generation."

Brian Rogers, a McCain spokesman, said the Obama campaign's outreach to Republicans was nothing more than bluster. "The real battleground is middle-of-the-road swing voters, and John McCain has enormous appeal for them based on his history as a maverick, his independence and his experience," Mr. Rogers said.

Mr. Obama is hardly a perfect candidate for Republicans. Some say they loathe his support for abortion rights but have decided, after the failed 35-year campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade, that they could accept a Democratic president who pledges to work to decrease abortions, as Mr. Obama has.

His multilateral approach to foreign policy disturbs some Republican supporters, who worry that he will indulge European interests, cozy up to the United Nations and engage Iran and North Korea. And some Democrats may end up breaking with Mr. Obama over Israel, given his concern with Palestinian issues (though he strongly supports Israel).

And the idea of a Barack Obama-Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid triumvirate, should Democrats still control Congress after the election, is anathema to many Republicans, as well as to independents who believe in the virtue of two-party government. No Republican member of Congress has endorsed Mr. Obama.

Yet concerns about Mr. Obama, several Republicans said, are less immediate and visceral than the anger at the Bush administration over the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and to a lesser degree over foreign policy decisions like support for Pakistan despite its failings at capturing terrorists.

"Some Republicans are so distressed with the state of their party that they might be for Obama if they don't see him as a threat to their interests," said David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. "Going after Republicans and getting some will only make him more acceptable to people who vote Republican."

Mike Murphy, a Republican media consultant who advised Mr. McCain in his presidential bid in 2000, said he believed that Mr. Obama would probably win more Republican votes this fall than Mr. Kerry did in 2004. But he said that most Republicans would ultimately stand behind Mr. McCain and that the Obama campaign's pitch, instead, could end up proving far more helpful with white independent swing voters.

"The Obama campaign is dripping with money, so they can afford to fool around with Republicans, especially since the McCain campaign is challenged," Mr. Murphy said, referring to Republican concern that the McCain bid has been unfocused at times. "Whether Obama pulls in a big number of swing voters this fall depends on whether McCain comes to life."

An invigorated McCain campaign, though, is not what some Republicans want. Even some who once supported President Bush say that they have tired of the party's hawkishness, unstinting support for the war and attacks on privacy, and that they believe Mr. Obama offers fresher thinking than Mr. McCain or others in both parties.

"I really worry McCain would just continue most of these wrongheaded policies," said Rita E. Hauser, a prominent philanthropist and former Bush fund-raiser who supports Mr. Obama. "I don't want to become a Democrat; I just want a new direction and then a chance for the Republican Party to get back to its roots."

Bill Clinton collected $10,085,000 in speeches alone in 2007, a figure that underscores his continued rock-star credentials on the international lecture circuit, according Sen. Hillary Clinton's financial disclosure forms for 2007, which were released Wednesday morning by the Secretary of the Senate.

The Clintons also earned between $11 million and $26 million last year by selling stocks from their personal portfolio, according to the newly released figures. The stock sales appear to be the proceeds from a blind trust that Senator Clinton announced she planned to liquidate during her presidential campaign to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

The new disclosures could have political consequences for the Clintons. By calling more attention to the couple's personal wealth, as well as the former president's enormous earning power, the figures could make it more difficult to persuade Democratic Party donors to help pay off Hillary Clinton's $22.5 million in campaign debts - nearly half of which is owed to the Clintons personally.

A Clinton spokesperson today said that the senator is not seeking relief for the $13 million she poured into her campaign. The spokesperson pointed to a June conference call, in which the New York Democrat said she considered the loan an "investment" and is not expecting anybody to help pay it back.

The disclosure shows that, even while actively campaigning on behalf of his wife's 2008 presidential bid, the former president kept a hectic international schedule. Among his speaking stops: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, London, South Korea and Canada. The international talks have been the most lucrative for the former president, commanding upward of $250,000 an appearance. Over a three-day period in Norway, Denmark and Sweden in May, Clinton earned $1,485,000. The Power Within, a Canada-based motivational speaking agency, shelled out $955,000 in 2007 to have Clinton appear in Minneapolis, Toronto, Montreal and Niagara on the Lake, Canada.

After leaving the White House, Clinton turned to speaking to help settle about $12 million in legal bills accrued during his time as president. In 2006, he gave 352 speeches (nearly one a day) and earned $10.2 million (much of which the former president has donated to charity.) The number of speeches in 2007 was much lower, but appears to have been on average much more lucrative for the former president.

Bill Clinton's speaking schedule attracted media scrutiny last year because of the large overlap between the corporate groups paying him to speak and those donating to his wife's presidential campaign. But now the political impact could be different. After Hillary Clinton dropped out of the presidential race, Barack Obama agreed to ask his top donors to help his defeated rival pay off her campaign debts. But the plea thus far has not yielded nearly the amounts the Clintons and their supporters had hoped for.

"Tuesday night is Hillary night," said one supporter.

Clinton will be joined on stage with the female Democratic U.S. senators, the sources said.

Those close to Clinton say that she believes there is little chance that she will be Obama's running mate.

While there could be a change of schedule, the vice presidential pick is expected to speak on Wednesday night.

"From what we can gather, she's not really on the short list," said Gloria Borger, a CNN senior political analyst. "The reason Hillary Clinton is out is because she's not on message for Barack Obama, her campaign is not about change, she represents Washington."

Meanwhile, the group Vote Both, which had been pushing for a joint Obama-Clinton ticket, said in a e-mail to supporters Wednesday night that Clinton's chances of being Obama's running mate were slim.

A message on the group's Web site urged Clinton supporters to back Obama. Some have said they would rather vote for John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, than throw their support to Obama.

"While we all were working toward a different result, ultimately we and Barack Obama are working for the same eventual outcome -- getting ready to take back the White House and bring our country the change Americans deserve and so desperately need," the message said.

Sources close to Clinton said the Obama campaign has asked her to hit the trail for Obama, and she will soon do so in the next couple of weeks -- focusing on Nevada, Ohio and Florida.

She's been told, according to the sources, to expect to travel a lot this fall. Those close to her say she's completely comfortable with that, and not angry with Obama.

Clinton's 18 million primary voters were once painted as the 18 million reasons Obama would want to pick her for the No. 2 spot.

Clinton made it clear that it was a job she'd take, if asked. Her closest friends did her bidding.

Mindful not to disrespect Clinton or alienate her supporters, Obama insists she hasn't been ruled out.

"I've said consistently that I think Hillary Clinton would be on anybody's short list," Obama said on NBC's "Meet The Press" on Sunday.

But as the short list gets shorter, the political calculations seem a little more clear.

"Hillary Clinton would be in the ticket if the Barack Obama campaign felt that they were in some trouble with the voters that she brings -- the older women, those voters in rural America, battleground states. They don't think they are in trouble there, so they probably don't think they need her," Borger said.

At the same time Clinton is now fully engaged in talks with the Obama team, the buzz is intensifying over who could be a running mate capable of bringing in Clinton voters.

Maybe I've been looking at the media's treatment of Barack Obama -- the relentless, often favorable and sometimes gushing coverage -- through the wrong end of the telescope.

Maybe -- though I'm not convinced -- what we write and report doesn't matter. Maybe Obama manages to float above it all, protected by a Teflon coating.

That, at any rate, is the theory being floated by Slate media critic Jack Shafer. And since I'm invoked, I feel the need to respond.

My cameo role involved a piece I wrote in March, cataloguing the negative subjects that had been chewed over in the media: Tony Rezko, William Ayers, 130 "present" votes in the Illinois legislature, a Senate compromise that favored a nuclear energy contributor and, of course, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

But I don't believe those stories had little or no impact on Obama; after that, you may recall, Hillary Clinton won most of the remaining primaries. Most likely, we haven't heard the end of the Wright issue. And the coverage of Obama has gotten much friendlier since he clinched the nomination, especially during last week's world tour.

In fact, that supreme self-confidence is itself becoming an issue, which says to me the media is largely firing blanks these days. How dare he meet Merkel, Sarkozy and Brown before he's even been nominated? How dare he tell House Democrats that he's likely to win? (Have you seen many candidates who go around proclaiming they'll probably lose?) It makes for good sport, but if this is the worst thing the media can pin on Obama, he's in for an easy ride.

In the end, though, here's why the coverage matters: Obama is--or was--the least-known nominee since Jimmy Carter. Our impressions of him aren't fully formed. That's why he keeps trotting out his family for People, Us Weekly and "Access Hollywood." He knows the coverage is crucial in sharpening the gauzy image many Americans have of him, and he's right.

Here's the Shafer argument:

"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 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?

"In a 2006 profile in Men's Vogue by Jacob Weisberg, Obama acknowledges that every politician, himself included, has 'some of that reptilian side to him.' To win public office, a politician must power his scales, trim his nails, and tame his swinging tail . . .

"Obama's poise and discipline allow him to resist whatever bait the press and politicians dangle in front of him. When he does address scandalous material, he generally does so to his advantage. In June, when the Web and cable news advanced false rumors that Michelle Obama had called white people 'whitey' on a videotape, Obama squelched the gossip with a denial and, as Ben Smith of Politico reported, put the press on notice by questioning the appropriateness of the question. Smears undermine a politician only when they appeal to voters' pre-existing idea of what sort of person a politician is. Seeing as the pre-existing idea of Obama is so positive, the Obama-haters have had trouble portraying him either as a literal bomb thrower, like William Ayers, or a figurative one, like the Rev. Wright. When the smear artists dress him up as a radical or as 'madrassa'-educated, the ploys only backfire."

The latest John McCain assault is to play the Britney card:

"After spending much of the summer searching for an effective line of attack against Senator Barack Obama," says the New York Times, "Senator John McCain is beginning a newly aggressive campaign to define Mr. Obama as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency.

"On Wednesday alone, the McCain campaign released a new advertisement suggesting -- and not in a good way -- that Mr. Obama was a celebrity along the lines of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Republicans tried to portray Mr. Obama as a candidate who believed the race was all about him, relying on what Democrats said was a completely inaccurate quotation." (The quote was reported by The Washington Post from a closed-door session with Hill Dems.)

But the Boston Globe cautions: "The taunting commercials also risk backlash if they are seen at odds with McCain's repeated pledges to run a civil campaign on the issues.

"Independent analysts have said that several assertions in the ads are based on questionable claims or outright falsehoods. In the TV spots, McCain suggests that Obama is responsible for rising gas prices and that Obama canceled a trip to visit wounded troops because he couldn't bring the media along - assertions strongly disputed by the Obama campaign."

The New York Post's fair-and-balanced headline: " 'Barack the Bimbo.' "

Josh Marshall faults The WP, CNN, AP and others for adopting the cockiness narrative:

"Here we have a candidate, John McCain, who is running on a record of straight talk and honorable campaigning running a campaign made up mainly of charges reporters are now more or less acknowledging are lies. But there's precious little drawing together of the contradiction. What's more, as everyone will acknowledge after the campaign, the McCain campaign is now pushing the caricature of Obama as a uppity young black man whose presumptuousness is displayed not only in taking on airs above his station but also in a taste for young white women.

"So please keep an eye out for references to Obama's presumptuousness, arrogance, etc."

But isn't the McCain camp mockingly comparing Obama to the likes of Britney Spears, rather than implying that he likes to hang with starlets?

Michelle Malkin hits the celebrity angle against the candidate the GOP is now casting as Paris Hilton:

"You couldn't pass a grocery store line this weekend without seeing the picture-perfect smiles of the Obama family. There were Barack Obama's young daughters (whose privacy their parents so sanctimoniously claim to want to protect) flashing their pearly whites on the cover of People. Malia and Sasha competed for attention right next to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's toddler daughter, Shiloh, whose cherubic face was splashed on the cover of another celebrity tabloid. Next to them beamed basket-case starlet Lindsay Lohan and her new lesbian lover -- oh, and that formerly pregnant 'man' who just gave birth to a baby girl. The Obamas blended seamlessly into this Hollyweird pop-culture galaxy.

"The spread in People, which earlier this year fawned over a photo of the bare-chested Obama in his swimsuit, was supposed to be an 'exclusive' first and last look at life at home with the Obamas. Knowing what we know about the Obama we know now, it probably won't be the last. They've hawked the kids to TV gossip show Access Hollywood, blabbed about their romance to Us Weekly, and plopped Michelle O -- the purported 'civilian' whom the Obamessiah declares immune from public criticism -- in front of the cameras to schmooze effortlessly for The Colbert Report and The View demographics. They believe their two-faced tabloid strategy (show their true elitist colors behind closed doors, but play the Every Family for the Obamedia sycophants) is working. Given our dumbed-down, celebrity-obsessed culture, they are probably right.

"Who cares about Barack's perilous lack of foreign-policy experience, his longtime associations with left-wing radicals and domestic terrorists, and his business dealings with Chicago corruptocrats? People brings you the scoop on what really matters in this critical presidential campaign: Michelle hula-hoops with her daughters. They're just like you and me! The kids have slumber parties. They're just like you and me! Barack does laundry, but he doesn't fold it. They're just like you and me! The kids get small allowances. They're just like you and me! The Obamas wear normal clothes while doing normal things."

It's an old right-wing playbook to mock and denigrate the Democrat, says the New Republic's Jonathan Chait:

"Do you remember when conservatives used to speak warmly, and sometimes rapturously, about Barack Obama? That was back when they were certain that the Clinton voodoo magic would make Hillary the nominee, and Obama her sympathetic roadkill. Since then, the right has made the horrifying discoveries that Obama is, successively, a left-wing ideologue, a coddler of anti- Americanism, a wine-sipping elitist, and, now, a shameless flip-flopper. The man will say anything, discard any position, in order to win the election.

"If such a tragic tarnishing of the reputation could happen to a fresh-faced reformer like Obama, it could happen to anybody. And, in fact, it has--at least to anybody who has happened to attain the Democratic presidential nomination at any point over the last five election cycles. John Kerry, as everybody remembers, came to be defined almost exclusively as a flip-flopper. (A 2004 Wall Street Journal news article described him as 'a politician with a troublesome reputation for trying to have it both ways.')

"Al Gore was relentlessly attacked by Republicans for his alleged waffling. ('Mr. Gore has a bit of a reputation for flip-flopping and corner-cutting,' reported The New York Times in 2000.) Bill Clinton was attacked by George H.W. Bush for 'turn[ing] the White House into a Waffle House' and the subject of a famous Time cover story titled, 'Why Voters Don't Trust Bill Clinton.'

"It was true: Voters didn't trust Clinton--or Gore, or Kerry. In all of those elections, polls showed the Democratic nominee scoring higher on most of the issues, but the Republican nominee scoring higher on honesty and other personal qualities. Either this is because the Democratic Party keeps nominating weasels for president, time and time again, or else there's something systemic that makes Republicans (and the press) portray them as such. I'm going with explanation number two . . .

"Flip-flopping is a simple accusation that campaign reporters can sink their teeth into. Moreover, there's always grist for the accusation, because getting to the position of running for president without changing your stance on a few issues is essentially impossible."

The libs, of course, have jumped on McCain's "nothing is off the table" tax comment with George Stephanopoulos--the subject of much subsequent backtracking--but conservatives are really steamed. Check out this Wall Street Journal editorial:

"One of the miracles of this presidential election campaign is that John McCain still has a chance to win, notwithstanding his best attempts to kick it away. In his latest random policy improvisation, the Arizona Senator tried to give up the tax issue . . .

"Economics has never been Mr. McCain's strong suit, but with Iraq receding as a crisis the economy is the ground where the Senator will have to fight and win. And the tax issue provides him with a potent opening, given Mr. Obama's pledge to raise taxes on incomes, dividends and capital gains. In proposing to raise the payroll tax cap, the Democrat is to the left even of Hillary Clinton. Mr. McCain's Sunday blunder will make that issue that much harder to exploit.

"Such mistakes also help explain the continued lack of enthusiasm for Mr. McCain among many conservatives. Meeting with us last December, before the primaries, he declared that 'I will not agree to any tax increase,' repeating the phrase for emphasis. He did not say any tax increase with the exception of Social Security. If Mr. McCain can't convince voters that he's better on taxes than is a Democrat who says matter-of-factly that he wants to raise taxes, the Republican is going to lose in a rout."

The Ted Stevens indictment--which comes as the Alaskan is up for reelection--inspires no sympathy from National Review:

"One of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens's most memorable moments of the last few years came during the Senate fight over the infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere.' In 2005, when Sen. Tom Coburn introduced a measure that would have redirected the money Stevens had earmarked for the bridge to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, Stevens gave an apoplectic speech on the Senate floor in which he threatened to resign if the Senate passed the measure. It was the nation's loss that the Senate voted the measure down, simultaneously missing two opportunities.

"Now that a grand jury has indicted Stevens on seven counts of making false statements, it is time for him to make good on his threat. Stevens is of course innocent until proven guilty of the crimes with which he is charged. But even if he committed no crime, the facts that have emerged over the course of the federal investigation into his personal finances are damning enough on their own. The indictment was just the last straw."

Obama's camp recognizes there is both promise and peril in accusing McCain and the GOP of racially-tinged attacks. Yes, it energizes the Democratic base (black and white) while also raising the antennae of suburban swing voters.

But Obama himself doesn't want to be seen as playing the race card, portraying himself as a victim. A large part of his post-racial appeal is that he's not run a grievance-oriented campaign. As Doug Wilder, the former governor of Virginia and nation's first elected black governor, told Ben Smith and I a few weeks ago, Obama must make plain that "he's not another Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson."

Which brings us to Obama yesterday in Missouri, testing out a new line that seems unambiguously aimed at accusing the GOP of using race (something which McCain and his campaign have not done):

"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said yesterday. "You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

Asked Thursday if Obama was referring to race, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "No."

"What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn't get here after spending decades in Washington," Gibbs said.

Right, neither did Lincoln, but his face, along with those of many other white men, adorns a dollar bill.

Obama is covering himself here just a bit by making his accusation predictive -- "going to" -- but this seems to be a pretty clear effort at having it both ways.

On John McCain's vice presidential pick: "I know he's looking at it because...I talked with somebody who's sort of in the loop on that. They haven't got much time...I don't know who's being vetted, but you need to vet them very carefully."

On campaign coverage and negativity: "I listened to the news the other night...they were saying he (McCain) wasn't being aggressive enough, you know, Barack Obama is getting away with all this stuff because the press has given him $325,000 and McCain $20,000. Barack can get away with the low blows and they never mention McCain -- if (McCain) sneezes it's a low blow.

"People though I should've lightened up more, but you don't know because it's pretty serious business. You're running for president of the United States. I think it's got to be aggressive, it's got to be -- I remember in '96 they wanted me to go after Clinton's character, I wouldn't do it. I think you have to satisfy yourself that there's a limit on how far you're going to go."

On whether McCain or Obama have crossed that limit: "I haven't tried to parse everything they've said. Somebody thought McCain was questioning his (Obama's) patriotism, I don't think -- nobody's questioning anybody's patriotism. Let's face it, politics is what it is. And if it's a political advantage to be opposed to the surge, or to support the surge as McCain is, that's fair game."

On surrogates: "What you really have to watch are your friends. The people out there, your surrogates, who say things, they get you off message, you waste a whole day, you don't make the news cycle."

Does McCain have a message? "They said that about me (that I didn't have a message). If you're winning, you're a hell of a candidate, but if you lose, you're a bum...I think he needs to get the campaign a little more focused. Obama's got all this money and a big organization...what are they spending, $20 million on the Latino vote?

"They ran against a pro. They ran against Hillary Clinton. And the Clintons know how to run a campaign.

"I think McCain's got a shot. This big trip overseas was a wash.. if I'm living out in Russell, Kansas, and a candidate is over in Germany with a couple hundred thousand Germans, and I can't get gas because I've got four bucks in my pocket, I'm not sure I get too excited about someone being all the way to Germany."

Half his lecturing haul was earned abroad, including a staggering $1.5 million in a four-day Scandinavia tour.

A headline in the New York Post on July 7, 2004, announced "Kerry's choice," showing a picture of Sen. John Kerry and former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt.

However, Kerry had picked former Sen. John Edwards as his 2004 presidential running mate.

With the Democratic convention less than a month away, Obama remains mum.

"The next time I talk about my vice presidential selection, it will be to introduce the selection," Obama told CNN's Candy Crowley in Berlin, Germany, last week.

But Washington being Washington, political junkies just can't help themselves.

Before the 1980s, presidential candidates typically did not unveil their running mates until the convention, often on its very last day.

Democrats broke this trend in 1984, when Walter Mondale announced his pick of Geraldine Ferraro four days before the start of the San Francisco convention.

The Democrats continued this practice through 2004, when Kerry announced Edwards as his running mate 20 days before the convention. Republican candidates did not start announcing their vice presidential picks ahead of their convention until 1996.

There are odds-on favorites for Obama's pick, as of now, including Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The most buzz, however, is around Kaine, who's been campaigning for Obama for the last year and a half. He is also the Obama campaign's national chairman.

Asked directly whether he's being courted, Kaine remained coy Tuesday.

"It's flattering to be mentioned; my mom loves it; she calls when she sees it. But, you know, it is just -- that is for the campaign to decide," he told WTOP radio.

CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider said there are several advantages: "He's young; he's fresh; he's new; he's an outsider."

And the downside?

Both Obama and Kaine are young and very new to the national stage, with little or no national security experience.

The two Democrats, however, are comfortable with each other. Kaine was the first governor to endorse Obama outside Illinois, when most of the Democratic establishment was still supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Demographically and geographically, Kaine is the full package.

Kaine, a Roman Catholic, once worked as a missionary in Central America. He can speak about religious values, something Obama wants more Democrats to do. Kaine also speaks fluent Spanish, another target group for Democrats.

Kaine was also born in Minnesota and went to college in Missouri, two swing states in the Midwest.

Stu Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report said Kaine "makes a lot of sense" for Obama.

"Virginia is going to be one of the two or three key states for Obama," he said.

Just as Al Gore did for President Clinton, Kaine helps re-enforce the central theme: The Democratic Party is new and different.

Biden, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a good pick in terms of experience, Rothenberg said.

"He's a grown-up; foreign policy, national security, been around a long time," Rothenberg added.

The Democrat's political experience will help counter GOP arguments that Obama is inexperienced on foreign policy.

Biden is also a scrappy campaigner and would almost certainly revel in the traditional attack-dog role of the running mate.

On the downside, Biden is more apt to wander off script more than once during a general election campaign. In addition, Delaware's three electoral votes are safely in the Democratic column.

Picking Bayh -- originally a big Clinton supporter during the Democratic primaries -- would help unite Democrats during a lengthy, heated primary campaign.

"Evan Bayh is not the kind of person to make mistakes. He is loyal; he's trustworthy; he's smart; he looks terrific in a photo op," Rothenberg said.

On the plus side, Bayh's service on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees would help shore up Obama's weak spots.

Running with this centrist Democrat would counter GOP critics that Obama is a typical liberal. Indiana's 11 electoral votes wouldn't hurt, either.

However, Bayh's support of the war in Iraq could put him at odds with his running mate, who has repeatedly brought up his opposition to the war during campaign rallies.

And then there's Sebelius, who could either help or hurt the women's vote.

"Kathlee Sebelius ... might evoke such a scream of anger from Hillary Clinton supporters that a Sebelius pick wouldn't be worth it if you're just going for a woman," Rothenberg said.

The popular two-term governor of Kansas could help Obama carry the state for the first time since 1964.

Sebelius, who chose a former state GOP chairman as her running mate in 2006, would reinforce Obama's image as someone who transcends the normal partisan divide.

The veepstakes spotlight on Clinton, however, has diminished.

"Normally, the presidential nominee doesn't want to be overshadowed by the veep or the veep's husband, and Sen. Clinton brings some considerable baggage and controversy," Rothenberg said.

That controversy includes the perception that she is one of the most divisive politicians. Obama may not want to put a polarizing figure such as Clinton on a ticket aimed at bridging the partisan divide.

On the plus side, there's no better way to unite the Democratic Party than by putting her on the ticket.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - "Vote Both," a group dedicated to persuading Barack Obama to pick former foe Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate, is folding, as hopes of a "dream ticket" fade.

Organizers Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Arora said they were halting their campaign, based on indications that the presumptive Democratic nominee was looking elsewhere for a right-hand man, or woman.

"Because it seems that Senator Obama has made his decision to offer the slot on the ticket to another candidate, we believe that continuing to ask him to pick Hillary is no longer helpful to our party's chances of winning in November," they wrote in a website message to supporters.

The two former Clinton staffers concluded that reports that Obama had offered Clinton a prime-time speaking role on the second night of the party's convention in Denver next month meant she would not be his pick for number two.

Vice presidential nominees traditionally speak on the penultimate night of the four-day convention.

"We worked for Hillary for a combined 10 years, so we know how many of you may be feeling," they wrote.

"And to those who are hesitant to support Obama right now, we urge you to keep giving him the chance to earn your vote. We are confident he will."

When she wrapped up her historic bid to become America's first woman president in June, Clinton pleaded with supporters to transfer their affections to Obama, to break the Republican stranglehold on the White House.

But some fervent supporters said they would find it hard to back Obama after such a drawn-out and bitter fight.

The former first lady, who piled up votes among women and working-class voters especially, has already campaigned with Obama, and has said she plans to throw herself into the fight to elect him in battleground states.

Vice presidential speculation surrounding Obama, and his Republican rival John McCain, is peaking in the month-long run-up to the party conventions.

The Democratic spotlight has recently fallen on Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.

Meanwhile Republican Mitt Romney, rumored to be on McCain's shortlist, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying "I don't plan on being part of the ticket" -- hardly a cast-iron refusal to serve if selected.

AFP, July 31, 2008

Davis is a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and a longtime friend of Sen. Hillary Clinton's dating back to their time at Yale Law School.

"If anyone thinks that picking a woman will simply placate Hillary Clinton's female supporters, I think that's very patronizing to women and i don't think that that either Gov. Sebelius or Gov. McCaskill would disagree," said Davis, who penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Thursday titled "Why Obama Should Pick Hillary."

Davis said he hasn't met either Sebelius or McCaskill and said he admires them, but Clinton is more qualified.

"She helps him more and she's more qualified," Davis said of Clinton, "Therefore, why would he pick two females, both who are very admirable public servants, why would you pick them over her?"

Davis, a longtime friend of Clinton, said he isn't speaking for Clinton and doesn't know if she truly wants to be vice-president. Though Davis said she recently called him when he was ill.

Davis said he hasn't given up on the "dream" of an Obama-Clinton ticket, though he said he has abandoned his early effort after Obama won the primary to get Clinton supporters to sign a petition urging Obama to pick Clinton as his running-mate.

However other Clinton supporters seem less confident in an Obama-Clinton ticket.

Two former Clinton campaign staffers who started the website VoteBoth.com to urge Obama to choose Clinton as his running-mate is shutting down under the assumption she's not on his short-list of vice-presidential candidates.

Obama's vice-presidential shortlist is being closely help by the campaign.

"We're not commenting about the nominee selection process," Obama spokesperson Bill Burton told ABC News.com.

Obama spent hours this week meeting with the co-chairs of his vice presidential committee search team Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy.

Likely Democratic vice-presidential contenders include Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Indiana Sen. Even Bayh, Sen. Joe Biden, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and Sebelius, a two-term governor of a red state, and McCaskill, a first-time senator from a battleground state who is close to Obama.

McCaskill campaigned with Obama in Missouri Wednesday, but she has said she's not being vetted and sources close to her describe her role as a close personal advisor rather than a possible veep candidate. Meanwhile, Sebelius sidestepped questions Wednesday about whether she is being considered.

Obama may try to solidify his support among women voters thought key in November by picking a woman as his running-mate.

Clinton, who lost her bid to be the Democratic Party's first woman presidential candidate, won 52 percent of Democratic women voters during the primaries. However Obama is leading McCain 54-39 percent in support from likely women voters, according to the latest ABC News poll.

But Davis argued Obama's poll numbers increase with Clinton as his running-mate, citing two June polls from Wall Street Journal/NBC and Fox/Opinion Dynamics.

"Even they wouldn't contend, I believe, that they would be more helpful to Sen. Obama on the ticket than Hillary Clinton," Davis said of Sebelius and McCaskill.

By Jennifer Parker, ABC News, July 31, 2008

"She's coming to basically set the table for him to speak to us," King said.

AFSCME endorsed Obama for President on June 19, 2008. The union group has 1.4 million members.

The hard vetting involves follow-ups to lingering questions about candidates' backgrounds and clarifications of their stands on issues. While the process is intensifying, the fact that the number of potential candidates still being considered is larger than generally believed, suggests that no decision is imminent, just 26 days before the opening of the Democratic National Convention.

It also runs counter to much-publicized comments by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine Tuesday that "there has been a long list. It seems to be getting shorter."

The spate of meetings between Obama and his vetting team this week in Washington were designed to brief Obama on the loose ends that the group is chasing down concerning various candidates rather than some sort of conclusive gathering in which a choice is settled upon.

No one The Fix spoke to for this story would confirm the names being subjected to the "deeper dig." Speculation over the past 48 hours has zeroed in on three names -- Kaine, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden -- but the idea of a wider list of potential veeps suggests that names like Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, former Sen. Sam Nunn and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (among others) are still in the mix.

With the exception of Kaine, who seems to be on something of a media blitz of late, all of the candidates above -- and their key political people -- are saying almost nothing about where they stand in the process. The idea guiding that approach is that the more publicly a candidate declares his (or her) interest in the job, the less chance there is that person will be the pick.

That radio silence makes reporting on the veepstakes one of the most difficult challenges in political journalism. A group numbering perhaps no more than four or five insiders has the whole picture of Obama's vice presidential search while everyone else -- including many of the candidates mentioned -- is left to interpret (and re-interpret) small comments and hints dropped by those in the know.

In other words, take it all cum grano salis. And, don't worry: this will all be over soon.

Obama stood on a small riser and spoke proudly of his trip abroad last week, saying, "What struck me was how hungry people were for American leadership." Of the 200,000 who came out to hear him in Berlin, he said, "They know that if America stands up and is leading with its values and ideals, then the whole world benefits."

A shortened stump speech lamented the 468,000 jobs lost since the beginning of this year, the highest rate of foreclosure since the Great Depression, spiraling gas and education prices and an average family income that has "flat-lined."

"We may be the first generation to pass on an America that is a little poorer than the one we inherited from our parents and grandparents," he said.

Speaking to "a lot of doctors in this room," he promised universal health care access by the end of his first term, a line that drew loud applause. He promised to spend $15 billion a year over the next decade on renewable energy sources, and he spoke of common-sense Midwestern values, singling out a woman who said she was his fourth cousin twice removed on his maternal side.

Standing on the patio of Gallagher's home, McCain made his usual fundraiser jokes about being welcomed "into this modest, middle-income tract home." After Gallagher murmured about the possibility of a tax break, the senator continued, "These public housing projects are quite remarkable."

McCain paid homage to former Rep. Bob Schaffer, who is running for the Senate this year to replace retiring Republican Wayne Allard, and to former Sen. Hank Brown (R-Colo.), a longtime supporter and fellow Vietnam War veteran.

"I will not let you down. I will always put my country first," McCain said. "This incredible fundraiser makes me even more committed to doing what's right for this country."

Gallagher's home abuts a country club golf course and is located just a couple of houses away from that of Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen. It featured the usual trappings of a fancy estate: gurgling fountains, manicured topiaries and elaborate fencing.

Tuesday's guests nibbled on appetizers that included Colorado lamb, a morel mushroom bruschetta, lobster salad and ahi tuna on sticky rice, followed by a salad course and Dover sole with caramelized onions. Attendees also received on their way out gift-wrapped copies of "Faith of Our Fathers," the book McCain wrote with his longtime aide Mark Salter.

On the same day that McCain's Senate colleague Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was indicted on federal corruption charges, McCain said Republicans deserved plenty of blame for Americans hating Washington.

UNION, Mo., July 30 -- Sen. Barack Obama campaigned through the conservative heart of rural Missouri on Wednesday, determined to prove that a Democrat can capture this bellwether state by winning over voters in its far-flung small towns as well as in its urban centers.

With a town hall meeting and rally in Springfield, another in Rolla, a stop in Lebanon, and a rainy barbecue here, Obama is trying to mimic Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill's winning game plan from 2006 and get beyond more traditional strategies that left Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) narrow losers in the Show-Me State. Democrats have traditionally counted on huge margins in St. Louis and Kansas City to counter GOP strength in the rest of the state, and it hasn't worked.

"We are going to be fighting for every vote here in Missouri," Obama told an audience in Rolla. "Don't let the other side scare you from what you know in your gut. You know in your gut we have to bring about change."

The odds may be against him. Public polling has given Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) a consistent but narrow lead statewide. But the Obama campaign is making a run at it, with 24 offices in rural Missouri and 150 paid staff members, an unprecedented total that is triple the number Kerry deployed.

"It's the difference between winning and losing," said McCaskill, who squeaked past Republican Jim Talent with 49.6 percent of the vote in 2006. "People all over the state need to have a sense that a candidate cares about them, and if you don't bother to show up in rural Missouri, if you don't bother to ask for people's votes all over the state, then you're not going to win statewide in Missouri."

"Southwest Missourians are much more focused on substance at the end of the day than style," said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), whose district hosted Obama all day Wednesday. "No question he has style. He gives a great speech. But there's a reason Missouri has been called for years the Show-Me State."

To hand out tickets for events Wednesday, Obama volunteers in Nixa had to set up a table outside what is supposed to be a campaign office, because no lease has been signed. Chad Jackson of Heartland Realty in Nixa said he thinks the Obama campaign intends to open the office eventually, but it isn't there yet, despite the billing. "We just need the signature," he said. "Call back Thursday or Friday, and I should give you a more definitive answer."

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) hinted at the problems Obama still might face here when she suggested that he "has some making up to do" with small-town America after his comments about "bitter" Americans clinging to guns and religion. "What rural Missourians don't like is a candidate who dismisses whole communities out of hand," she said.

But Obama supporters say the effort here is real and the enthusiasm is already there. About 2,000 Missourians stood in 90-degree heat to claim the 1,400 tickets available for the candidate's appearance at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, a town where McCaskill told a sweaty crowd "a lot of people in this state would think nobody would show up . . . for Barack Obama."

To Obama and McCaskill, victory in November is a numbers game. Kerry took 46 percent of the vote in Missouri in 2004, but in the three counties Obama campaigned in, Greene, Franklin and Phelps, he won 37 percent, 41 percent and 36 percent, respectively. McCaskill didn't win them, either, but her 43 percent average was enough.

"North of 40 would do it" for Obama, McCaskill predicted.

Blunt said McCaskill virtually lived in and around Springfield, showing she learned her lesson from her losing gubernatorial campaign two years earlier. Obama could never put in that kind of personal effort, he said, and McCaskill barely won in a year when congressional Republicans were beaten soundly across the country.

But Obama's organization may outdo McCaskill's. By design, a significant number of his Missouri staffers have local roots. Peachy Myers, who commands the field operation, comes from Rolla, and two deputies are from Joplin and Kansas City.

Nearly 100 volunteers, most from Missouri, just finished a six-week commitment to work 30 hours a week. Many worked more. Volunteers and staffers have canvassed in rural areas where no presidential candidate has operated before. On Thursday, the campaign will open two larger offices in St. Louis and one in Kansas City.

The campaign sees potential advantages in Missouri as Obama tries to do what Kerry and Gore could not. One is the existence of a large black population amid polls that suggest Obama is likely to get more than 90 percent of the African American vote nationwide. Another is geography: Missouri's long border with Illinois has given voters more than average familiarity with the senator from next door.

Obama strategists see an opening, too, in the results of the Feb. 5 Republican primary, in which McCain received just 33 percent of the vote, narrowly beating Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney on a day when 200,000 more Missourians cast ballots for a Democrat than for a Republican.

It was no accident that Obama's first campaign stop designed for the general election was in Cape Girardeau, a conservative Mississippi River community that is Rush Limbaugh's home town.

As Election Day nears, McCain's campaign is adopting the aggressive, take-no-prisoners style of Karl Rove, the GOP operative who engineered victories for President Bush. The campaign continued the attack Wednesday with a sarcastic television ad deriding Obama as a "celebrity," part of an intensifying effort to cast him as an elitist.

But the sharp-edged approach is being orchestrated for an unpredictable candidate who often chafes at delivering the campaign's message of the day. It is that freewheeling style that has made him popular with voters and cemented his reputation for candor and straight talk.

McCain, who was most comfortable as an underdog in the unscripted environment of the New Hampshire primary, makes his advisers cringe as he delivers the attack line -- and then keeps talking. In that respect, he is no Bush, his handlers say.

For weeks, McCain's staff has been criticized for running a campaign that has no clear message. The decision by the senator from Arizona to have former Bush strategist Steve Schmidt run daily operations was described as a way to get control of the message. But some Republicans outside the campaign believe that not much has changed since then.

At a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania last week, McCain stood before a banner that proclaimed "Energy Solutions" and "The Lexington Project" -- the moniker his campaign coined for an energy proposal featuring a combination of conservation efforts, expanded offshore drilling and nuclear power.

McCain rambled quickly through the details and showed little appreciation for the art of "branding."

"I call it the Lexington Project, my friends, but you can call it anything you want," he said.

Several weeks ago senior aide Mark Salter said McCain would stop kicking off town hall meetings with news "ripped from the day's headlines" and would instead deliver a formal introduction on a single theme. That effort lasted just a few weeks: In his opening remarks at Tuesday's town hall, McCain hopscotched from the war to pork-barrel spending.

In a news conference with reporters, campaign manager Rick Davis said the ad draws a distinction between Obama's popularity and McCain's appeal, which Davis said stems not from "celebrity" but from "actually having a political movement based on ideas and solutions for the American public."

Schmidt joined the conference call midway through to hammer the point. "There's no dispute that he's become the biggest celebrity in the world," Schmidt said of Obama. "The question that we are posing to the American people is this: Is he ready to lead yet?"

The new ad relies mainly on atmospherics, but it also delivers a harsh assessment of Obama's record, declaring that the Democrat "says he'll raise taxes on electricity." In fact, Obama opposes a "carbon tax," though he does favor a "cap and trade" plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions, which McCain also supports. The assertion is based on a comment that Obama made to a San Antonio paper in February: "What we ought to tax is dirty energy, like coal and, to a lesser extent, natural gas."

Obama's campaign responded to McCain's attacks Wednesday with an ad describing them as "the politics of the past."

On the stump in Missouri, Obama also said: "You know, I don't pay attention to John McCain's ads. Although I do notice that he doesn't seem to have anything to say very positive about himself. He seems to only be talking about me. You need to ask John McCain what he's for, not just what he's against."

But sometimes McCain is not his best spokesman.

At a town hall meeting Tuesday, a GOP voter posed a question McCain has heard everywhere from Sparks, Nev., to Dayton, Ohio: Why should Republicans support him?

"I think I speak for a lot of conservatives when I say I'm not very excited about this election," the questioner said, noting that he differs with McCain on issues including "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and the senator's support for "the global warming crowd's agenda."

But rather than rattle off his most conservative positions -- his opposition to abortion and support for the war -- he launched into a long explanation of his role in a compromise on judges, something that conservatives often criticize him for.

He sparked applause from the Republican audience by mentioning his support for conservative Supreme Court Justices John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr., but he then noted that he had backed liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer as well.

McCain finished off what was supposed to be an explanation of why conservatives should back him with a pledge to push for a cleaner planet.

"I've stood up against my party many times," he said, "because I've done what I thought was right."

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.

Along the way, he traveled in a bubble more insulating than the actual president's. Traffic was shut down for him as he zoomed about town in a long, presidential-style motorcade, while the public and most of the press were kept in the dark about his activities, which included a fundraiser at the Mayflower where donors paid $10,000 or more to have photos taken with him. His schedule for the day, announced Monday night, would have made Dick Cheney envious:

11:00 a.m.: En route TBA.

12:05 p.m.: En route TBA.

1:45 p.m.: En route TBA.

2:55 p.m.: En route TBA.

5:20 p.m.: En route TBA.

The 5:20 TBA turned out to be his adoration session with lawmakers in the Cannon Caucus Room, where even committee chairmen arrived early, as if for the State of the Union. Capitol Police cleared the halls -- just as they do for the actual president. The Secret Service hustled him in through a side door -- just as they do for the actual president.

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 Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reported last week that Obama has directed his staff to begin planning for his transition to the White House, causing Republicans to howl about premature drape measuring. Obama was even feeling confident enough to give British Prime Minister Gordon Brown some management advice over the weekend. "If what you're trying to do is micromanage and solve everything, then you end up being a dilettante," he advised the prime minister, portraying his relative inexperience much as President Bush did in 2000.

On his presidential-style visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem last week, Obama left a written prayer, intercepted by an Israeli newspaper, asking God to "help me guard against pride and despair." He seems to have the despair part under control, but the pride could be a problem.

One source of the confidence is the polling, which shows him with a big lead over McCain. But polls are fickle allies: A USA Today-Gallup poll released Monday found McCain leading Obama by four percentage points among likely voters. Another reason for Obama's confidence -- the press -- is also an unfaithful partner. The Project for Excellence in Journalism reported yesterday that Obama dominated the news media's attention for a seventh straight week. But there are signs that the Obama campaign's arrogance has begun to anger reporters.

In the latest issue of the New Republic, Gabriel Sherman found reporters complaining that Obama's campaign was "acting like the Prom Queen" and being more secretive than Bush. The magazine quoted the New York Times Adam Nagourney's reaction to the Obama campaign's memo attacking one of his stories: "I've never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others." Then came Obama's overseas trip and the campaign's selection of which news organizations could come aboard. Among those excluded: the New Yorker magazine, which had just published a satirical cover about Obama that offended the campaign.

Even Bush hasn't tried that. But then again, Obama has been outdoing the president in ruffles and flourishes lately. As Bush held quiet signing ceremonies in the White House yesterday morning, Obama was involved in a more visible display of executive authority a block away, when he met with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani at the Willard. A full block of F Street was shut down for the prime minister and the would-be president, and some 40 security and motorcade vehicles filled the street.

Later, Obama's aides issued an official-sounding statement, borrowing the language of White House communiques: "I had a productive and wide-ranging discussion. . . . I look forward to working with the democratically elected government of Pakistan."

It had been a long day of acting presidential, but Obama wasn't done. After a few hours huddling with advisers over his vice presidential choice, Obama made his way to the pep rally on the Hill. Moments after he entered the meeting with lawmakers, there was an extended cheer, followed by another, and another.

"I think this can be an incredible election," Obama said later. "I look forward to collaborating with everybody here to win the election."

Win the election? Didn't he do that already?

CHICAGO

Patti Solis Doyle has come home to get her house in order and her reputation back. It has not been a good year.

After a dramatic failure at the helm of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, and five months after Clinton sacked her via e-mail, she moved back to the comfort of her home town to work for Barack Obama.

Here, she is in the protective cocoon of her close Mexican American family, and enveloped by the familiar faces of the tight Democratic machine that helped shape her.

And here, in a small glass office on the 11th floor, at Obama's campaign headquarters on Michigan Avenue, she keeps her head down and tries to unravel the mysteries of 2008: why Clinton lost, why so many of her old friends have turned on her, why she is largely blamed for the campaign's dysfunction, and, most unsettling to her, why Clinton has distanced herself from her onetime closest confidant.

In Washington, proximity to power is power, and on the February day Solis Doyle was replaced, she experienced one of the more rapid -- and extraordinary -- free falls in American politics. She was immediately shut out of the inner circle and cut loose. She was accused of squandering millions of campaign dollars, of being holed up in her corner office watching soap operas as the campaign collapsed, of being an imperious leader who perpetuated a tense and joyless atmosphere -- all of which she denies.

"It's really sad and discouraging and revolting at times," Solis Doyle, 42, says over lunch one recent day. "I have to tell you, I was surprised by the vitriol towards me. I think I'm a good person."

It is generally an unremarkable event when staffers for a defeated presidential candidate join the rival's campaign. At a certain moment, there is a clarion call for all hands on deck. But Clinton loyalists were enraged when Solis Doyle was named chief of staff for Obama's future vice presidential pick.

"When I speak, Hillary is speaking," she would tell people.

Now, she and Hillary do not speak. She and Hillary have not spoken since Feb. 10, the day she was ousted. The senator from New York declined to be interviewed for this article but, through a spokesman, says she wishes Solis Doyle well.

* * *

The Obama campaign was stunned by the swift and loud outcry from the Clinton camp when Solis Doyle's appointment was announced last month. Loyalists read the hiring as a pointed message from Obama that he had no intention of considering Clinton as his running mate.

"There was no message -- absolutely not," Obama senior strategist David Axelrod says. He said he never asked Solis Doyle, whom he's known for 20 years, where she stood with Clinton, and he says he was not aware of issues associated with her management style.

"Honestly, we were not privy to the history of the campaign's relationships," he says.

The Obama operation hired Solis Doyle, he explains, because it needed someone who had been through the process. "She is my friend -- I make no bones about it," he says. "But we're not a [charitable organization]. We're trying to win a election here. She brought a useful skill set."

Asked whether he had given consideration to Solis Doyle's reputation as a controversial manager, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says: "There's a culture to an organization that influences people's behavior, and our culture has been collegial and respectful. . . . I heard theirs was not as collegial. . . . In the past few weeks, she has been a complete team player."

Solis Doyle also offered the prospect of a seamless transition because of her longtime relationships with many of those in Obama's inner circle. Fresh from Northwestern University in 1988, Solis Doyle went to work at Chicago's City Hall for Treasurer Miriam Santos and then joined Richard M. Daley's mayoral campaign. Her brother Danny is a well-connected alderman from the city's largely Hispanic lower West Side. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel -- another Chicagoan -- is a friend.

Her job with Obama is a significant one. Reporting directly to campaign manager Plouffe, she is hiring more than 30 people to support the vice presidential nominee and his or her family. "Unless someone has run for president before, this is an experience that is completely indescribable," she says. "The idea of going from zero to 100 overnight -- it is incumbent upon me to staff that person with people who have done this before. And I have done it before." And that staff's foremost loyalty is to the nominee, not his running mate. The fierce loyalty that Solis Doyle once enforced for Hillary Clinton she will now insist upon for Barack Obama.

"The day she conceded I cried," Solis Doyle says, "but I heard her. She said we are moving on, and we cannot waste time with the what-ifs." She says restoring her reputation was not paramount in her decision, but notes, "Certainly, no one would want their final act in anything to be what happened to me."

* * *

It's impossible not to feel sympathy for this sixth child of Mexican immigrants, who, at 25 years old, was Hillary Clinton's first personal staff hire when her husband ran for president in 1992.

It shadowed him as he struggled against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in many states through the primaries - results that sometimes stood at odds with the huge, enthusiastic crowds that turned out to see him. It was there in the exit polls that suggested that many Democrats were uncomfortable with Obama, putting an asterisk next to some of his biggest primary victories.

And it is back again as he returns from an overseas trip that even Republicans have described as politically triumphant. In this case, the question is why, given how sour Americans feel about President George W. Bush and the Republican Party, about the Iraq war and the ailing economy that Bush will leave to his successor and about the perception that Obama is running such a better campaign than Senator John McCain, the senator from Illinois is not doing even better in national opinion polls

Most polls show Obama with a lead of 6 or 7 points over McCain nationally, and he rarely breaks the 50 percent mark. Those are statistics that have given Republicans, who are not exactly feeling joyful these days, a line to grab onto and has fed some underlying anxiety among some Democrats.

"They've known John McCain for years," said Bill McInturff, a pollster for McCain. "But people say in focus groups, 'Who the heck is Barack Obama? Had you heard of him before six months ago?'

"And he's 46 years old. He's somebody nobody knows about."

McCain is "running ahead of where he should be based on the environment," McInturff said.

Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster, said the statistics should serve as a reminder of the particular obstacles that Obama faces.

"Here's a 46-year-old African-American with a narrative that is very unusual and that few other Americans can relate to," he said. "Add to the fact that he has had four years in the United States Senate and very little international experience. That's a large leap for the American public to make."

Beyond that, Obama faces an opponent in McCain with a history of appealing to independent voters and defying his party on occasion. McCain's advocates argued during the primaries that he was the strongest candidate the party had in a general election contest for just these reasons.

"I believe had Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney been our nominee, they'd be 10 or 12 points behind right now, they'd be much closer to the generic vote," McInturff said.

Yet for all that, is Obama really struggling? Are these summer polls truly evidence of underperforming or fundamental weaknesses in his campaign?

The truth of the matter is, given the history in open presidential elections over the past 50-years - not to mention the recent polarization that has marked politics in the United States - a seven-point victory by Obama, or by McCain, in November would have to be considered substantial in a contest where there is no incumbent on the ballot.

"If you look at this historically, presidential elections are close," said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager.

In the elections of 2000, 1968 and 1960, with no incumbent president on the ballot, the two candidates were separated by less than a percentage point. George H.W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988 by seven points, and suffice it to say that Obama is no Dukakis. Bill Clinton defeated Bush four years later by six points, and that was in a three-way election with H. Ross Perot.

Some analysts said that Obama could be like Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan was up against an unpopular incumbent, President Jimmy Carter, who for all his weaknesses was a known quantity. Only after Reagan convinced voters that he was credible as a president did the polls break in his direction.

Even Obama's advisers say they are uneasy at his difficulty at breaking the 50 percent barrier, a reminder - in poll after poll - that there are a lot of Americans who are not ready to cast their lot with him and may never be.

Yet in a multi-candidate race, as this one is - though Bob Barr and Ralph Nader so far are having minimal effect - victory can be claimed with less than 50 percent of the vote. Other than Bush in 1988 and Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, presidents have been routinely strolling into the Oval Office without a majority of the vote - or barely: Reagan drew just under 51 percent in his three-way race with Carter.

And finally, this is July. There are two conventions and three debates to go; many Americans will not even begin really paying attention to this election until early September.

Voters may be holding back because they have all kinds of apprehensions about Obama. Or they might just not be ready to make a decision quite this early.

By Adam Nagourney, International Herald Tribune, July 28, 2008

Senator John McCain recently began giving a radio address every Saturday.

Obama's campaign plane has been dubbed "O-Force One." ("Obama-'08/President" is stitched into the captain's chair.)

McCain gave a speech in Columbus, Ohio, in May hypothetically looking back on his first term in office.

It is unclear when the two presidential candidates will host their first state dinners, spend their first weekends at Camp David or welcome this year's National Basketball Association champions, the Boston Celtics, to the Rose Garden.

It can be easy to overlook this detail given that McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, and 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 play-act the role of president.

Both have been engaged in "dueling efforts to hew a faux reality of occupying an office that they haven't yet won," said Joshua King, a veteran of political stagecraft who served as director of production in the Clinton White House. "They're relatively free to fabricate their own version of officialdom."

Both McCain and Obama have embarked on high-profile trips abroad, a practice unheard of in recent decades by nonincumbent presidential nominees or nominees-to-be. Obama traveled to Europe and the Middle East last week, while McCain visited Latin America earlier this month.

The journeys provided a roving platform for the candidates to mimic the "official" conventions of a commander in chief. Obama set forth on his European and Middle Eastern tour accompanied by 12 foreign policy advisers and a virtual army of men wearing earpieces that approached presidential levels. He was ferried through the streets of Amman, Jordan, in a 20-car motorcade.

While the McCain entourage pales compared with that of his rival - as does his Boeing 737 next to Obama's 757 - his trips still convey an unmistakably presidential vibe. In Colombia, he held a news conference with President Álvaro Uribe that followed the same format as joint presidential appearances (a couple or so questions from each side.)

On all trips, McCain's campaign distributes mini-schedule booklets that are nearly identical to those used in the White House - same style, same typeface, same size.

"You obviously always want your candidate to look presidential while not acting too presidential," said Ed Rollins, a longtime Republican strategist.

This challenge was particularly acute last week for Obama on his five-country tour of Europe and the Middle East. He enjoyed rarefied perches and backdrops typically reserved for traveling presidents: being photographed in front of 10 Downing Street in London, surveying Iraq from the air with General David Petraeus and addressing hordes of Berliners while looking toward the Brandenburg Gate.

Obama's trip was mostly judged a success, which was particularly important to his candidacy because polls have shown that he has the greater burden in convincing voters that he is ready for the presidency. He needs "to plant in people's minds the visual image of him sitting in the White House," said Mike McCurry, a former spokesman for President Bill Clinton.

Obama has a few built-in advantages: He is adept at reading speeches from a teleprompter, as presidents tend to be (and McCain is not). He also received Secret Service protection early in his campaign, which has lent appreciably to his "Kind of a Big Deal" aura.

But Obama has been criticized for overreaching at times. In June, his campaign displayed a facsimile of the presidential seal. The Obama version included an "O" covering the body of the eagle and the Latin phrase "Vero Possumus" in place of the standard "E Pluribus Unum." ("Vero Possumus" roughly translates to the Obama campaign slogan, "Yes, we can.")

The seal was instantly derided as an affectation; three days later, it was retired. McCain joined in the ridicule on July 12 - in his first "weekly radio address." (The real president also delivers one every Saturday morning.)

At times on his overseas trip, Obama and his campaign teetered on the presidential-presumptuous line. It did not go un-snickered-upon within the McCain campaign, for instance, when Obama said Wednesday that he wanted to acquaint himself with foreign leaders "who I expect to be dealing with over the next 8 to 10 years."

McCain's surrogates hit the overconfidence note repeatedly last week. Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for McCain, mocked Obama's speech to Germans as "a premature victory lap in the heart of Berlin."

But the press corps traveling with Obama did not react well this week when a campaign aide tried to invoke White House custom by declaring a briefing by a foreign policy adviser to be "on background" - meaning he could not be identified.

"When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally," the adviser said. A reporter was compelled to point out that Obama "is not president of the United States."

The candidate was more vigilant about not prematurely counting his chickens. Aboard O-Force One on Wednesday, Obama was asked whether he had studied the famous speeches Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy had given in Berlin. "You know, they were presidents," Obama said. "I am a citizen."

But on a Monday morning this month, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee campaigned in a local diner, after a Sunday stop at his campaign office here, where he urged volunteers to "make sure we get our voters registered, to make sure we are organized."

In the sea of uncertainty that defines U.S. politics, presidential candidates have generally been able to count on the residents of their home state, Al Gore's loss of Tennessee in 2000 being a notable exception.

But a variety of factors have made McCain's chances in Arizona less assured than they ordinarily would seem, as his campaign has acknowledged.

The number of independent voters in Arizona has risen 12 percent since 2004, and those voters have helped send a Democrat to the governor's mansion and given the party four of the state's eight House seats - including two in 2006, one in a historically Republican district.

In June, the McCain campaign startlingly added Arizona to its list of 24 "battleground states," a fact that state Democrats have clung to like sprinkles on a soft-serve ice cream cone.

"John McCain has striking vulnerabilities here," said Emily DeRose, spokeswoman for the Arizona Democratic Party. "We are going to take him to the mat. We are not giving him a pass in Arizona."

What is more, the state's Republican Party is more or less in disarray, split between its moderate and staunchly conservative factions. Its chairman - who just two months ago cheerfully attended a campaign event here for Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican who ran for president this year - has been a thorn in McCain's political side for years. In the Arizona primary in February, McCain captured 47 percent of his party's voters, hardly the resounding victory that a candidate who has represented his state for over 25 years might expect.

The Democratic ambitions here may be largely bluster. Neither McCain nor Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, his presumed rival in November, appears to be spending money in the state. There are no advertisements, and the Obama campaign has no paid staff in Arizona.

McCain's political director, Sarah Simmons, said the campaign's designation of Arizona as a battleground state was simply a recognition that voters there do not always vote for Republicans for president.

"Obviously, any state that has swung before, we pay attention to," Simmons said. (Arizona has gone to Democratic presidential nominees twice in the past 60 years - Harry Truman in 1948 and Bill Clinton in 1996.)

McCain's breakfast photo event and his recent visit to his southwest regional campaign headquarters here to cheer on volunteers were unusual for an election with so many states in play.

McCain may be trying to appeal to people like Steven Townsend, a software executive from the upscale Paradise Valley neighborhood of Phoenix, who said he had voted for McCain several times.

"I represent a large group of Republicans in this state who feel disenfranchised," Townsend said, citing the war, the economy and McCain's occasional forays into socially conservative territory as reasons for his disenchantment.

"You've got such a large percentage of the population that is here now that doesn't care about the popular history that many here have about him," he said. "I believe he is susceptible here. It is not as clear-cut as some people may believe."

Demographic trends may not favor McCain. Roughly 20 percent of the state's voters are Latino, a group that tends to support Democrats in this state. Many Republicans in Arizona, including the sheriff of the most populous county, Maricopa, have taken an extremely hard line on illegal immigrants.

Further, there has been a large influx of younger voters, who tend to favor Democrats over Republicans by about 2 to 1, said Bruce Merrill, a state polling expert. Many of these people are registering for the first time.

"I've never voted, and I never cared to vote," said Sandy Simmons, 28. "But this is such an exciting time in our history." She said she planned to vote for Obama.

Also, McCain's state party has not been his staunchest supporter.

It recently came under the control of its most conservative, activist branch, which was infuriated last year by McCain's support of a Senate bill that would have offered a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The state Republican chairman, Randy Pullen, who attended the Paul rally in late May, has often shown support for other candidates.

"He is the best pick almost by luck of the draw," Pullen said of McCain in an interview at the party's headquarters here.

Pullen shrugged off the many disparaging remarks he had made about McCain in the past, most revolving around what he saw as the senator's lack of conservative credentials. "That was then, this is now," he said. "At this point, I very much support John McCain."

McCain's more relevant concern in this state may be the independents, who have been registering at breakneck speed since the last presidential election and who, along with crossover Republicans, clearly helped elect Democrats in 2006.

"My research shows that in Arizona, the new independent is a different type of person from seven years ago," said Merrill, the polling expert. "That voter was more libertarian, more get-government-out-of-my-life. The new independents, which went heavily Democratic in the last election, are much younger, better educated and overwhelmingly antiwar."

While Democrats welcomed the McCain campaign's description of Arizona as a battleground state, the pronouncement could also have been a strategic move, done to raise money or motivate volunteers at home, or simply to mess with the minds of the opposition.

With polls showing a tight race, the economy is at the forefront of U.S. voter concerns as gas prices, inflation and home foreclosure rates soar. As the campaigns head into the stretch before the August and September nominating conventions, Obama has tried to portray his Republican rival as four more years of unpopular Bush policies.

"It's true that change is hard, change isn't easy," Obama said. "Nobody here thinks that Bush or McCain has a real answer for the challenges we face so what they're going to try to do is make you scared about me," Obama said in remarks prepared for an audience in Springfield, Missouri, the first stop on a bus tour devoted to discussing economic security.

"It's a leap, electing a 46-year-old black guy named Barack Obama," he said, adding that the message Republicans have for voters is simple: "He doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bill."

Obama contends that McCain would resort to tired Republican charges that he is a big-spending liberal.

Obama further slammed McCain on Wednesday, saying that his rival wants to cut taxes for the wealthy, while his own policies would repeal Bush's tax cuts for the rich, give $1,000 tax cuts to 95 percent of workers and provide relief to struggling homeowners.

"I want to cut taxes for middle-class families, ordinary folks who are working hard and playing by the rules," he said. "I'm ready to duel John McCain on taxes right here, quick draw."

That drew a quick retort from a McCain aide.

"If Barack Obama wants this so-called duel, then why did he and his entourage run for the hills when John McCain challenged him to 10 town halls," said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

Obama responded after shaking hands at a restaurant in Lebanon.

"I don't hear very much positive from Sen. McCain," he said. "He seems to be only talking about me. You need to ask John McCain what he's for, not just what he's against."

Obama's comments come a day after McCain battled to allay concerns among his conservative voter base that he is open to raising taxes to shore up America's federal retirement program.

At a town hall meeting Tuesday with Nevada voters, McCain handed his microphone to a young girl who asked if he would raise taxes. "No," he said in a stern response, apparently hoping to quash concerns growing out of a weekend television interview.

He caught some Republicans by surprise when he responded to a question about payroll tax increases, saying, "I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table."

"I don't want tax increases. But that doesn't mean that anything is off the table," he said.

That comment drew a strong response from the Club for Growth, a Washington anti-tax group, that wrote to McCain saying his words were "shocking because you have been adamant in your opposition to raising taxes under any circumstances."

On Wednesday, McCain was to be in Colorado before heading to a Kansas City, Missouri, fundraising session.

There was growing speculation, meanwhile, about who both men would name as their vice presidential running mates. Current and former governors and senators seem the most serious contenders, though most of those mentioned are playing coy about any discussions with either campaign.

The choices were expected to carry special weight with voters in this election: McCain would be the oldest person elected to a first term as U.S. president and Obama may be looking for a more experienced running mate given his relatively short four years on the national political stage.

There were growing indications that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - once seen as a natural choice for Obama after he defeated her in an extended primary battle - has been ruled out or slipped to near the bottom of the Illinois senator's short list.

Campaign watchers now are looking to Virginia's Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, who on Tuesday refused to confirm media reports that he has given the Obama campaign his financial records for review.

McCain has likewise kept his decision-making under tight wraps and potential running mates have been just as evasive.

Minnesota's Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty said he has decided to stop answering questions about a spot on McCain's ticket because of all the gossip.

In March, Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, spoke about his race and its possible impact on the presidential election. He was referring to the Democratic party primaries.

"Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country," Obama said.

Barack Obama won millions of votes from white Democrats during primary contests against Senator Hillary Clinton. But now he is in a national campaign against Republican Senator John McCain. He hopes to win states that are traditionally Republican, like Virginia and West Virginia.

States like Pennsylvania that are traditionally Democratic but where white working class voters preferred Senator Clinton in the primaries. Many voters in these states indicate race will be a factor come November.

West Virginia is a southern state with a large white working class. Steve Miller owns a hotel and restaurant in the town of Franklin. He says his community will not support Obama. "I don't think it is racist but they [West Virginians] are just not sure if they are ready for a black in office yet I think is the problem," Miller said.

When Hillary Clinton defeated Obama in the West Virginia primary, an ABC News and Washington Post poll found that for two in 10 white voters, the candidate's skin color was a factor.

Ed Tallman is editor of Franklin's newspaper. He says he knows why West Virginians have a problem with Obama. "When a black man has political power, or when a black person has political power many small town West Virginians seem to believe that his policies will favor blacks rather than working class whites," Tallman said.

Jeff Bowman, 84, owns a hardware store there. He believes America is ready for a black president, but he also finds Obama lacking. "He doesn't have the experience," Bowman said. "That is more detrimental to him than the race."

Vesla Weaver is a professor at the University of Virginia. She has done extensive research on how voters react to candidates' skin color.

Pennsylvania, a northeastern state, also has a large white working class. With more than 8 million registered voters, the state is crucial for Obama. Here too, Hillary Clinton defeated him in the Democratic primary.

Lillian Kepler, 80, from Lewistown, Pennsylvania says her problem with Obama is not related to race. "No, it isn't because he is black it is just that I do not think he has the qualifications that McCain has," Kelpler said.

On college campuses, even in southern Republican states, Obama has been extremely popular with students.

University of Virginia students Geoff Skelly and Chris Blank say race will be a factor in the election, but not for them.

"I think it is still going to be an issue for some people, I think it will be a very small percentage of the voters, maybe enough to turn the election, hopefully not," Skelly said.

"I sincerely feel that the people who are not going to vote for him because he is an African American were never going to vote for a Democrat anyway, " Blank added.

VOA spoke to dozens of voters across the country. Most said America is ready to elect a black president. But political observers say gauging views on race can be difficult, in part because many hide their feelings. They say voters sometimes are not even aware that race is influencing them.

By Chris Simkins, Voice of America, July 29, 2008

If soccer moms determined the outcome of the 1996 presidential race and security moms tipped the balance in 2004, it is beginning to look as if older moms are the key to the 2008 contest. Obama has a problem among women over 40 and a big problem among women over 50. These groups, normally the staunchest of Democratic supporters, are showing a propensity to back McCain and a disinclination to support Obama.

According to the latest Fox News survey, Obama is winning among women under 40 by 13 points, but McCain is winning among women aged 41-45 by four points. Among women 50 and over, McCain is three points ahead. Obama's 48-35 lead among women under 40 is normal for a Democrat, but to trail among women in their 40s by 45-41 and by women over 50 by 38-35 is extraordinary.

The problem is that older women don't like Obama as much as younger women do. While 70 percent of women under 40 have a favorable opinion of the Democratic candidate, only 58 percent of women in their 40s feel the same way, and only 52 percent of those over 50 see him favorably.

In fact, the gap between male and female voting preference in this election is far lower than it normally is. Among people under 40, men back Obama by eight points and women support him by 13. Among those in their 40s, men back McCain by 11 points and women support him by four. And for those over 50, men vote for the Republican by a nine-point margin while women prefer him by three points.

Usually, the gender gap runs at least 10 points in each age group and, more usually, averages a 15-point differential. The lower gap in this race does not indicate any special popularity for McCain or negatives on Obama among men. Men are voting the way they usually do. It's women who are making the big difference and keeping this race tied.

Part of the problem may stem from Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Hillary drew her strongest support from older women who still remembered the sexism of their youth and their struggles to pierce the glass ceiling. For younger women, sexism has much less personal relevance and they were less drawn to her candidacy.

But a bigger problem may be a cultural alienation older white women feel toward Obama. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright may linger as a worry in their increasingly gray heads as they contemplate an Obama presidency. This fear of the unknown and the gap they seem to feel with Obama is so strong that it is overcoming their normal proclivity to back Democrats.

Of course, McCain is a uniquely attractive candidate to the Democratic and independent base. Long regarded as a maverick Republican, he attracts these swing voters and is ideally positioned to exploit the estrangement between older women and Barack Obama.

Would choosing Hillary as a running mate assuage the concerns of older white women? It might.

They could get enthusiastic, one would think, about seeing a woman sitting a few feet away from the president in the Oval Office (again!).

But Hillary would bring with her a different set of problems. Her candidacy would invite scrutiny of Bill's financial dealings, most recently exposed in The Wall Street Journal's coverage of the incredible corruption of his buddy the president of Kazakhstan.

The problem is Obama. And it can only be solved by Obama, not by his running mate. For his part, McCain should take dead aim at this demographic, perhaps by selecting a female running mate who would appeal to them.

The current favorite, Mitt Romney, does him no earthly good with these folks, and his Mormonism is likely to be a big turnoff. But McCain could choose Condi Rice or any number of other Republican women (like Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas senator) and attract these dissident women.

Barack Obama conceded yesterday that US voters were nervous about making him their next president as fresh polls showed him in an increasingly tight race against John McCain, his Republican rival.

The Democratic candidate sought to explain why he has not seen a significant bounce in the polls after his international tour last week - with a new survey showing Mr McCain taking a lead for the first time since Mr Obama secured his party's nomination.

Mr Obama's aides say that it is relatively early in the general election cycle, but there is a growing anxiousness about why he is not doing better against Mr McCain, who has so far run an unimpressive, disjointed and at times shambolic campaign.

The Democrat said that voters were still sizing him up and that his candidacy was "new for them, new for us as a country.

Most recent surveys show Mr Obama about six points ahead, but stuck several points below the 50 per cent threshold. A USA Today/Gallup poll yesterday showed the Republican four points ahead - 49 per cent to 45 per cent - among likely voters, in the first poll taken since the Democrat's overseas tour. It showed a surge since last month among likely Republican voters, suggesting that the trip might have galvanised them.

What concerns Mr Obama's supporters is that by every measure he should be doing much better. In generic polls, voters overwhelmingly want a Democrat in the White House next year and a record number believe that the country is on the wrong track.

The Illinois senator is running a sharp, disciplined campaign - often setting the day's agenda - with Mr McCain appearing slow-footed and reactive.

Yet in recent polls the message is clear: voters may want change, but they are uneasy about Mr Obama. Both campaigns admit that the election is becoming a referendum on Mr Obama, testing the willingness of voters to overcome their doubts about a 46-year-old African-American with little political experience, to whom many find it hard to relate.

In a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll last week, half of those questioned said that they were focused on what sort of president Mr Obama would be, with just a quarter focused on what kind of leader Mr McCain would be. Asked who was the riskier choice, 55per cent said Mr Obama, to just 35per cent who said the same of his rival.

In a private conference call with supporters last week, Steve Schmidt, Mr McCain's chief strategist, vowed to sharpen attacks on Mr Obama and to try to increase the perception that he is a risk.

Mr McCain, who at 71 is the oldest US presidential candidate in history, said last week: "They need a steady hand on the tiller. That's what I'm going to convince them of."

He has also begun to attack Mr Obama's patriotism. In a new advertisement the Republican campaign pounced on Mr Obama's decision to call off a visit to wounded US troops in Germany. "He made time to go to the gym, but cancelled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras," the narrator says.

The Obama camp countered that the visit had been scrapped amid concerns that it would appear too political.

Nagging at Mr Obama are memories of his big defeats to Hillary Clinton in the later stages of their primary battle, when white, working-class voters turned their backs on him.

Going back farther, there are other nail-biting historical precedents: in three elections when there was no incumbent president on the ballot - 2000 (Bush-Kerry), 1968 (Nixon-Humphrey) and 1960 (Nixon-Kennedy) - the winner entered the White House with a margin of victory of less than 1per cent.

History lessons

1980 Mr Obama's aides believe that this election is similar to the contest when voters had become disenchanted with President Carter but were unsure about Ronald Reagan. Only when Reagan quelled those doubts with an impressive performance in their one debate late in the campaign did support for Carter collapse. Reagan won by a landslide

1948 The McCain team hope to emulate Harry Truman, whose chances of winning in 1948 against the young, eloquent Thomas Dewey were dismissed by press and pundits. On election night the Chicago Daily Tribune even printed "Dewey defeats Truman". Truman won with 49 per cent of vote to Dewey's 45

One point of inquiry, for instance, is a batch of old legal files in Richmond, Va., where death penalty cases of a young civil rights lawyer named Tim Kaine are being reviewed. Mr. Kaine is now the governor of Virginia, but his work from two decades ago is suddenly a subject of at least some of the political detective work being conducted on a handful of Democrats.

Mr. Obama, who devoted several hours here on Monday and Tuesday to meeting with his vice-presidential vetting team, is increasingly turning his focus to selection of a running mate. The detailed vetting of possible choices like Mr. Kaine suggests that the effort is well along.

Yet Mr. Obama has not conducted formal sit-down interviews with candidates, aides say, and a decision is believed to be weeks away, not days. His aides say there is no particular rush: the campaign seems to be going well for him at the moment, and so he does not need the burst of attention and energy that typically accompanies the announcement of a vice-presidential choice.

For all the calculations about who would make a better running mate - a governor or a senator, someone with a military background or business experience, a native of a battleground state or a national name - the list of candidates for Mr. Obama is believed to be fairly small. Several aides placed it at fewer than five, though they acknowledged that they were not sure, given the secrecy ordered by Mr. Obama.

Even the campaign's political strategists and nearly all its advisers - people typically knowledgeable about all elements of the race - are excluded from the process involving the vetting team. A rollout to introduce Mr. Obama's ultimate choice is already being charted, but members of the team planning it expect to have no say in the selection, or barely any advance knowledge.

And prospective running mates are not talking.

"My conversations with the campaign stay with the campaign," Mr. Kaine told reporters Tuesday in Washington. "I haven't sought it. I'm not running for it. I'm not asking for it. I've never asked anything of the campaign."

Until this week, Mr. Obama and his campaign had been focusing considerable attention on the overseas trip he just completed, aides said, and so a short list has not been formally compiled. But while he was away, the vetting moved forward, focusing not only on the current positions of the candidates but also on their earlier careers.

Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who also served two terms as governor - at 33, he was the youngest governor in the nation - has a record dating from 1986, when he was elected Indiana's secretary of state.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas is a former state lawmaker and was also elected state insurance commissioner. Of all those mentioned as candidates, she is perhaps the least well known, and so even her achievements need researching. As commissioner, for example, she won credit for blocking a proposed merger between an out-of-state insurer and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas, a move that some analysts said spared Kansans an increase in insurance rates.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, a senator nearly 36 years, has more of a public record than perhaps any other prospect. That, as well as his own bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, puts the focus of the vetting largely on financial and personal matters.

Each of those mentioned would bring advantages to the ticket. Mr. Kaine is Catholic and Spanish-speaking, and that could allow him to expand Mr. Obama's appeal to those voters. Mr. Bayh could bolster the ticket in Indiana, where Mr. Obama believes he can win. Ms. Sebelius could help present a thematic arc for Mr. Obama, whose maternal grandparents were from Kansas. And Mr. Biden has unassailable national security credentials.

They have their drawbacks as well. Pairing Mr. Kaine or Ms. Sebelius with Mr. Obama would produce a ticket with limited experience in foreign affairs. And while Democrats are uncertain that Mr. Bayh has the stomach to be an attack dog, they worry whether Mr. Biden has the discipline for the scrutiny of a general election campaign.

It is the least well known Democrats who draw the most attention from the vetting team, not least, of course, on policy positions. Mr. Kaine, for example, has said he is personally opposed to both the death penalty and abortion, though he has vowed to uphold existing laws.

Then there are the variety of other factors that come into play, from compatibility and camaraderie to loyalty and how the prospective running mates look alongside each other. These are among the few matters presumably left not to the vetting team but to Mr. Obama himself.

Let's start with the flavor of the day: Kaine.

Kaine and Obama have forged a friendship since Kaine became the first governor outside of Illinois to endorse the Senator. They share family roots in Kansas and Harvard law degrees. Yet, though Kaine is firmly on Obama's shortlist of potential running mates, the 50-year-old Catholic has his own deficits.

He is a liberal-leaning Democrat from a mid-sized, conservative swing state who won election to the statehouse only three years ago. Before that he was mayor of Richmond, a mid-sized, insular Southern city that prides itself on having been the capital of the Confederacy. He has no foreign policy or defense experience, a credential deficit for which Obama has been criticized too. And he is virtually unknown on the national stage.

The other top contenders -- Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton -- are all sitting senators.

But picking Bayh could complicate Democratic plans to try and win a 60-vote cloture-proof majority in the Senate. If an Obama - Bayh ticket won in November, there's a chance a Republican governor could replace Bayh in the Senate.

In Indiana, the statehouse is contested. If a Republican wins, he would take office before Bayh is inaugurated.

In Delaware, Sen. Joe Biden has a Senate seat for life if he wants it, and he could shore up Obama's own foreign policy shortcomings anyway as Secretary of State. The governor of Delaware, Ruth Ann Minner, is a Democrat, so his seat would stay on that side of the aisle if he gets the V.P. nod.

But some Democrats worry he can be a loose cannon -- and are concerned his selection could also concede the point that Obama, in fact, needs a senior VP with foreign policy experience to shore him up.

Most observers believe that Obama's statement on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday that Sen. Clinton "would be on anybody's short list" of VP candidates was just a sop to her constituency.

And complicating the equation in the senate of course is the 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman who now calls himself an Independent Democrat and caucuses with the party.

But if Lieberman speaks at the Republican Convention as rumored, staffers in the senate say the Democrats plan to strip him of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, kick him out of the party caucus and he will, for all intents and purposes, become a Republican.

With Paulson, the focus of an extended phone conversation was the future of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the expanded authority Paulson will receive from a just-passed housing law. According to an Obama economic adviser, the senator from Illinois wanted to hear from the Bush Treasury secretary just how he would use that authority and press him to make sure his focus was more on keeping capital flowing to mortgage holders, not bailing out Fannie and Freddie shareholders and executives. He also wanted to hear how quickly Paulson could act to set up the new regulatory structures authorized by the law.

"This is as much authority as a Treasury secretary has ever had," said the Obama adviser, who was cleared to speak only without being named. "The next administration can make changes, but he'd [Obama] much rather see the next Treasury secretary build on what this Treasury secretary does," instead of starting from scratch.

Obama's message to Bernanke this afternoon at the Fed is that he respects the independence of the Fed and does not wish to influence the chairman's decisions. Instead, Obama is seeking Bernanke's views on the state of an economy that Obama said yesterday was in crisis, and where that economy is heading in the near term.

Since Bernanke took the lead in pressing for a restructuring of the housing credit market, Obama wants his take on the new legislation and what more needs to be done by Congress and the president. He'll also talk to Bernanke about his push for additional stimulus measures of at least $50 billion, some of that for housing, some for more tax rebates and still more for aid to state and local governments. The economic aide said issues of the looming record budget deficit and energy prices are likely to come up, but the focus will be near-term action to right the economy, not long term action to get the nation's fiscal house in order.

Obama met this morning with Democratic women leaders, many of whom strongly backed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the nomination. Ellen Malcolm, president of Emily's List, which funds women Democratic candidates, said Obama brought up Clinton, saying he had recently spoken with her. But the focus was on the economy and the special burdens women are bearing.

"The whole conversation revolved around the incredible pressures women are feeling in this economy," Malcolm said, promising that "by the time of the convention, Democrats will be totally united."

The Obama campaign has a woman problem. How big? How small? It's not clear, but in a close election, small can be big.

And Michelle Obama spoke to it Monday in Chicago.

You wouldn't have known it from this mostly well-dressed, mostly well-heeled crowd. Many of the women, black and white, young and old, were early donors who gave money back when Barack Obama was a long shot, and they were gladly giving again now. A lovely lunch of organic chicken prepared by a renowned chef, Alice Waters, brought in somewhere between $400,000 and $700,000 for the Obama Victory fund.

But the women Obama needs right now are the ones who do not dine downtown. They're the ones who can't afford organic anything, forced to choose between a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk because they can't buy both on the same day.

Women like Sarah.

A few hours after leaving the "Women for Obama" luncheon, I ran into Sarah, not her real name. I've known her for a few years. A single mom, she free-lances, working as many jobs as she can to support two growing boys. She dreams of a permanent gig with benefits, but it's still just a dream.

A 37-year-old Democrat, she is also a college grad and a news junkie who has watched this campaign like a hawk. She surprised me with her anger Tuesday, saying she's voting for McCain.

To Sarah, Barack Obama is like the organic chicken at lunch. Sleek, elegant, beautifully prepared. Too cool.

Though both Obamas have spoken often and in great personal detail of their own humble beginnings, of Michelle's hardworking blue-collar dad and Barack's struggling single mom on food stamps, it somehow hasn't sold Sarah. You might ask if she was a die-hard Clinton supporter. The answer is yes, a supporter, but die-hard? Not really.

At the luncheon, I'd asked women if there was still a sizable breach between the Clinton and Obama camps.

Most told me not anymore, that on issues of choice, national health insurance and gender parity of wages, Clinton supporters know they have far more differences with Republican John McCain than they do with Obama. And Republican women, including Paula Wolff, who for 14 years was in the high command of Republican Gov. James R. Thompson, were there to demonstrate that Obama has crossover appeal, too.

"The Supreme Court," said Wolff. "I think for most women when they walk into the voting booth, that will be the first thing on their minds."

Some of the numbers bear that out. The July 15 Quinnipiac University poll shows women overall backed Obama over McCain 55 percent to 36 percent. Then again, the margin was far smaller among independent women, who preferred Obama by just three points, 45 percent to 42 percent. And finally, there's that Clinton problem. The Associated Press/Yahoo News "found that just 12 percent of former Clinton supporters say they are excited about Obama."

It seems pretty clear that if Obama is not going to pick Clinton as his running mate, he'd better not pick a woman at all. That, Sarah made clear in our conversation Tuesday, would be unfair.

The Obamas, for their part, have in recent weeks spoken warmly and respectfully of Hillary Clinton and she of them. On Monday, Mrs. Obama called Sen. Clinton an "extraordinary woman" and added she was "thrilled to welcome Dana Singiser to the campaign as our new senior adviser for women."

Singiser, who worked for Clinton's campaign and Senate office before that, told me Tuesday by phone, "We're working really hard for all women voters and leaving no stone unturned."

They may need to try offering more macaroni and cheese.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most powerful woman of all?

Nancy Pelosi showed the Republicans who's boss of the Hill recently. After promising "fairness and open debate," according to David Rogers at Politico.com, Pelosi resorted to hard-knuckle politics to shut down the GOP's chance to offer any policy alternatives to the Dems' official party line. She's not exactly apologetic about it.

Rogers reports: "I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet," she says impatiently when questioned. "I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy."

The thing about liberal Democrats is that they are so much better than Republicans, when they have the power of using such power ruthlessly. They have no qualms about process. There are good guys and there are bad guys, and, well, Pelosi is the biggest good guy of them all.

Obama -- in front of 200,000 screaming Germans -- anointed himself the one to save the planet. But Nancy Pelosi is not going to let him get away with stealing all the limelight.

"I respect the office that I hold," she said to Rogers. "And when you win the election, you win the majority, and what is the power of the speaker? To set the agenda, the power of recognition, and I am not giving the gavel away to anyone."

Fair play, respect for the rights of the minority -- all fall before the sweeping lese majesty of the elevants Nancy Pelosi. Does it matter that public support for Congress is headed toward single digits?

Liberal Democrats' respect for democratic process has never been weaker. As John Fund points out in The Wall Street Journal, organized liberalism has taken dead aim at Ward Connerly's efforts to take the issue of racial quotas directly to the American people. Boycotts, intimidation, arcane legal maneuvers -- anything to keep that issue out of the people's hands is fine.

New alliances are forming around Pelosi the Magnificent. T. Boone Pickens, who funded the "Swift Boat" campaign against John Kerry in 2004, has suddenly had a vision: Saving the planet requires a stream of government funding into companies that he owns.

Why not? The Republicans proved unable to lift restrictions on drilling, and as they say in Iraq, people prefer a strong horse to a weak horse any day.

For intellectual refreshment, Madame Speaker Pelosi turns to Umberto Eco or Pope Benedict's "Jesus of Nazareth."

"It's like reading, but it's also almost a meditation," she says

And its far more refreshing to the spirit of the nation's highest-ranking Catholic politician than, say, Pope Benedict's repeated calls to support marriage as the union of husband and wife or to respect human life from the first moment of conception.

Duh.

With "Know your Power," Nancy Pelosi is casting herself in the role of role model for all the little girls in the country -- and perhaps their aging mothers, who were shell-shocked that Hillary Clinton is never going to be president of the United States.

"The goal," she told Rogers, "is to give an answer to people who all over the country say to me, 'How did you go from the kitchen to the Congress, being a housewife to the House speaker?' And it was just a short little story of that."

Next year, if Democrats control both houses of Congress and the presidency, Nancy Pelosi may find the task of governing less easy than that of inspirational autobiographer.

The verdict on her effectiveness as speaker is still out.

But, no matter.

So far, everything's coming up Nancy.

By Maggie Gallagher, Yahoo News, July 29, 2008

Don't be surprised if third or fourth party presidential candidates garner enough votes in November to make a difference in some of the hotly contested swing states. The polls show more than enough Republican disaffection with John McCain's candidacy to make a case that Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate, or another right-of-center candidate could take votes away from the G.O.P. standard bearer. And on the Democratic side, Barack Obama has to worry about defections of not only Hillary Clinton's supporters, but also of liberals, who are beginning to grumble that he is moving too much toward the center.

The 2000 presidential election clearly showed that third party candidates do not have to roll up big numbers to make a huge difference. Ralph Nader accumulated just 2 percent of the vote in Florida - and exit polls found that Al Gore was the second choice among most of Mr. Nader's voters. While Democratic voters were never wildly enthusiastic about Mr. Gore during that campaign, the climate of opinion about John McCain is more fragile this year.

Mr. McCain's standing is in stark contrast to the support for Mr. Bush four years ago, when the vast majority of Bush voters (71 percent) said they backed him strongly. In June 2000, committed Bush backers constituted only 44 percent of his support, but this was significantly more than Mr. McCain now registers. You have to go back to Bob Dole in 1996 to match the current lack of enthusiasm for John McCain.

Today, Republican voter malaise is evident in a number of other ways, as well. Uncharacteristically, fewer Republicans than Democrats say it really matters who wins the presidential election (62 percent vs. 70 percent). And while 74 percent of Democrats say they are satisfied with the candidates, only 49 percent of Republicans feel this way.

While the Democrats and the Obama campaign can take some comfort in these numbers, there are potential problems for them, too. Barack Obama has a unity problem. Hillary Clinton's supporters have moved in Mr. Obama's direction since the primaries ended, but only 72 percent say they would back him if the election were held today. In particular, Mr. Obama is not polling well among white women. Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama are running about even among this important voter bloc and he trails Mr. McCain among older women, despite the strong Democratic disposition of this group.

Could a small number of disappointed Clinton supporters be attracted to a third party candidate? Sure. Perhaps more important, there is the question of whether Mr. Obama can live up to the expectations that his liberal backers have about his commitment to change. The Tomes' William Yardley reported recently that critics on the left are emerging in response to Mr. Obama's positions on the war in Iraq, wiretapping, gun control and the death penalty.

While there is little indication of this in Pew's polling data, our latest survey finds a rise in support of the idea of a third party candidate among people who have been ardent Obama backers: young voters, liberals and independents.

Nonetheless, given the level of enthusiasm for Mr. Obama, it is unlikely that a left-of-center third party candidate could draw major support, but certainly matching Mr. Nader's 2000 numbers in Florida cannot be ruled out. And on the Republican side, the door is wide open for a third party to matter. In fact, polls conducted by Fox News, The Los Angeles Times and ABC/Washington Post now have about 7 percent of the vote going either to Mr. Barr or Mr. Nader. Whatever the limitations of these candidates' personal appeal, either or both could be protest candidates.

By Andrew Kohut, The New York Times, July 29, 2008

The size of the last group will no doubt come as a surprise to pundits who spent so much time last week - and still! - holding forth about the political impact that Obama's whirlwind jaunt was certain to have. (God knows that an absence of information has never rendered them opinionless.) The initial reaction to the trip was as fawning as it was banal: Gosh, he looked so presidential! Golly, he was gaffe-free! And hey, didja see that three-pointer? Talk about a man of destiny! Then came the inevitable backlash: Presumptuous! Arrogant! Ego-tripping! Talk about a hot dog!

The truth of the matter is that, at this stage, none of us can know what the lasting implications of Obama's foreign whistle-stop will be. The images of him in the Middle East certainly struck me as giving him gravitas. (And the Maliki endorsement of his troop-withdrawal timetable was a ginormous political gift.) The images of Obama in Berlin, by contrast, may be effectively used against him. (See this early, and kinda funny, effort from the Republican National Committee.) But the nature of the trip - which will either work or not on an unconscious level, either assuaging inchoate doubts about Obama or exacerbating them - won't be known until Election Day, if ever.

But that doesn't mean Obama's trip wasn't instructive or clarifying - about both him and his campaign. In fact, I can think of five things that Obama's odyssey brought into focus.

1. The Obama campaign has some stones.
In certain quarters, it's becoming conventional wisdom that the Obama campaign is playing it too safe, that it's too controlled and too controlling. And though there may be something to the criticism in general, the world tour suggested that when Obama's people perceive the potential payoff to be high, they are willing to roll the dice. A trip of this kind is risky business, fraught with peril - the kind of gambit few politicians without the resources, diplomatic infrastructure, and security apparatus of the White House behind them would've had the nerve even to contemplate. Which brings us to ...

2. The Obama campaign scales - but isn't perfect.
The organizational prowess displayed during the Democratic-nomination fight by the guys and gals in Chicago is already the stuff of legend, and justifiably so. But Obama's international trip was in a different league from anything his squad had attempted before: an undertaking of gargantuan logistical complexity and political sensitivity. Yet the Obamans pulled it off in a sweat-free style reminiscent of their candidate's recent forays to the gym. For Democrats concerned that Team Obama might lack sufficient general-election experience to take its game to the next level, last week should have provided ample reassurance. At the same time, though, the decision not to visit the troops hospitalized in Landstuhl, Germany, was clearly a bonehead move - one which suggests that, for all their savvy, the Obamans still don't fully grasp the nature (and the resonance) of the attacks that McCain and his people plan to build their campaign around.

3. On foreign policy, Obama = Bush.
Okay, that's an overstatement designed to be provocative, but it's not a million miles from the truth - and, counterintuitively, it's also not such a bad thing, at least politically speaking. What the Middle East portion of Obama's trip highlighted is that on Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Israel, his positions all fit quite comfortably into what the Council on Foreign Relation's Walter Russell Mead calls "a loose bipartisan consensus" now emerging on policy toward the region - a consensus, Mead argues, that's "closer to Bush's views than to those of the antiwar activists who propelled [Obama] to [his party's] nomination." A painful thought for some on the left, to be sure. But a fact that robs McCain of a potentially powerful point of contrast.

4. Even so, Obama is vulnerable on the surge.
It's now taken as read that on a central question of military policy viz the central foreign entanglement of our time (and also one of the central political issues of the election), McCain was right and Obama was wrong. Unlike the war itself, this is an issue where Obama actually had to cast a vote in the Senate. With McCain driving the media narrative, Obama was asked repeatedly on the trip to recant his original position. His answers weren't merely poor and grudging, but veered into the realm of falsehood when he suggested in interviews that he'd always believed the surge would reduce the mayhem in Iraq. In fact, he said at the time of its announcement, "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse." This is a question that Obama is going to be peppered with again and again, and he needs a better reply. The argument that judgment trumps experience in foreign policy worked in the Democratic primary, when the debate was over the authorization of the war itself. But now the debate is going to be more forward-looking, and McCain can claim his judgment on the surge as a means of bringing a measure of peace and stability to Iraq trumped Obama's.

5. Obama is in McCain’s head - Obama needs to get McCain a little bit in his.
As I argued recently in the magazine, 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.

By John Heilemann, New York Magazine, July 29, 2008

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.

"The McCain campaign, I think, is being pulled in two directions," said Todd Harris, a Republican strategist who worked for Mr. McCain in 2000. "On the one hand, this race is largely a referendum on Obama, and whether or not he's going to pass the leadership threshold in the eyes of voters. So being aggressive against Obama on questions of leadership and trust and risk are important, but at the same time I think they need to be very careful because McCain is not at his best when he is being overly partisan and negative."

The McCain campaign said that Mr. Obama had been taking shots at Mr. McCain for some time, and that Mr. McCain was simply trying to draw the contrast between the two candidates.

Mark Salter, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain, noted that the two candidates addressed the same Hispanic groups three times this summer, and that at the first two appearances Mr. McCain declined to criticize Mr. Obama, only to be criticized. ("He suggested in his speeches here and there that I turned my back on comprehensive reform out of political necessity," Mr. McCain complained.) The third time, he said, before La Raza, Mr. McCain decided to "correct the record."

"There are no cheap shots," Mr. Salter said. "There are honest differences between them. They want to take the country in different directions, and we'll talk about it."

Mr. McCain drew contrast after contrast with Mr. Obama at a town-hall-style meeting in a high school gym here on Tuesday, though he took a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone.

"Senator Obama is an impressive speaker," he said. "And the beauty of his words has attracted many people, especially among the young, to his campaign. I applaud his talent and his success. All Americans, all Americans should be proud of his accomplishment. I know I am.

"My concern with Senator Obama is on big issues, and small issues, what he says and what he does are often two different things. And that he doesn't seem to understand that the policies he offers would make our problems harder, not easier to solve."

Mr. McCain went on to criticize Mr. Obama for seeking pork-barrel spending ("nearly a million dollars for every working day he's been in office"), accused him of wanting to raise taxes, painted him as an obstructionist on energy policy, rapped him for abandoning his pledge to take public financing, and criticized his Iraq policy.

Some of his lines of attack have been accused of being misleading. Mr. McCain, for instance, said Mr. Obama had voted in the Senate "for tax hikes that would have impacted those making $32,000 a year." FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan Web site, said the vote was on a budget resolution to raise taxes on people making $41,500 a year; the $32,000 figure, it said, was the amount of taxable income those people had.

An advertisement criticized Mr. Obama for the high price of gas. "Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?" an announcer intoned, as chants of "Obama, Obama" were heard.

Dan Schnur, who worked on Mr. McCain's 2000 campaign and is the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said the McCain campaign seemed to be drawing on lessons from watching the Democratic primary fight between Mr. Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"It wasn't until the last weeks of the primary that Clinton and her campaign really took the gloves off on Obama, and as it happens it was too little, too late," he said. "Obama is at his best when he talks from the mountaintop, and Clinton showed that the best hope for an opponent is to pull him back down to earth. McCain's campaign quickly decided not to wait as long as she did."

But some Republicans say privately that Mr. McCain, by trying to make the election a referendum on Mr. Obama, risks ceding control of some of the narrative by constantly reacting.

Mike Murphy, a Republican media consultant who worked on Mr. McCain's 2000 campaign, said that while the campaign needed to balance positive messages about Mr. McCain with negative ones about Mr. Obama, he thought it should ultimately be more about what Mr. McCain would do than Mr. Obama.

"I think the campaign does have to be careful about its tone," Mr. Murphy said. "A pure attack tone could be perilous."

After months of sitting on the sidelines and watching the presidential race unfold in Iowa, Florida and Colorado, Capitol Hill staffers are leaving for the campaign trail in droves.

Many on Sen. Barack Obama's team left months ago to work on the Illinois Democrat's primary campaign. Now, dozens of young Democratic aides are leaving Washington as the presumptive party nominee sets off a 50-state strategy and infuses his campaign with new blood.

"The way things are going, with more and more staff heading for the campaign trail, this place is soon going to look like a ghost town," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat.

That is one reason Mr. Reid announced earlier this month that the Senate would adjourn for the summer one week earlier than planned. Leaders are aiming to finish their work by the end of the week.

Although Washington will still conduct business, Congress will hold fewer votes and take more frequent recesses until the Nov. 4 elections, which will set the course for the next four years.

"Staff is heading to where the real action is: the campaign trail," said a Democratic aide who was left behind on Capitol Hill.

Republican staffers are leaving to join the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

"Today I am heading back to South Florida for the next few months to head up efforts for the McCain presidential campaign. I am very excited about this new opportunity to lead Republican efforts in my hometown," Bettina Inclan told reporters when announcing her departure from the office of Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, Michigan Republican, and the Republican House Policy Committee.

Melanie Roussell, a top aide for the House Judiciary Committee, last month announced her "leave of absence" through November so she could run the Southern press desk for the Obama campaign.

Obama campaign offices across the country are staffed by aides to fellow Senate Democrats, including Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Evan Bayh of Indiana.

Some of the campaign aides of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, have joined the Obama team. Others have returned to Mrs. Clinton's Senate office or are helping House and Senate campaigns.

Hill staffers are sending e-mails announcing that they are "on loan" to Mr. McCain or to Mr. Obama. Some are negotiating deals with the congressional members to whom they are assigned, especially those who are not facing competitive re-election battles, to take up to six weeks off to work on the campaign circuit.

The Obama campaign declined to disclose its number of paid personnel, but campaign finance reports show at least 954. The McCain campaign also did not release its figures, but the candidate's June report showed 205 paid staffers.

Mr. Obama is hiring paid grass-roots organizers in all 50 states and is opening unprecedented numbers of offices across the country. Mr. McCain's finance reports indicate that the campaign has opened few offices.

The Obama campaign announced 90 hires recently in Missouri and last weekend opened 24 offices in rural parts of the state.

The Missouri Democratic Party said it is "placing offices where no other presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, has had a presence before."

Team Obama has 12 new offices in Iowa, 18 new offices in Michigan with three more to come, and 19 offices opening in Ohio in the coming days.

By Christina Bellantoni, The Washington Times, July 30, 2008

Does he double down on his weakness or does he compensate for it?

For months, much of the Democratic Party intelligentsia in Washington has insisted that Obama must do the latter and pick an older, white, foreign-policy or establishment figure such as Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, even Senator Hillary Clinton of New York. The chatter from this class has been logical, based in polls and nonstop — and it stems in part from the fact that many of those who have been spreading it are aligned with some of those potential veeps.

But there has never been much evidence that anyone in Chicago shared that view.

The alternate universe goes like this: The last thing Obama ought to do is pick a figure from the Washington establishment. He needs, instead, to reinforce his message of change and shake up the status quo with an outsider untainted by the Capitol games. Such a pick would be aimed not at the party's base but at the pool of independent voters who still aren't comfortable with Obama and are looking all summer for signs that he is both something different and up to the job. Those who back this approach have been talking about Kaine for months in this context, as well as former Virginia governor Mark Warner, Kansas governor Kathleen Sibelius and Virginia Senator Jim Webb (before he took himself out of the contest).

Noting the various qualities he is searching for in a running mate, Obama said on Meet the Press Sunday that "I'm going to want somebody who shares a vision of the country - where we need to go; that we've got to fundamentally change not only our policies but how our politics work, how business is done in Washington."

Of course, Obama could try to split the difference. And parked somewhere between these poles is Senator Evan Bayh, a moderate Democrat from Indiana who has been a member of the Intelligence and Armed Services committees and backed Hillary Clinton during the primary but has kept a comparatively low profile despite a decade in Washington. He has been elected statewide five times in a state where his last name is something close to hard currency, though that is hardly a guarantee that he could help Obama carry the state. Bayh's also a little short on excitement, but that's the one area where Obama can carry the ticket all by himself.

In any case, the choice between doubling down and compensating for weakness is not unlike the judgment awaiting Republican John McCain. He could look to a younger Republican who is more oriented toward domestic policy - such as Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who is 48, or former Bush Administration official and Ohio Congressman Rob Portman of Cincinnati, who is 52. Or he could forgo those relative newcomers and instead try to underscore his own experience by tapping former governor, businessman and Olympics organizer Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who is 61.

McCain can go in two very different directions with his choice, and he's not decided which path to take, sources close to McCain tell ABC News.

One route is to tap a conservative who's generally popular with the base. The other is a less-traveled path: an out-of-the box moderate/conservative who could also have cross-over appeal with all those blue-collar Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton.

In deciding his course, McCain is confronting the reality that there's no ideal "conservative" candidate for VP. Each candidate on his short list--his former opponent, Mitt Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and former Ohio Rep. Rob Portman--has drawbacks.

Let's start with Romney. In recent months, he clearly has been the most effective spokesman for the Republican Party--and the most effective Obama critic. He's capable of raising big bucks for McCain and he's strong on economic issues.

But Romney brings to the ticket what McCain has spent an entire career avoiding: political expediency. McCain's stock-in-trade has been straight talk and independence, to the point that he's alienated some of his colleagues over the years in the Senate. Romney has not only changed his positions on specific issues--he's pretty quickly changed his entire persona, from a moderate conservative governor to a far-right presidential contender. He may bring in dollars, but he would rob McCain of one of his most enduring characteristics.

Now Romney, the thinking goes, can deliver Michigan (and also be a boost in western states, like Nevada). Michigan is obviously an important state in this closely divided race. But there's little evidence Romney would set the world on fire beyond that--as the polls (the real ones, that people entered in the primaries) made clear.

Pawlenty and Portman are lesser known, youthful conservatives who would be palatable to the base - but not add a whole lot of spark to the ticket.

Pawlenty has an established relationship with McCain and has been a visible surrogate for him on the political talk shows. He's spoken powerfully about changing the Republican Party from the Country Club to Sam's Club--which, if he could do, would help in those key states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. But nothing suggests at this point that Pawlenty could actually deliver those states, so what does he add? And can you really say, “President Pawlenty?”

Same goes for Portman: What does he add to the ticket? He's popular in Ohio's 2nd District, including Cincinnati, where he handily won his congressional seat six times and hauled in $2 million for McCain and the GOP at a fundraiser last month. But could he deliver the wider state? That's a big question. Although he served as U.S. trade representative, he also carries the baggage of having the unfortunate title of "former White House Budget Director" under President Bush--which can only give ammunition to the Democratic call of "McSame."
As for compatibility, for a guy like John McCain who values personal relationships, Portman is not someone the candidate is close with.

Which brings us to two men McCain actually could envision governing with: Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman.
The drawbacks from the conventional conservatives may make the moderate Republican/Independent type--Ridge or Lieberman--more appealing, especially since both of those prospects have long relationships with McCain.

McCain likes and respects both men - and both are strong on the issue he cares most deeply about: the threat of Islamo-fascism.

What's more, in a season when the buzzword is "change," selecting either Ridge or Lieberman would accomplish that in a big way with the Republican Party. That's significant, especially when so many moderate voters on the Right and Left are up for grabs.

Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor, is a particularly interesting choice, because he could deliver his home state - a must-win for John McCain. Ridge, the first head of Homeland Security, also could help - possibly decisively--in winning the two other states that are critical in this election, Michigan and Pennsylvania. McCain must carry two of those three to win the White House.

Lieberman, the Independent Democrat, could help deliver Florida--though that state is projected for McCain already (for now, anyway). Yes, Lieberman was on the Democratic ticket in 2000, but he's now seen as someone like McCain has been--willing to stand alone, at odds with his party, on issues he believes in. And despite wearing the "D" label, Lieberman's support of Israel is popular with conservative Evangelicals.

But both Ridge and McCain have short-list shortcomings--namely that both are pro-choice and would infuriate the conservative base, which only now is starting to warm to the maverick McCain. That could cause a world of problems at the Republican convention--especially if Independent Democrat Lieberman were the pick. It also could stem the tide of dollars, which is something McCain can ill afford to do.

Which leaves open the Third Way: Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. But they have their drawbacks, too.

Hillary Clinton is auctioning off the chance for have dinner with her "under the stars" in an effort to raise money to retire her massive campaign debt.

In an e-mail appeal to supporters, Clinton jokes that her staff is referring to this meal as her "retirement dinner" because she's trying to retire all the outstanding bills she owes to small vendors (and some who are not-so-small).

She also tries to make light of the fact that her loss have left her with enough spare time to actually be able to sit down for an extended meal.

"Summer is a time for simple pleasures: family vacations, baseball games, and dinner out under the stars," Clinton writes. "At least it is if you aren't running for president!"

"It sure is nice having a little more time on my hands, and I'd love to spend some of it with you. Would you like to join me for dinner?"

Clinton is asking for a minimum contribution of $5 for donors to be eligible.

Barack Obama is running a fund-raising contest, too, but his winners (10 in all) will get an all-expense trip to the Democratic National Convention in Denver and a backstage meeting with Obama before his acceptance speech at Invesco Field.

By Elizabeth Benjamin, New York Daily News, July 29, 2008

The AFL-CIO announced that, starting yesterday, it was sending mailers to more than 600,000 union households in the key battleground states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. "Union voters, like many voters across the country, are still learning about Senator Obama and have heard many things - some true, some false," the AFL-CIO said.

So one mailer tries to dispel the false rumors that Obama is Muslim, that he used a Koran for his Senate swearing-in, that he will not wear a flag lapel pin, that he won't put his hand over his heart while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and that he wasn't born in the United States.

The other mailer features testimonials about his record on jobs, healthcare, and workers' rights.

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee and Obama's campaign yesterday announced a $20 million effort to mobilize Hispanic voters.

The campaign plans to spread the money in all 50 states but will emphasize their efforts in swing states such as Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico, Temo Figueroa, the Latino vote director for the Obama campaign, said at a news conference. The campaign said the money will be spent on registering and mobilizing voters, advertisements, and online organizing. It also plans to put additional staff in the four states and aims to train about 500 Latino organizers.

While Obama did not do as well among Latino voters as rival Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries, a Pew Hispanic Center survey released last week gave Obama a 66 percent to 23 percent lead among Hispanic voters over Republican John McCain.

THE BOSTON GLOBE AND ASSOCIATED PRESS, July 30, 2008

Already, one leading pundit, columnist Robert Novak, gained widespread attention when he suggested - incorrectly it turned out - that Republican John McCain would name his running mate last week. Novak later said he had probably been used by campaign officials to float a story to grab attention during Democrat Barack Obama's overseas trip.

But some analysts now say McCain might gain more of an advantage by waiting until the last possible moment. Obama must announce his pick by the time of the Democratic convention during the last week of August. McCain can wait until the following week, when the Republican convention is held.

Historically, the candidate who has the later convention gets the later "bounce" in the polls. As a result, some political analysts and commentators say it would not make sense for McCain to give away the vice presidential bounce by announcing his pick before Obama.

"Why surrender that shot of presumably favorable coverage when you are running close, or in some polls, ahead?" asked presidential historian Richard Norton Smith, a scholar-in-residence at George Mason University. "And let's face it, why is anyone going to pay any attention to the Republican convention otherwise?"

Smith said it would make more sense for McCain to wait and see what the landscape looks like after the Democratic convention and Obama's running mate selection. That will also give McCain extra time to vet his prospects, who are believed to include former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, whose state is hosting the GOP convention.

McCain, himself, said Monday night on CNN that he would announce his pick "as soon as the process is completed" and vowed that "it won't be driven by any other factors - the Olympics or any other. It will be strictly on when we can arrive at a conclusion."

While McCain has steadfastly refused to name names, he did give some insight into his thinking when asked at a campaign event Monday night in Bakersfield, Calif., how his search was going. "There's a lot of highly qualified people in our party," he said, according to media accounts. "Governors, senators, businesspeople . . . you need someone who shares your values and priorities."

Obama, likewise, has kept his short list private, with the exception of former rival Hillary Clinton. Still, he said on Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press" that he plans to pick "somebody with independence, who's willing to tell me where he thinks or she thinks I'm wrong." He also suggested he is leaning against a Washington insider.

The Olympics has already thrown off the usual convention schedule. Typically, conventions have occurred several weeks apart. But this year, they are separated by just one weekend. It is widely believed that neither campaign wants to announce its vice presidential nominee during the Olympics.

"It's more a product of the cable news cycle than anything that the campaign has said," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said yesterday.

In recent elections, presidential candidates have tended to announce their running mates in the days before the convention. In 2004, Senator John F. Kerry recorded the biggest gap ever between the announcement and the convention when he selected Senator John Edwards of North Carolina 20 days before the Democratic gathering in Boston.

Mark Mellman, Kerry's pollster during the campaign, said the thinking behind such an early announcement was that "you want to get a lot of positive press for as long a time as possible." To build interest, Kerry kept his selection under wraps, leading to days of speculation.

As for the current campaign, Mellman said that "as a planner, you would probably say not to do it during the Olympics." But the lateness of this year's conventions - leaving only two months before Election Day - may prompt the candidates to announce their running mates soon.

By comparison, in 1988, Democrat Michael Dukakis named Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas as his running mate before the convention in mid-July. With this year's conventions so late, Dukakis said yesterday, it would "make sense" to announce a running mate "earlier rather than later, assuming you have come to the right conclusion" about the choice.

"There are a lot of reasons why you want to" name a running mate early, the former Massachusetts governor said. "You can begin campaigning in advance of the convention, meld your staff, and put the operation in place."

Analysts interviewed yesterday said it is most important to fully vet a candidate.

A number of vice presidential picks in modern campaigns have backfired, including Democrat Thomas Eagleton, who was removed by George McGovern from the ticket in 1972 after his history of electroshock treatments for depression was disclosed, and Republican Dan Quayle, who was introduced at the 1988 convention as a little-known senator who was quickly defined by questions about whether he had ducked active military service by joining the National Guard.

In Quayle's case, George H.W. Bush's campaign spent much effort on the timing, aiming to have a surprise announcement occur during the convention - only to have many reporters focus on questions about Quayle instead of the Bush campaign theme.

WASHINGTON - Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are knuckling down to the work of choosing running mates with their nominating conventions just weeks away.

Current and former governors and senators seem the most serious contenders, though most of those mentioned are playing coy about any discussions with either campaign.

"I'm just not going to talk about my conversations with the campaign," Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, of Virginia, said Tuesday as he declined to confirm reports that he has provided financial documents to Obama for review. Another, Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, said he has decided to stop answering questions about a spot on McCain's ticket.

Among others believed to be getting close looks: Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for Obama, and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Ohio Rep. Rob Portman for McCain.

It's appearing less likely that Obama will choose former rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. And it's still possible McCain will choose former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, whose support for abortion rights might upset conservatives whose enthusiasm McCain needs.

Aides to both candidates refuse to comment.

$20M to court Hispanic vote

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign plans to spend $20 million to court Hispanic voters in key swing states, aides said Tuesday.

The money, which Democratic officials call an unprecedented amount for Hispanic outreach, will be used for political mobilization, voter registration and niche advertising for Latinos. The campaign intends to spend more than half the money in Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.

"If we win Florida, then we think Obama is president of the United States," said Cuauhtemoc "Temo" Figueroa, the Obama campaign's national Latino vote director.

Sen. John McCain is speaking this week at town-hall meetings in some of those same states. The Arizona senator was in Nevada as the Obama campaign made its announcement Tuesday.

McCain also made trips this month to Colombia and Mexico to raise his profile among Latinos.

Doctors said a biopsy shows no evidence of cancer in the skin removed from Republican Sen. John McCain's face.

"The biopsy that was performed did not show any evidence of skin cancer. No further treatment is necessary," Michael Yardley, a spokesman for the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., said Tuesday.

The Republican presidential candidate had a small patch of skin removed from his face Monday and biopsied as part of a regular checkup.

Union aims to clarify portrait of Obama

The nation's largest labor organization mailed 600,000 fliers to swing union voters in four states Tuesday in an effort to help Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama correct some of the most persistent rumors about him.

The AFL-CIO wants union voters to know that the Illinois senator was born in the United States, occasionally wears a flag pin, puts his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance and is not a Muslim. The flier shows him being sworn into the Senate with a family Bible and not the Quran, as rumored.

The fliers will begin showing up in mailboxes in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week.

Union voters usually are reliable Democratic supporters, and the AFL-CIO expects one in every four voters going to the polls Nov. 4 to be from a union household. The AFL-CIO has 10.5 million members, and its leaders say getting the truth out about Obama will help his campaign.

The AFL-CIO endorsed Obama last month, freeing the organization and its 56 unions to spend some of its $200 million war chest on his campaign.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama met privately Tuesday with a group of female leaders, seeking their endorsement and raising a sore point: the issue of gender bias in his Democratic primary fight with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Participants at the hourlong meeting at a Washington hotel said the session focused mainly on winning in November.

"He talked about his concerns about some of the sexism in the course of the campaign," said Ellen Malcolm, of political group EMILY's List. "But essentially the meeting was forward-looking."

In Nevada, meanwhile, Republican John McCain engaged in a similar bit of political fence-mending. At a town-hall meeting in Sparks, the Arizona senator ruled out raising taxes if elected.

"I think the worst thing that could happen to America in these very tough economic times is to raise someone's taxes," he said in response to a question. "I won't do it."

McCain had angered some fiscal conservatives by seeming to suggest in recent interviews that he would consider higher payroll taxes to pay for Social Security.

On July 9, McCain said that Social Security funding needed help. "I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table," he said.

He went a step further Sunday on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulus." Asked about payroll-tax increases, McCain said: "There is nothing that's off the table. ... I don't want tax increases. But that doesn't mean that anything is off the table."

The Club For Growth, an anti-tax group, sent an open letter Monday expressing concern about McCain's comments, and the Obama campaign claimed that McCain had flip-flopped on the question.

Both candidates have said Social Security's funding formula needs to be changed to ensure the program's long-term viability. Obama has called for imposing a new payroll tax on incomes of more than $250,000. Currently, incomes up to $102,000 are subject to the 12.4 percent payroll tax, which employers and employees split evenly.

McCain has made no specific proposals to fix Social Security, the benefit program for retirees and the disabled.

Obama opened his meeting with about three dozen women's advocates by discussing Clinton's treatment during the primary, participants said.

Many women believe the New York senator was subjected to sexist behavior on the part of TV personalities, bloggers and others. Some have voiced anger that Obama and other Democratic leaders did not speak out more forcefully in Clinton's defense.

Obama mentioned "he knew there had been frustration with stuff directed at Senator Clinton by the media," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women. "It was very important for him to reach out," said Gandy, whose organization has yet to make an endorsement.

Separately, Obama met Tuesday with Yousuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister of Pakistan, spoke on the phone with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and met with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for about 40 minutes. Since returning from a foreign trip, Obama has tried to emphasize a focus on economic affairs.

By Peter Nicholas and Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2008

Both presidential rivals appeared intent on shoring up their perceived liabilities as they headed into the stretch before the national party conventions later this summer, with polls showing the race growing tighter.

At a town hall meeting Tuesday with Nevada voters, McCain handed his microphone to a young girl who asked if he would raise taxes. "No," he said in a stern response, apparently hoping to quash concerns growing out of a weekend television interview.

He caught some Republicans by surprise when he responded to a question about payroll tax increases, saying, "I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table."

"I don't want tax increases. But that doesn't mean that anything is off the table," he said.

Obama, meanwhile, dashed from meeting to meeting in Washington - surrounded by a presidential-looking Secret Service team - to consult with Bush administration economic officials, the prime minister of Pakistan and Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives. They reported on the Illinois senator's vow to scour White House executive orders and expunge those he saw as abridging citizens' rights.

Presidents, as head of the executive branch of government, issue such orders to direct operations of executive branch agencies, like the Justice Department and the CIA. For example, President George W. Bush used an executive order last year to breathe new life into the CIA's controversial interrogation program that allowed harsh questioning of terror suspects.

Obama "talked about how his attorney general is to review every executive order and immediately eliminate those that trample on liberty," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat.

"He indicated there would be a review in his administration," said Rep. James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who serves as majority whip in the lower house of Congress.

Obama did not mention executive orders when he addressed reporters who waited for him outside the closed-door meeting. He said only that he would be campaigning alongside members to win the presidency and help expand Democratic majorities in both legislative chambers.

During his presidency, Bush increasingly has relied on executive orders to dictate policies without seeking congressional approval.

On Wednesday both candidates were campaigning in critical swing states. Obama planned to focus on the economy during a visit to Missouri, while McCain was to be in Colorado before heading to a Kansas City, Missouri, fundraising session.

There was growing speculation, meanwhile, about who both men would name as their vice presidential running mates. Current and former governors and senators seem the most serious contenders, though most of those mentioned are playing coy about any discussions with either campaign.

The choices were expected to carry special weight with voters in this election: McCain would be the oldest person elected to a first term as U.S. president and Obama may be looking for a more experienced running mate given his relatively short four years on the national political stage.

There were growing indications that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - once seen as a natural choice for Obama after he defeated her in an extended primary battle - has been ruled out or slipped to near the bottom of the Illinois senator's short list.

Campaign watchers now are looking to Virginia's Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, who on Tuesday refused to confirm media reports that he has given the Obama campaign his financial records for review.

"I'm just not going to talk about my conversations with the campaign," he said Tuesday after appearing on a Washington radio station.

McCain has likewise kept his decision-making under tight wraps and potential running mates have been just as evasive.

Minnesota's Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty said he has decided to stop answering questions about a spot on McCain's ticket because of all the gossip.

Among others believed to be getting close looks were Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for Obama; and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Ohio Rep. Rob Portman for McCain.

Obama met Tuesday with top aides and his search committee in Washington for the second time in as many days, and at least the third time this month.

He told NBC television on Sunday he was going to pick "somebody with integrity; I'm going to want somebody with independence, who is willing to tell me where he thinks or she thinks I'm wrong; and I'm going to want somebody who shares a vision of the country - where we need to go. That we've got to fundamentally change not only our policies but how our politics works; how business is done in Washington."

That comment cast doubt that Obama would choose Clinton, who has spent more than a decade in Washington as a first lady and New York senator. During the primaries, Obama portrayed her as the ultimate Washington insider while suggesting he offered a fresh approach, above partisanship.

For his part, McCain gave away even less during a Monday interview with CNN television.

"I will announce it just as soon as the process is completed," the Arizona senator said, adding he was vetting both men and women.

McCain, meanwhile, received welcome health news. A biopsy showed no evidence of skin cancer, doctors said Tuesday.

The Arizona senator, who suffered severe sun damage from his 5 1/2 years in North Vietnamese prison camps, gets an in-depth skin cancer check every few months because of a medical history of dangerous melanomas. He has survived three bouts of melanoma that included four lesions.

ATLANTA - 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.

Democrats haven't won this state since Bill Clinton captured it in 1992 - with a critical assist from independent candidate Ross Perot.

It's a state where the political world today is dominated by a Republican governor, two Republican U.S. senators, and a Republican state legislature.

But the state is also home to a large African-American constituency, an influential white urban voting bloc and Bob Barr, a popular former Republican congressman who is running at the top of the Libertarian Party ticket.

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain lost the Peach State primary to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and barely held off former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to take second place.

Within that complex political mosaic, Obama spies opportunity.

He sent his first field workers to Georgia in May 2007, according to his financial disclosure forms. They remained here, albeit in smaller numbers, even after the primary.

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.

Their job is made easier by the enthusiasm gap, which is creating impassioned pockets of Obama supporters even in GOP strongholds who can be mobilized at minimum cost. The effort could pay off in tightening polls, an even bigger donor pool and votes.

A Politico analysis of the candidates' spending in Georgia - not including advertising - since January 2007 found that overall, McCain has spent $441,895 to Obama's $335,671.

But half of McCain's cash, $220,613, has gone to three people, all of whom are fundraising consultants.

In the most recent financial disclosure reports released last week, McCain lists 13 Georgia-related expenses for June, which total $46,723.

Almost all of the payments were related to a Savannah campaign stop in May. McCain hasn't hired any full-time field staff in Georgia and he's not running any commercials on television there.

Obama listed 22 Georgia payments in his June financial disclosure form totaling $11,503. Of them, 13 were staff payroll costs. Since June 20, he's aired $1.6 million in positive, biographical advertisements on Georgia stations, according to Evan Tracey, founder of the Campaign Media Analysis Group.

"They are treating the money they spent in the primaries as organizational investments and relying on them to form the foundation for the general election," said Anthony Corrado, a nonpartisan campaign finance expert.

"Rather than retooling or starting over, they are just building out from the organizational structure they began months ago in some of these states," he added.

The McCain campaign is dismissive of their opponent's effort to turn so many red states to blue.

"I cannot begin to analyze or make sense of the political strategy employed by the Obama campaign," said Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman.

"They have paid staff in Utah and other states that are solid McCain territory. They've clearly made a determination that staff on the ground means that a state is in play. That's their determination, not ours," Bounds added.

Biden's office declined Tuesday to comment on the speculation. He has repeatedly said he does not want the job, but would serve if selected.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, met Tuesday afternoon with the head of his search committee, Washington attorney Eric Holder. A decision and announcement are expected by mid-August, before the Democratic National Convention, which begins Aug. 25 in Denver.

Among others believed to be getting close looks: Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Several more have been mentioned, and it's appearing less likely that Obama will choose former rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Kaine is considered by some to be the strongest choice because he is from a Southern state, has few ties to insider Washington politics and appeals to a large demographic, including Hispanics. Kaine is fluent in Spanish.

On Tuesday, Kaine declined to confirm reports that he provided background documents to Obama's search committee -- a group that reportedly also is looking at similar documents for Biden, Bayh and Sebelius, the Washington Post reported. There were reports that Kaine is in "serious" talks with the Obama camp about the possibility of being on the ticket.

Chuck Ardo, Rendell's press secretary, said Tuesday that Rendell thinks Biden would be the best pick for the vice presidential slot, and his comments on Bloomberg simply were expressing a long-held opinion, not an effort to "campaign" for Biden.

"Ed Rendell is widely known as a politician who responds to questions honestly," Ardo said.

Rendell said Biden is a "good campaigner" whose experience and knowledge of foreign affairs would complement Obama.

"They would mesh together very nicely," he said.

Biden has been a heavily discussed possibility because of what some see as his ability to mitigate questions about Obama's foreign policy experience. These flames were fanned when Biden adviser Tony Blinken accompanied Obama last week to the Middle East.

On July 15, Biden came to Obama's defense on his foreign policy stances: "[Obama] has the judgment, he has the intellect, which no one doubts, and I guarantee you he has the steel in his spine to lead this country of ours out of the deep hole we have dug ourselves into."

Talk of Biden as the vice presidential nominee generally is accompanied by the belief that he also could be destined for a Cabinet seat such as secretary of state, should Obama take office.

GOP speculation

Speculation about the Republican ticket is rampant, as well.

Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota said he has decided to stop answering questions about a spot on Sen. John McCain's ticket because of all the gossip.

Among others mentioned are former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Ohio Rep. Rob Portman and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, whose support for abortion rights might upset conservatives whose enthusiasm McCain needs.

This much is certain: Obama and McCain have been regularly huddling behind closed doors with advisers to examine the backgrounds and records -- and weigh the political implications -- of at least a handful of prospects.

Each nominee-to-be may even be holding private one-on-one meetings with vice presidential hopefuls or polling possible tickets to see how they would fare in certain target states. It's tough to tell; such details are tightly held.

At the same time, possible picks are trying out for the part in public. They do numerous TV interviews on behalf of the candidates and campaign alongside them, almost certainly at the behest of campaign advisers who want to assess how each handles the media and campaign rigors.

Obama could thoroughly review his options during his planned Hawaiian vacation and then name his choice in the week before the Democratic convention in Denver at the end of August. McCain is seriously considering naming his No. 2 in the few days separating the two conventions in the hope of stunting any post-convention surge in the polls for Obama.

By GINGER GIBSON, The News Journal, July 30, 2008

We have no earthly idea if Virginia Governor Tim Kaine is Obama's choice for Vice President. All we know is that distinguished reporters who claim to have good sources are calling and saying that Kaine is on the short-short list.

Since the Crystal Ball is based in Virginia, and since we have followed Tim Kaine's career since it began on the Richmond City Council in 1994, we'll offer our readers a brief precis on what Kaine would add to the ticket, and what he would not, should the rumors prove accurate.

As with all potential Veep picks, there are pluses and minuses. Let's start with Kaine's advantages:

There can be little doubt that this is the main reason why Obama is looking at Kaine. The first state governor outside Obama's Illinois to endorse Obama for President, Kaine was immediately drawn to the Illinois senator because they are two peas in a political pod. Both Harvard Law graduates with Kansas roots, both attorneys with a central focus on civil rights, and both relatively new to the big leagues, Obama and Kaine clearly like one another and enjoy each other's company.

Obama has realized that a modern Vice President practically lives with the Chief Executive, especially in times of crisis, and he wants someone he can trust completely. One other similarity that some see is less flattering. Obama and Kaine are both supremely self-confident, and their adversaries (and even some of their friends) occasionally detect a hint of hubris and arrogance. On the other hand, we have never known a President or governor who was genuinely humble. That special quality possessed by the meek doesn't go hand in hand with high political office.

2. Emphasis on Domestic Policy

The foremost issue in the minds of voters isn't Iraq or foreign affairs anymore; it's the sour economy and domestic policy. A governor focuses daily on the key components of domestic concern--jobs, education, transportation, health care, and the like. Kaine could speak with self assurance in these fields. Not only has he served as governor, but he was on the Richmond City Council from 1994 to 2001 (when he was elected lieutenant governor), and the Council-elected mayor of Richmond from 1998-2001. As an ambassador to the urban areas of America, Kaine would have credibility.

3. Out-of-Washington Change

It has not escaped anyone's notice that the President is at 25 percent approval, the Congress is around 15 percent, and even the Supreme Court has fallen below 50 percent in some polls. Since Obama has been in Washington barely long enough to learn the street layout, he can avoid the awful, prevailing D.C. taint. Kaine adds emphasis to the 'change' theme since he has no Washington experience of any kind.

4. Virginia

For decades, analysts prematurely proclaimed that the Old Dominion had become the New Dominion, and in the twenty-first century it's finally true. Among the most improbable of 2008's toss-up states, Virginia is on the knife's edge. It is not unreasonable to expect the sitting Governor to add a couple of points to Obama's total. Kaine is popular (mid-50s in most surveys), though not wildly so, as was his predecessor, Mark Warner, who is currently cruising to a big U.S. Senate victory in the state.

Oh, it almost goes without saying that John McCain would have a very difficult time finding the 13 electoral votes he might lose in Virginia. Keep in mind that Virginia has voted Republican in thirteen of the last fourteen presidential contests (save only LBJ's in 1964), and the state is tied for the best GOP record in the nation. Even Georgian Jimmy Carter, who won all the other states of the South, couldn't take Virginia. Defeat in the New Dominion would be a major and perhaps decisive blow to McCain. Could Tim Kaine be the first VP nominee since Lyndon Johnson in 1960 to deliver a critical, toss-up home state for his ticket?

5. Special Qualities

Kaine is Roman Catholic, often described as "devout" even though he is pro-choice in effect while projecting a pro-life image and accepting of the death penalty despite personal opposition to it. Catholics are a swing vote in 2008, and Kaine's Christian religious orientation matches Obama's. This might help with the campaign's much publicized outreach to church-going Americans. Kaine is a former missionary to Honduras and he speaks fluent Spanish, which can only assist in the effort to woo Hispanics.

Kaine is more national than real Virginian (as a native of Virginia, this author can snobbishly suggest this), having been born in Minnesota, having grown up in Kansas, and having attended colleges in Missouri and Massachusetts. Therefore, Kaine has ties to three swing states (MN, MO, and VA). Kaine has a bipartisan dimension, since his father-in-law is Linwood Holton, Virginia's first Republican Governor of the 20th century, who served from 1970 to 1974. Republicans will be quick to add that Holton has long since left the party--Holton says the party left him--and he recently told this author that the only Republican he has voted for in recent times is retiring U.S. Sen. John Warner, a moderate.

Kaine is highly articulate, young (age 50, close to Obama's 46 years), and an accomplished campaigner. As a team, they will look good and make sense, much as the youthful team of Bill Clinton and Al Gore produced synergy for 1992's Democrats. Finally, fulfilling the oldest VP mandate of "first, do no harm", Kaine is squeaky clean and scandal-free, as even his enemies admit, and he is unlikely to commit gaffes or deflect attention from the presidential nominee.

There are no perfect people, and that goes double for VP picks. So Kaine brings certain disadvantages and baggage to Obama, too:

1. Lack of Experience Where It Is Most Needed

Other than the possibility of racial leakage at the polls--the chance that many white voters who would otherwise vote Democratic this year will be unable to cast a ballot for an African-American--there is no greater threat to Obama's victory than his inexperience. With fewer than four years in Washington as a senator, most of which has been spent running for president, plus a stint in the Illinois State Senate, Obama's public office resume is undeniably thin. His recent successful Magical Mystery Tour of eight European and Middle Eastern countries notwithstanding, Obama has little or no foreign policy, military, and national security experience.

Unless one counts foreign trade missions, Kaine has even less knowledge of these areas than Obama. Survey after survey has shown that Americans have a hard time, at least so far, seeing Obama in the role of commander-in-chief. A VP pick with solid background in the military or international arena would be reassuring. Kaine provides no comfort there, and it may cost Obama. Overall, Kaine has executive experience as a mayor and governor that perhaps balances Obama's purely legislative resume. Yet this would be a team whose elective resume is rather skimpy, beginning only in the mid-1990s, with just one truly consequential office each--and not a full term in it for either.

2. The Hillary Factor

Few insiders believe there is a chance Obama will pick Hillary Clinton, despite her near-tie with Obama in popular votes and delegates. The reasons are well known, including lack of personal chemistry and the potential campaign and White House role of Bill Clinton. But given continuing reluctance among some Hillary voters to back Obama, is it a risk for Obama to form a ticket with Kaine, one of his earliest and most ardent backers? Might it not make more sense for Obama to select a former strong Hillary backer--though someone of pleasant personality with whom Obama could forge a working partnership? The obvious name is Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, who some say is also on Obama's short-short list.

3. Kaine's Governorship

Few nonpartisan observers in Virginia regard Kaine's tenure in the Governor's Office as particularly successful. Having known every governor since Albertis Harrison (1962-1966) and having studied the records of the dozen most recent governors, I would characterize Kaine's term to this point as belonging to the bottom quartile. To be fair, he has a year and a half to go, and sometimes a Virginia governor can make a final push that raises his grade considerably.

So far, Kaine has had one shining moment after the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007, when he handled the tragedy with aplomb--easily on a par with Gov. Frank Keating's management of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 or Gov. Haley Barbour's skill in bringing Mississippi back from the brink of chaos after Hurricane Katrina. But otherwise, his executive tenure has recorded few significant successes and one giant, overriding failure in the transportation field where Kaine hoped to make his mark. Is Kaine solely responsible? Absolutely not.

The Republican House of Delegates, controlled by social conservatives and anti-tax partisans, has been determined not to give Kaine a major achievement. "No more Mark Warners" has been their slogan, believing that the GOP's willingness to work with Kaine's Democratic predecessor to pass a large tax hike created a political juggernaut in Warner, and deeply alienated the right-wing Republican base. Still, even Democratic legislators friendly to Kaine say privately that he is often a distant governor, certainly compared to Warner, inclined to give orders without thorough follow-up and flexibility. Whether Kaine's record as Governor would matter much to a national audience is doubtful, so this may not be much of a threat to Obama.

4. The Aftermath in Virginia

Naturally, Obama would not be especially concerned about the post-Kaine era in Virginia, and given the frustrations of his governorship, one could hardly blame Kaine for grabbing a chance to move up and out--and eventually perhaps have his own shot at the presidency. However, many Virginia Democrats are privately unhappy at the prospect of Kaine leaving in mid-term, potentially the first Virginia governor not to complete the single four-year term since it was established beginning in 1852. That is because Kaine would be succeeded by a deeply conservative Republican lieutenant governor, Bill Bolling.

Undoubtedly and appropriately, Bolling would quickly move to put his own stamp on state government with a new Cabinet, agency heads, and board appointments. Under an agreement previously reached with the now-presumptive 2009 GOP gubernatorial nominee, Attorney General Bob McDonnell, Bolling would be the Republican nominee for a full term. (The election is in November 2009.) Bolling had side-stepped a divisive GOP primary with a grateful McDonnell in order to run for reelection to the lieutenant governorship, but part of their gentleman's agreement--confirmed by both men to me at the time--guaranteed Bolling the nomination if he should succeed to the top spot before the June 2009 nominating deadline. Thus, for the first time since 1852, an incumbent Governor, Bill Bolling, would seek reelection.

While mistakes in office could always deny him the prize, the presumption would be that Virginians would not want three governors in one year. Thus, Kaine's departure could deliver a five-year Bolling governorship, quite possibly followed by a term of McDonnell. (The modern Virginia tradition has been to give a party at least two consecutive terms in the governor's chair, even though the one-term-and-out rule means that different people would be elected every four years.) The Bolling term would include the redistricting year of 2011, possibly enabling Republicans to tenure in their state legislative and U.S. House incumbents for another decade. The Senate of Virginia, narrowly controlled by the Democrats (21 to 19) and dependant upon the good health of an eighty-something incumbent, could also go Republican in 2011, with a GOP governor leading the charge. This would wipe out Democratic momentum in Virginia.

We're jumping way ahead, and perhaps this nightmare scenario for Democrats would be short-circuited somewhere along the way--but it is very much in the minds of senior Virginia Democrats as they contemplate an early Kaine departure for the Vice Presidency. And the top Republicans will hardly believe their luck, if this comes to pass. In all states, gaining the governorship is the key to expanding a party's political control. The Virginia GOP has been deep down and virtually out since 2001, but they may well owe their comeback to a Democratic presidential candidate and a Democratic governor. By the way, this same situation could develop even if Kaine is not chosen VP. A President-Elect Obama would almost certainly offer Kaine a Cabinet post. Were Kaine to take it, Republicans would begin their roll.

Democrats will happily absorb the first half of this essay, while Republicans will eagerly focus on the second half. As always, the Crystal Ball tries to walk in the middle of the road--that six-inch-wide yellow line where you get hit from both sides.

This entire piece of prose is pure speculation, of course. But hasn't it been fun?

By Larry Sabato, Real Clear Politics, July 30, 2008

From the get-go, Barack Obama has tried to transcend race in his presidential campaign. Like Tiger Woods, he'd like the public to focus more on his swing than his color. But too many voters aren't willing to let him out of this sand trap.

Polls indicate race as an influence in voter decisionmaking, and not always in Mr. Obama's favor. While an overwhelming majority of blacks support him, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken in mid-July shows he may be in trouble with a small but significant percentage of whites.

Of white voters surveyed, 8 percent said race is the most important factor in choosing a candidate – up from 6 percent a month ago. In the Democratic primaries, exit polling in swing state Pennsylvania showed race mattered to 12 percent of voters. A quarter of that percentage backed Obama, but the rest backed Hillary Clinton.

On the other end of the spectrum, select criticism can be heard within the black community that Obama is not paying enough attention to it. Black DJs would like to host him more often on their shows, while Jesse Jackson accuses the candidate of "talking down to black people."

Racial and ethnic minorities in America want him on board with their specific concerns. He fielded questions about some of these issues at a July 27 conference of minority journalists in Chicago. If he were president, for instance, would the federal government apologize for the treatment of native Americans? What about reparations for slavery? Does he support affirmative action at a time when the push is on for ballot measures to ban racial and gender preferences (measures that Republican hopeful John McCain now appears to endorse)?

His answers showed a sensitivity to minority causes, but he also moved quickly to rhetoric that rose above their specificity. He is more concerned about "delivering a better life" to native Americans than a government apology, for example. Likewise, the best reparations for descendents of slaves would be the opportunity for a decent job and quality education.

And, Obama said, he supports affirmative action "when it is properly structured" so that race is one factor among others such as class – a position in line with the Supreme Court, at least regarding public school admissions. Wealthier African-American children shouldn't get more breaks than poor white kids, he says.

These answers tend toward a tide-that-lifts-all-boats strategy – ideas that could just as easily have been uttered by Bill Clinton as Obama.

They also echoed Obama's speech earlier this month to the NAACP – an audience which might have expected him to don the mantle of civil-rights icons.

But Obama's bottom-line message was that it doesn't matter how many government programs are launched if "we don't seize more responsibility in our own lives" – as parents, as young people, as members of a community. "We all have to do our part," he said.

In a landscape as culturally and ethnically diverse as America, no other message, really, can work for Obama. He cannot speak for just the black community, just as John F. Kennedy couldn't run solely as the Catholic candidate.

Being inclusive is the only way for Obama to keep black support, and fight back that lingering racism among a small minority of white voters.

It's almost certainly too late, after his coronation tour of the Middle East and Europe, to amend the story and to show precisely how and why the conventional wisdom about Barack Obama and the surge is wrong, but just out of curmudgeonly pedantry, let me attempt the task.

On Feb. 21, Sens. Obama and Hillary Clinton had one of their "debates" in Austin, Texas. The question of the surge - just then beginning to show serious and lasting results - came up. Sen. Clinton, of course, having apparently been decisively out-lefted by Obama at the beginning of the campaign, felt compelled to put the sourest face on all matters Iraqi. And then Campbell Brown of CNN asked the following question:

Sen. Obama, in the same vein, you were also opposed to the surge from the beginning. Were you wrong?

At that point, sitting at home, I suddenly realized what Obama ought to do if he wanted to show that he was capable of thinking on his feet and stealing a march on his rivals. He should praise the surge without withdrawing from his opposition to the war. And so he did, in the following words:

Well, I think it is indisputable that we've seen violence reduced in Iraq. And that's a credit to our brave men and women in uniform. In fact, you know, the First Cavalry, out of Fort Hood, played an enormous role in pushing back al-Qaida out of Baghdad. [APPLAUSE] And, you know, we honor their service. But this is a tactical victory imposed upon a huge strategic blunder. [LAUGHTER] And I think that when we're having a debate with John McCain, it is going to be much easier for the candidate who was opposed to the concept of invading Iraq in the first place to have a debate about the wisdom of that decision [APPLAUSE] than having to argue about the tactics subsequent to the decision. [LAUGHTER]

Not bad for a performance in the liberal-skewed primaries and (with its rather obvious nod to the local heroes of Fort Hood) not entirely unpremeditated, either. I felt almost sure that this - "Obama Has Kind Words for Surge" - would be the headline next day. Instead, there was no mention of it to speak of, and most people with whom I later talked seemed not to have noticed the moment at all. In some way, the notion that Obama was beating Sen. Clinton mainly because he was more anti-war than she was the story, the whole story, and nothing but the story; and no statement that was in any way incompatible with it could be considered newsworthy. I took this up with the late Tim Russert, who shrugged a bit and added that the line of the evening - "Change you can Xerox," a vulgar taunt about Obama's alleged plagiarism from Sen. Clinton via Sidney Blumenthal - had swiftly become the agreed headline among those who decide these things. Really, there are times one is ashamed to be in the profession.

However, it isn't just the famous "liberal bias" that explains all this groupthink and on-the-spot editing. The right wing had no interest in highlighting Obama's nuanced position in Austin, either, because there was (and is) a conservative interest in painting Obama as a heedless and irresponsible pacifist, with absolutely no experience of crashing an expensive aircraft on the territory of a country on which the United States had never declared war.

In fact, the worst you can say of Obama's position on Iraq (where we also didn't declare war but where we did have a long series of U.N. resolutions putting the Saddam Hussein regime outside international law) is that he was a member of that quite large and undistinguished group that constituted the president's fair-weather wartime friends. Shortly after Baghdad had fallen at a then-cost of perhaps 100 U.S. fatalities, he said publicly that there was no serious difference between the Bush position and his own. It was only by retro-engineering his politics, and pointing to a speech he had made in Chicago very much earlier in the Iraq debate, that he was able to create the idea that he had been both braver and more prescient than his rivals for the nomination.

According to your taste, then, this succession of local and national and now international shifts and adaptations makes Obama either a very ordinary politician or a highly extraordinary one. The timing of events in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to make him an astonishingly fortunate nominee. And fortunate, too, it must be said, in his opponent. Sen. John McCain could have said gravely that only the surge made the talk of American withdrawal - whether it came from Nouri al-Maliki or Obama - possible in the first place. He could have taken Obama's words from last February, about the 1^st Cavalry vanquishing al-Qaida, and used them wryly and dryly to congratulate the younger man on being willing to learn. Instead, he peppered everything but the target with the inaccurate charge that Obama had always been anti-war and anti-surge. Obama may indeed have been serially for them after he was against them, but that's different from (and better than) the other way around.

The cliche for the Obama phenomenon is jujitsu, where the strength of your opponent is precisely what you use against him. McCain had one particular strength when this campaign began: his fortitude in respect of Iraq, which entailed (as some people forget) his willingness to criticize the commander in chief in time of war. Now he is in real danger of confusing the two things and trying to make criticism or disagreement appear to be suspect in themselves. If last week hasn't taught him that this is a doomed tactic - and strategy - then he is unteachable.

By Christopher Hitchens, The Slate, July 28, 2008

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. The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg found "the big papers … assembling quite a list of matters on which the candidate has 'changed his position,' including Iraq, abortion rights, federal aid to faith-based social services, capital punishment, gun control, public financing of campaigns, and wiretapping."

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 claimes 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?

In a 2006 profile in Men's Vogue by Jacob Weisberg, Obama acknowledges that every politician, himself included, has "some of that reptilian side to him." To win public office, a politician must power his scales, trim his nails, and tame his swinging tail. It's called persona-building, and everybody does it. But just compare the persona Obama crafted to the one crafted by Mitt Romney. The Romney bodysuit is all snapping teeth and empty glad-handing. Obama, on the other hand, projects a remarkably appealing and authentic character. He's the koala of iguanas.

Whether by design or by chance (I'd say design), Obama took possession of this public face with the publication of his confessional memoir, Dreams From My Father, in 1995. Written before he ran for office, Dreams shrewdly moots his youthful drug use as "some bad decisions." When the New York Times rereported this period in Obama's life for a Feb 9, 2008, piece, it probably expected to uncover spectacular dope-crazed tales. Instead it found evidence that Obama's memoir might have exaggerated his drug use. An Obama friend - now a fundraiser - tells the Times Obama was somewhat of a reticent drug user: "If someone passed him a joint, he would take a drag. We'd smoke or have one extra beer, but he would not even do as much as other people on campus. ... He was not even close to being a party animal."

Obama's poise and discipline allow him to resist whatever bait the press and politicians dangle in front of him. When he does address scandalous material, he generally does so to his advantage. In June, when the Web and cable news advanced false rumors that Michelle Obama had called white people "whitey" on a videotape, Obama squelched the gossip with a denial and, as Ben Smith of Politico reported, put the press on notice by questioning the appropriateness of the question. Smears undermine a politician only when they appeal to voters' pre-existing idea of what sort of person a politician is. Seeing as the pre-existing idea of Obama is so positive, the Obama-haters have had trouble portraying him either as a literal bomb thrower, like William Ayers, or a figurative one, like the Rev. Wright. When the smear artists dress him up as a radical or as "madrassa"-educated, the ploys only backfire.

Like Chief Justice John Roberts, Obama has constructed a professional resume low on embarrassing material. In this regard, Obama's lack of legislative accomplishment is a genuine achievement. They can't hit you where they can't find you, which is a gambit that worked for Roberts in his confirmation hearings. Separating the real Obama from the persona is probably impossible, as Ryan Lizza hints in The New Yorker, where he writes:

[Obama] campaigns on reforming a broken political process, yet he has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist. He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the inside game. He is ideologically a man of the left, but at times he has been genuinely deferential to core philosophical insights of the right.

Obama has maintained his persona by keeping the campaign press corps on a starvation diet. Yet such a strategy becomes self-limiting as the race for the White House narrows down to a two-person contest. Voters in the general election, as opposed to the primaries, tend to want more answers and fewer gestures.

At some point he's going to have to start answering questions, an observation that shouldn't come as a surprise to Obama's chief strategist, former journalist David Axelrod. Last week, Slate's John Dickerson excoriated Obama for his double-talking ways in an interview with NBC's Brian Williams about his position on the surge. Writes Dickerson: "[H]e suggested that he'd always said the surge would decrease violence in Iraq. That's not just spin. It's not true."

It's one thing to stiff-arm the press, but quite another to lie. Lying isn't something that becomes Obama - or his persona.

WASHINGTON (AP) - As speculation swirls, Barack Obama and John McCain are knuckling down to the work of choosing running mates with their nominating conventions just weeks away.

Current and former governors and senators seem the most serious contenders, though most of those mentioned are playing coy about any discussions with either campaign.

"I'm just not going to talk about my conversations with the campaign," Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia said Tuesday as he declined to confirm media reports that he has provided financial documents to Obama for review. Another, Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, said he has decided to stop answering questions about a spot on McCain's ticket because of all the gossip.

Among others believed to be getting close looks: Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for Obama as well as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Ohio Rep. Rob Portman for McCain.

Several more have been mentioned as well. But it's appearing less likely that Obama - a Democratic Illinois senator - will choose former rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. And it's still possible that McCain - a Republican Arizona senator - will choose former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, whose support for abortion rights might upset conservatives whose enthusiasm McCain needs.

This much is certain: Obama and McCain have been regularly huddling behind closed doors with a small circle of advisers to examine the backgrounds and records - and weigh the political implications - of at least a handful of prospects.

Each nominee-to-be may even be holding private one-on-one meetings with vice presidential hopefuls or polling possible tickets to see how they would fare in certain target states. It's tough to tell; such details are tightly held.

At the same time, possible picks are trying out for the part in public. They do numerous TV interviews on behalf of the candidates and campaign alongside them, almost certainly at the behest of campaign advisers who want to assess how each handles the media and campaign rigors.

Obama could thoroughly review his options during his planned Hawaiian vacation and then name his choice in the week before the Democratic convention in Denver at the end of August. McCain is seriously considering naming his No. 2 in the few days separating the two conventions in the hope of stunting any post-convention surge in the polls for Obama.

Recently, each has left the impression his search has reached an advanced stage.

Obama met Tuesday with top aides and his search committee in Washington for the second time in as many days, and at least the third time this month.

He told NBC's Tom Brokaw on Sunday: "I'm going to want somebody with integrity; I'm going to want somebody with independence, who is willing to tell me where he thinks or she thinks I'm wrong; and I'm going to want somebody who shares a vision of the country - where we need to go. That we've got to fundamentally change not only our policies but how our politics works; how business is done in Washington."

That comment seemed to cast doubt that Obama would choose Clinton, who has spent more than a decade in Washington as a first lady and New York senator. During the primaries, Obama portrayed Clinton as the ultimate Washington insider while suggesting he offered a fresh approach above partisanship.

Even so, Obama told Brokaw: "I've said consistently that I think Hillary Clinton would be on anybody's short list. She is one of the most effective, intelligent, courageous leaders that we have in the Democratic Party."

McCain, for his part, didn't give away much more Monday.

He told CNN's Larry King that he's considering both men and women and, "I will announce it just as soon as the process is completed."

Aides to both candidates refuse to describe the selection process and bristle when asked directly about one person or another; neither side appreciates prospective running mates who promote themselves.

Even now, it's possible long-shots could be chosen, like Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska for Obama, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for McCain, or New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, for either.

And names that were hot just months ago seem to have grown cold, like Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and South Dakota Sen. John Thune among Republicans, and Democrats like Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and Virginia Sen. Jim Webb have taken themselves out of the running.

So far, the few who know for certain the names remaining on each short list aren't talking.

like Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado and Minnesota, that McCain will really make this a race in the fall and might even have a chance to win. And the inside track is that as McCain either closes the gap or continues to remain competitive when he should be down by 15 points, Hillary's name goes back on the VP "short list" and maybe moves up rather fast.

What's happening? Several things are at play here and some of them are converging in McCain's favor by default.

First, the media is at it again. By all rights, in at least three of the state primaries in the Democratic primary campaign, when Hillary Clinton should have been closed out on election night, the voters' perception of a media "bias" against Clinton and in favor of Obama actually helped sustain Clinton particularly among white females to enable her to fight on another day.

And now, that same media, still determined to elect Senator Obama, may actually be hurting him as a recent poll showed that 73% of those polled say the media is "favoring Obama over McCain." I believe that some of the rise in McCain's poll numbers reflect some backlash against the media in the same way that response actually helped Hillary in the later primaries.

Second, the current polls show Americans split right down the middle on supporting Obama's position calling for a sixteen month timetable for withdrawing all troops from Iraq vs supporting McCain's position of withdrawals based only on conditions on the ground without a set timetable. And with increased focus on Iraq because of Senator Obama's trip to both Iraq and Afghanistan, John McCain has been given an opportunity to argue that the "Surge has worked even though Senator Obama opposed it". Yes, the Surge is working, but it has not accomplished the goals the Bush Administration originally set as its purpose, so I reject McCain's argument -- but the American people are not rejecting that argument.

And McCain's support for off shore oil drilling, a policy that will be years off in providing real relief at the pump, is nevertheless an argument that's finally taking hold with voters ($4.00 a gallon gas prices helps voters get a better "hold" of the issue). And Barack Obama also opposes that policy as well.

Third, I continue to repeat the argument I have been making for months -- that many Americans, mostly white liberals, the media, and now even many African Americans, are still significantly underestimating the extent to which Race will be a factor when people go behind closed curtains to vote on November 3rd -- and that factor is also at play in the recent polls showing McCain gaining regardless of what any pundit may tell you.

And Fourth, and most importantly, Barack Obama still has not introduced himself and defined himself in a way that tells the American people "who he really is" in a way that would make most Americans, specifically moderates and independents, more comfortable with him as a person who would be their President - and this point is not primarily about race - it's about human nature. And it helps explain a recent NBC- Wall Street Journal Poll that shows 55% of voters think Obama is a riskier choice for President, while only 35% think McCain is.

Barack Obama needs to introduce and define himself in a familial way to the American people -- not the German people, and in the words of his national co-chair, Harold Ford of Tennessee, "he better do it soon." Otherwise, Obama will continue to be far more vulnerable to New Yorker magazine type covers, "Oreo cookie" comments by the John McLaughlins' of the world, and increased negative personal scrutiny when Jesse Jackson and others make comments that really should not have any impact on Obama, but do have an impact on him because when people don't feel they really know you, then anything they hear about you helps them to think they are now learning more about you.

But until Barack Obama really defines himself (and he has a great story), then he runs a campaign where others define him. And if you let others define you (swift boaters a la John Kerry) etc, regardless of how much money you have and how large your crowds are, it's hard to win. And for Obama, the most difficult challenges remain here at home. After all, I would remind everyone that in US Presidential elections, the European vote tends to come in well after our polls have closed.

Finally, I will repeat this assessment of the November 3rd results several times between now and then. John McCain does not have the potential to beat Barack Obama in a landslide, and with all the negatives for Republicans this year, if it's not a landslide, then issues like "Race" are playing far larger than most are willing to acknowledge.

Therefore, if the election results are a landslide (8 points or higher), Obama wins and is the only possible winner. But if this election is close, within 3 to 4 points, with all the problems in the country, then John McCain is your next President.

"It was mentioned very briefly," said Ellen Malcolm of EMILY's List, one of about 30 women part of the discussion. "I think everybody realizes this will be his personal decision."

Obama told the group that he had met with Clinton earlier as part of a conversation with women senators. A Clinton spokesman confirmed that the two former rivals were together this morning, but was unaware if there was one-on-one time.

"He actually told us who it's going to be," Malcolm joked, quickly adding that she like others has no indication of the Illinois senator's thinking.

Obama has just departed the office of Eric Holder, who is heading his running mate search. He spent two and a half hours there today, after spending nearly two hours there yesterday.

Approximately 10 percent of Hillary Clinton voters in the primary season now belong to the "Just Say No" coalition, a collection of groups devoted to keeping Barack Obama out of the presidency. After Obama become the presumptive nominee, these groups rose from the ashes of Clinton's presidential bid in support of her. The groups advocate different methods, from voting for John McCain, writing in Clinton's name, or simply not voting at all.

Anger seems to be the sole motive for these groups, since the former first lady has said it would be a grave mistake for her supporters to not support Obama.
The Just Say No backers gripe, "If the parties won't uphold democratic principles, who will?"

The Democratic party and Barack Obama's campaign today announced a plan to spend $20m to organise and mobilise Hispanic voters.

Meanwhile, in Washington today buzz grew about Virginia governor Tim Kaine's place near the top of the short list of Obama vice-presidential choices. Kaine, an early Obama backer, could help Obama carry Virginia, and would bring outsider appeal to the ticket. He appeared in Washington today, ostensibly to visit his daughter, and told reporters: "I think I'm just not going to talk about my conversations with the campaign."

The Democrats will focus the $20m on four swing states in the west and south-west with large Hispanic populations. The party aims to take advantage of what it considers a blunder by Republicans who have embraced hard-line immigration policies that have alienated Hispanic voters and provoked them to political action. Democrats say that never before has a national party pledged this much money this early in such a broad programme.

Democrats say Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida are in play for Obama after voting for George Bush twice. Victories there would reduce pressure on Obama to win Ohio and Pennsylvania, typically the site of brutal fall battles.

At a press conference at Democratic National Committee headquarters this morning, four Hispanic congressmen said Obama's message of "change" on the economy, energy, healthcare, the war in Iraq, immigration and other issues appeals to Hispanic voters. The news conference did not focus on immigration, though polls show it is a top concern for Hispanic voters.

"The reality is that [McCain] is proposing the same initiatives as President Bush, on the war, on social security, the economy," Arizona representative Raul Grijalva said in Spanish, for the benefit of the Spanish-language media present, "and those were a failure for our community, a tremendous damage. For me, the need for our community to choose Barack Obama is economic, political and social".

The money, which comes both from party coffers and Obama campaign funds, will be spent to contact, register and mobilise Hispanic voters, on online organising, media advertising, travel for campaign speakers and staffing in swing states. Democrats familiar with the initiative said the funds will be spent in all 50 states, but focused largely on the Hispanic-heavy swing states.

Obama is poised to carry a majority of Hispanic voters. According to a survey release last week by the Pew Hispanic Centre, a non-partisan research organisation, Hispanic registered voters favour the Illinois senator 66% to 23% for McCain. But by aiming aggressively at the segment, especially new voters, the Democrats hope to increase turnout that will add to his vote total in November, and force McCain to spend time and money campaigning in states that Bush won.

Bush, former governor of heavily Hispanic Texas, made strong inroads with Hispanic voters. His strategists recognised that the group's share of the electorate is growing, and Bush in 2000 and 2004 spent heavily on Spanish-language advertising and enlisted Bush's part-Mexican nephew in the effort. As a result, the Republican party doubled its share of the Hispanic vote in 2004 from 1996, winning 40% to the Democrats' 59%.

McCain, who also hails from a heavily Hispanic state, Arizona, was poised to share in Bush's appeal. In 2006 he was a staunch supporter of ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful immigration reform legislation backed by Bush and leading Democrats. Beginning in 2007 and through the Republican primary, McCain yielded to anti-immigration forces in the party base, however.

"He's got two key problems," said Democratic party spokesman Luis Miranda. "One, he's promising the same failed policies of the Bush administration, and two, he walked on an issue of such importance to the community, like immigration reform, which showed the community that, can you really trust him?"

Colorado senator Ken Salazar said immigration "is not one of the defining issues of our time" but noted that Obama "has not wavered in his commitment" to reforming the system. Obama has long backed a guest-worker programme for low-paying jobs typically filled by illegal aliens, a path to legal status for illegal aliens, and other provisions

Indeed, the McCain campaign has acknowledged the Republican party's poor standing among Hispanics, but the side plans to remind Hispanics of McCain's longstanding ties to the community. The campaign hopes Hispanics won't punish him for their distaste for Republican immigration policies.

In a statement released by the McCain campaign, Florida representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart said: "Unlike Barack Obama, John McCain doesn't need an introduction to the Hispanic community. John McCain has been working for more than two decades for the values, principles and issues Latinos care about."

During the long primary campaign, Hispanics backed New York senator Hillary Clinton nearly two to one, in part because Hispanic voters had a favourable view of former president Bill Clinton, and because of historic cool relations between blacks and Hispanics.

Representative Jose Serrano of New York, a staunch Clinton backer during the primary season, today said Latino support for her transfers to Obama, her fierce rival.

"That love that the Latino community had for Hillary is also a love for change," he said. "It's a love for the future of our country... it's a love for ending those policies which are unfair and it's a love for true change in America."

By Daniel Nasaw, The Guardian, July 29 2008

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.

When Mr. Obama appeared Sunday on "Meet the Press" on NBC he offered a description of the kind of person he was looking for, hinting that it would not be someone who was identified strongly with Washington, a choice that would appear to leave out Mrs. Clinton. His associates said this description reflected the lack of serious thought being given to Mrs. Clinton for the post.

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.

Mrs. Clinton's boosters have not given up. "If he picks Hillary he gets her 18 million supporters and we would win in a cakewalk and control the White House for 16 years," Terry McAuliffe, who was the chairman of her campaign, said Sunday in an interview.

Yet even Mr. McAuliffe, in a separate interview on MSNBC on Monday morning, seemed to acknowledge the diminished chances of Mrs. Clinton's ending up on the ticket when he said he expected her role at the convention to consist of delivering a speech on Tuesday night. (If history is any guide, the vice presidential candidate speaks on Wednesday night; Mr. Obama's advisers said they had not decided when Mrs. Clinton would speak.)

By every indication, Mr. Obama has not reached a decision. Given the political strength Mrs. Clinton exhibited as she dueled with Mr. Obama to the end of the primary season, it is conceivable - say, if polls over the next few weeks suddenly show him struggling against Senator John McCain - that Mr. Obama would turn to her. But his associates describe that as unlikely, saying that for a variety of reasons, Mr. Obama is not looking to have her as a running mate or serving with him in the White House.

Mr. Obama's aides are confident that the passions of the primary season have given way to a more pragmatic view among Mrs. Clinton's supporters and that Mr. Obama would not risk a major backlash from women or other constituencies associated with her if the vice presidential slot goes to someone else.

But the Obama camp has done little in public to prepare Clinton supporters for the increasing likelihood that she will not be on the ticket. There is no shortage of speculation among Mrs. Clinton's supporters that she is very much in the running as Mr. Obama begins closing in on a decision.

The list of potential candidates includes Senators Evan Bayh of Indiana and Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, as well as Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, and other names of varying degrees of plausibility. The Democratic convention begins Aug. 25 in Denver, and Mr. Obama was said to be considering an announcement the week before, although aides said it could be earlier.

The arguments for picking Mrs. Clinton have always been highly pragmatic, based more on electoral politics than anything else, as Mr. McAuliffe suggested in pointing to the vote-getting power she had exhibited. (For what it is worth, some of Mr. McCain's advisers said they viewed Mrs. Clinton as the single strongest candidate Mr. Obama could pick for those same reasons.)

Those arguments have not held much sway with Mr. Obama or his inner circle. They have indicated that any political benefits gained by putting Mrs. Clinton on the ticket would be outweighed by the costs.

Mr. Obama's advisers say that a central message of his campaign - that he would represent a break from the way politics are conducted in Washington - would be tarnished by the simple act of linking himself to the family that has dominated Democratic politics since Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992.

In addition, a campaign marked by tight control and few displays of infighting (a structure that Mr. Obama's advisers would like to replicate in the White House should he win) would, some of Mr. Obama's associates said, be undermined by trying to merge with the Clintons. Several of his associates said they were particularly wary of trying to manage a campaign that included Mr. Clinton.

All this takes place against a backdrop of wary relations between the two campaigns. Strikingly, other than Mrs. Clinton's former policy director, Neera Tanden, no other members of her current inner circle have found their way into the Obama camp. (Patti Solis Doyle, who was Mrs. Clinton's campaign manager but was forced out in a shakeup last February, is now in charge of setting up the vice presidential operation for Mr. Obama.)

There is also continued grousing within Mrs. Clinton's circle that Mr. Obama is not doing more to help her pay off her debt, and continued grousing within Mr. Obama's circle that Mrs. Clinton expects him to do much to help her repay her debt.

But Mrs. Clinton has made clear that she will do whatever Mr. Obama wants and has arranged a crowded schedule of appearances over the next two months on Mr. Obama's behalf - some with him, but most on her own, an aide said.

Obama will be 47 on Aug. 4. McCain will be 72 on Aug. 29.

Their 25-year age gap, and the questions it inherently raises about experience and vitality, is part of a powerful generational subtext of the 2008 campaign.

This is the first presidential contest to substantially involve the emerging so-called millennials, a generation that some political and social scientists predict will be the most politically active and powerful of any since the GI Generation that won World War II.

McCain comes from what social scientists call the Silent Generation, those tucked between the GI Generation and the baby boomers who followed the war. McCain's generation fought in Korea and Vietnam and has been split over baby boomer politics since the 1960s.

If McCain does not win in November, his generation could be the first in American history to not produce a president, according to Morley Winograd, who coauthored with Michael D. Hais the new book, "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics."

Barely a boomer

Obama is a tail-end boomer, but his political appeal is heavily focused on the millennials who have begun voting in the last three presidential elections. Millennials are 26 and younger, and the 100 million of them born between 1982 and 2003 constitute the largest and most diverse American generation ever.

Both McCain and Obama have traits that appeal to this generation: McCain's reputation as a maverick, Obama's focus on casting off the divisive politics of the past.

Generational experts view McCain and Obama as bookends of a rebellion against the culture-war politics over abortion, marriage and other social divides of the baby boomers.

The McCain-Obama match is "in some ways a reflection of the country's lack of interest in continuing the boomer political debate that has gone on between the two boomer presidents," Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said Winograd, who advised former Democratic Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration.

"It's that whole culture-war gridlock, that type of politics that this country is really tired of," he said. Voters "have managed to choose ... the two candidates least likely to continue that kind of politics."

A June survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that slightly more voters are concerned about McCain's age (51%) than are concerned about Obama's inexperience (42%).

The 25-year gap between Obama and McCain is bigger than the 23-year age difference between Republican challenger Bob Dole and incumbent Bill Clinton in 1996. It's also bigger than the 17-year-gap between Republican incumbent Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale in 1984, when the 73-year-old Reagan famously quipped that he would not hold his opponent's relative inexperience against him.

Initially, some of those with qualms about McCain's age were his fellow senior citizens. But he has maintained a vigorous campaign schedule, and Pew discovered that the percentage of those older than 65 who thought McCain was too old to be president fell from 30% in February to 18% in June.

"I think they are trying to do as much as possible to convert age into experience," said Tony Fabrizio, a pollster for Dole in 1996. "But the contrast between John McCain and Barack Obama is there. You can't change the fact that John McCain has white hair and Barack Obama looks younger."

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is on the right path to winning the presidency, but he needs to get over the trust hurdle he has with some voters if he wants to close the deal on rival John McCain, Democratic strategists say.

Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein said that while voters repeatedly say the struggling economy is their No. 1 concern in this year's election, he doesn't think it will ultimately be what decides the race.

"[The economy] is the driving issue, but it's not going to decide this campaign. It's going to be about trust," Gerstein said. "It's the trust, stupid."

The strategist said Obama will need to get over that hump because the bad political environment for McCain has made the election more about Obama than McCain.

"I think there's a growing consensus that McCain is almost incidental to the campaign," Gerstein said. "The election within the election is a referendum on Obama."

To win that race, Gerstein said that Obama needs to continue "systematically and methodically addressing doubts and questions swing voters have" while at the same time he should "not get dragged into the day-to-day trench warfare with McCain."

Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist who supported Clinton in the primaries, said that he sees three major events left in the race - the conventions, the selection of a running mate and the series of debates between Obama and McCain. Of those, Elmendorf said, the debates will be the most critical for Obama.

"I think that's where the test is going to come," Elmendorf said.

Gerstein noted that there continue to be some voters who erroneously believe that Obama is a Muslim or that he refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance. And while some of those voters will likely never fully trust the Illinois senator, he can do some things to assuage the concerns of more centrist voters who simply don't know enough about the 46-year-old Democrat. Gerstein added that even Obama has "stated the obvious, which is he is an unknown quotient with a lot of voters."

Gerstein's advice is to tackle the trust issue head-on in town hall-style settings that would essentially be a message to voters that he is "an open book." If Obama did so in a high-profile way, Gerstein contends, it would do more to establish trust than the Obama camp's efforts have so far.

"I think taking it directly to voters would be much more effective than fightthesmears.com," Gerstein said. "I think it would show confidence and leadership, but it would also show openness."

Elmendorf said that the biggest part of the trust issue is the so-called "commander-in-chief test," which he said Obama helped himself with on last week's overseas trip that included stops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I think he did a lot last week to move the ball down the field on that," Elmendorf said.

But he added that the debates, where he will be standing side-by-side with McCain in front of more fully engaged electorate, will be Obama's chance to seal the deal - or, conversely, to amplify whatever concerns there are about him.

The debates also offer an opportunity for Obama to be more specific about his plans for meaningful change as he seeks to blunt McCain's criticism that the Illinois senator's rhetoric is just that.

"People are going to want to hear more specifics out of him," Elmendorf said.

Most strategists The Hill contacted for this story agreed that Obama is in good shape at this point on the calendar, and he can clear whatever hurdles remain in his way.

Mark Kornblau, a Democratic strategist who served as former Sen. John Edwards's (D-N.C.) press secretary during the primaries, said that, heading into the stretch, Obama needs to continue to run his kind of race.

"For Obama it's simple: Stay true to yourself," Kornblau said. "It's gotten you this far. Despite a year and a half of second-guessing from pundits and Beltway insiders, Obama has largely followed his own good instincts and as a result he has toppled a Democratic giant, and created a very real sense of optimism in a country that is yearning for a new vision and a better sense of self."

In Wednesday's paper, The Hill will look at what Republican strategists view as the key for McCain to win inside the last 100 days.

To be sure, Mr. Obama has been clouding these positions as he heads into the general election and, once elected, presidents sometimes see the world differently than when they are running. Some cite Bill Clinton's move to the economic policy center following his Hillary health-care and 1994 Congressional election debacles as a possible Obama model. But candidate Obama starts much further left on spending, taxes, trade and regulation than candidate Clinton. A move as large as Mr. Clinton's toward the center would still leave Mr. Obama on the economic left.

Also, by 1995 the country had a Republican Congress to limit President Clinton's big government agenda, whereas most political pundits predict strengthened Democratic majorities in both Houses in 2009. Because newly elected presidents usually try to implement the policies they campaigned on, Mr. Obama's proposals are worth exploring in some depth. I'll discuss taxes and trade, although the story on his other proposals is similar.

First, taxes. The table nearby demonstrates what could happen to marginal tax rates in an Obama administration. Mr. Obama would raise the top marginal rates on earnings, dividends and capital gains passed in 2001 and 2003, and phase out itemized deductions for high income taxpayers. He would uncap Social Security taxes, which currently are levied on the first $102,000 of earnings. The result is a remarkable reduction in work incentives for our most economically productive citizens.

The top 35% marginal income tax rate rises to 39.6%; adding the state income tax, the Medicare tax, the effect of the deduction phase-out and Mr. Obama's new Social Security tax (of up to 12.4%) increases the total combined marginal tax rate on additional labor earnings (or small business income) from 44.6% to a whopping 62.8%. People respond to what they get to keep after tax, which the Obama plan reduces from 55.4 cents on the dollar to 37.2 cents -- a reduction of one-third in the after-tax wage!

On dividends the story is about as bad, with rates rising from 50.4% to 65.6%, and after-tax returns falling over 30%. Even a small response of work and investment to these lower returns means such tax rates, sooner or later, would seriously damage the economy.

On economic policy, the president proposes and Congress disposes, so presidents often wind up getting the favorite policy of powerful senators or congressmen. Thus, while Mr. Obama also proposes an alternative minimum tax (AMT) patch, he could instead wind up with the permanent abolition plan for the AMT proposed by the Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D., N.Y.) -- a 4.6% additional hike in the marginal rate with no deductibility of state income taxes. Marginal tax rates would then approach 70%, levels not seen since the 1970s and among the highest in the world. The after-tax return to work -- the take-home wage for more time or effort -- would be cut by more than 40%.

Now trade. In the primaries, Sen. Obama was famously protectionist, claiming he would rip up and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). Since its passage (for which former President Bill Clinton ran a brave anchor leg, given opposition to trade liberalization in his party), Nafta has risen to almost mythological proportions as a metaphor for the alleged harm done by trade, globalization and the pace of technological change.

Yet since Nafta was passed (relative to the comparable period before passage), U.S. manufacturing output grew more rapidly and reached an all-time high last year; the average unemployment rate declined as employment grew 24%; real hourly compensation in the business sector grew twice as fast as before; agricultural exports destined for Canada and Mexico have grown substantially and trade among the three nations has tripled; Mexican wages have risen each year since the peso crisis of 1994; and the two binational Nafta environmental institutions have provided nearly $1 billion for 135 environmental infrastructure projects along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In short, it would be hard, on balance, for any objective person to argue that Nafta has injured the U.S. economy, reduced U.S. wages, destroyed American manufacturing, harmed our agriculture, damaged Mexican labor, failed to expand trade, or worsened the border environment. But perhaps I am not objective, since Nafta originated in meetings James Baker and I had early in the Bush 41 administration with Pepe Cordoba, chief of staff to Mexico's President Carlos Salinas.

Mr. Obama has also opposed other important free-trade agreements, including those with Colombia, South Korea and Central America. He has spoken eloquently about America's responsibility to help alleviate global poverty -- even to the point of saying it would help defeat terrorism -- but he has yet to endorse, let alone forcefully advocate, the single most potent policy for doing so: a successful completion of the Doha round of global trade liberalization. Worse yet, he wants to put restrictions into trade treaties that would damage the ability of poor countries to compete. And he seems to see no inconsistency in his desire to improve America's standing in the eyes of the rest of the world and turning his back on more than six decades of bipartisan American presidential leadership on global trade expansion. When trade rules are not being improved, nontariff barriers develop to offset the liberalization from the current rules. So no trade liberalization means creeping protectionism.

History teaches us that high taxes and protectionism are not conducive to a thriving economy, the extreme case being the higher taxes and tariffs that deepened the Great Depression. While such a policy mix would be a real change, as philosophers remind us, change is not always progress.

Obama has emerged as the most prominent voice on women's issues in Sen. Barack Obama's campaign. She told stories about women she had met while campaigning and described a series of policies that she said would help working women and families.

"This is personal," said Obama, who talks often of juggling family and career. "These are the issues that I carry in my heart every single day."

The immediate challenge is also political. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ran strongly among women during the Democratic primary season, taking the women's vote in more than half the primaries.

"In the 35 states that held primaries over the course of this year, Barack won the women's votes in 15 of those states," Obama said. "So, there's something going on. We're doing something right, but we have more work to do."

Waters traveled from her chic Berkeley restaurant to oversee the preparations of grilled organic chicken and baked stuffed Hargrande apricots with vanilla ice cream. Before introducing Obama, she made a pitch for healthier eating, more leisurely mealtimes and the use of more local produce.

Waters said the next president should set an example by planting a vegetable garden on the White House lawn.

By Peter Slevin, The Washington Post, July 28, 2008

"I'm sure that Senator Obama could have made no better use of his time than to meet with our men and women in uniform there," Michael J. Durant, a retired Army soldier, said in a statement released by the McCain campaign. "That Barack Obama believes otherwise casts serious doubt on his judgment and calls into question his priorities."

Mr. Durant said the stop "was canceled after it became clear that campaign staff and the traveling press corps would not be allowed to accompany Senator Obama."

That assertion is not correct, Mr. Obama's advisers say. Before his visit to Ramstein Air Base, which is near the medical center, was canceled, the plan called for reporters to stay behind at an airport terminal while Mr. Obama and one adviser met with the troops. Why? The Pentagon does not allow reporters and photographers inside Landstuhl.

For weeks, Mr. Obama had been planning to visit wounded troops in Germany, just as he did in Afghanistan last week and previously had done at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Yet the Landstuhl visit carried more risk because it was to come in the middle of an overseas campaign trip.

Robert Gibbs, a senior strategist for the campaign, said Mr. Obama thought he could carry out the visit without being perceived as politicizing it.

But two days before the visit, Pentagon officials told the campaign that only Mr. Obama would be allowed inside the medical center in his capacity as a senator. The adviser who had intended to join Mr. Obama, Scott Gration, a retired major general in the Air Force, was told he could not go along because he was a volunteer campaign adviser.

Mr. Obama was asked by reporters to explain the matter on Saturday in London.

"That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political, and the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns," Mr. Obama said. "So rather than go forward and potentially get caught up in what might have been considered a political controversy of some sort, what we decided was that we not make a visit and instead I would call some of the troops that were there."

The McCain television commercial, which asserts that Mr. Obama chose to go to the gymnasium over visiting troops, is not entirely accurate. Instead of going to Landstuhl on Friday morning, Mr. Obama also conducted an interview with CNN in his hotel in Berlin.

Assertions in early news reports that the Pentagon had told Mr. Obama he could not visit the medical center were incorrect, said Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman. He said the military personnel in Germany had made arrangements for Mr. Obama's visit and were surprised when it was called off.

The cancellation provided one of the few sour notes in an overseas trip that otherwise seemed to be well orchestrated. It offered an opening on a subject, military affairs, that the McCain campaign believes Mr. Obama is vulnerable on.

If the story behind the story of the canceled troop visit has run its course, one question remains: Why didn't Mr. Obama leave his aides behind, even the retired general, and make the visit by himself?

"Even him going alone would likely be characterized by some as a political event," Mr. Gibbs said in an interview on Monday, adding, "He decided not to put the troops in that position."

Mr. Obama's focus on jobs seemed intended to show his mastery of an issue of special concern to working-class voters, especially working-class whites in industrial swing states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. During the Democratic primaries, those voters tended to support his main rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"The economic emergency is growing more severe," Mr. Obama said just before the afternoon meeting began. "Jobs are down, wages are falling," and "the financial markets threaten to be engaged in a protracted credit crunch with long-lasting ramifications."

"I believe more action is going to be necessary," he added, "so that entrepreneurship is encouraged, so that the market is thriving, so that hard work is rewarded."

Even before the meeting began, however, Mr. McCain's surrogates and advisers were attacking both the meeting and Mr. Obama's prescription for the nation's economic ills. As they did last week while Mr. Obama was abroad, they accused him of grandstanding, and said he was granting too big a role to government and too small a one to private initiative.

"The American people are getting treated to yet another photo op by Barack Obama today," said Carleton S. Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive and one of Mr. McCain's economic advisers. "Meanwhile, John McCain has been out talking about the economy, understanding the economy, taking advice on the economy for many many months."

Participants in Mr. Obama's meeting included prominent Democratic figures like Robert E. Rubin, President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary; Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter; and Warren Buffet. But two people who served under President Bush during his first term also attended: Paul H. O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary, and William H. Donaldson, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Laura Tyson, a chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Mr. Clinton, described the meeting as "lively and wide-ranging," with "some significant differences among Democrats," rather than a strictly partisan divide, regarding policies Mr. Obama should pursue. Ms. Tyson said the agenda included immediate concerns, including whether a second economic stimulus package was needed, as well as "long-term structural issues in the economy," like energy independence and health care.

Employment and related issues are an area where the differences between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama are especially sharp. Republicans argue that the government needs to avoid "getting in the way of job creation or growth," in Ms. Fiorina's words, while Mr. Obama has talked favorably about government-led initiatives, like rebuilding infrastructure and encouraging investment in alternative energy sources.

Both camps talk of policies to stimulate small businesses as the main engine of economic growth and job creation. But Martin Feldstein, a deficit hawk who was President Ronald Reagan's chief economic adviser and now advises Mr. McCain, said Monday that "Obama's plan will slow the economy, will depress the economy" because he wants to let the Bush administration's tax cuts expire. Those cuts have primarily benefited the wealthiest segment of the population.

In the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted July 7-14, more than half of the people surveyed cited an economic issue as the most important problem facing the country, compared with 7 percent before the 2006 midterm elections in which Democrats won control of Congress. The war in Iraq, which Mr. McCain has made the centerpiece of his campaign, was cited by just 13 percent of those polled as the issue of paramount concern to them.

In addition, 51 percent of those polled said Democrats were more likely than Republicans to ensure a strong economy. That suggests a strong liability for Mr. McCain, as only one in five voters approve of Mr. Bush's handling of the economy and 6 in 10 said they expected Mr. McCain to generally continue his predecessor's policies if elected.

Mr. McCain has compounded those problems with statements like, "the issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." But his surrogates argued Monday that he did have the economic knowledge to go with his experience in foreign policy and national security, and that Mr. Obama was deficient in all of those areas.

"From my perspective," Ms. Fiorina said, none of Mr. Obama's proposals "suggest to me an understanding of how the economy really works."

She added, "I think it is good that Barack Obama is consulting some experts today."

CHICAGO (AP) - After Hillary Rodham Clinton lost the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, one of her delegates wanted to send a message. So Mary Beth Pyle wore a Clinton T-shirt to a unity dinner meant to build support for Barack Obama.

Then she pulled it off to reveal an Obama T-shirt underneath - a symbol of her support for the party's new candidate for president.

"We were there to get over it. We had a sip of wine - goodbye, Hillary - and another sip - hello, Obama," said Pyle, chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Mesa County, Colo.

But many of Clinton's supporters aren't so willing to embrace Obama, at least not yet. Independents and moderate Republican women remain a question mark, too.

So Obama is working fiercely to win their votes.

He has put out a report explaining what his economic plans would mean for women, reinforcing the message with town hall meetings devoted to the subject. He talks frequently about being raised by a single mother, her economic struggles (including a period on food stamps) and her worries about health insurance as she was dying of cancer.

He's hired former Clinton aides, including Dana Singiser as a senior adviser on female voters. His Web site offers a prominent "welcome" to Clinton supporters and an extensive section for women. Aides are planning events nationwide on the 88th anniversary of the day American women won the right to vote.

"They are going to decide the next president," said Anita Dunn, a senior Obama aide. "We believe that he can make a very strong case to the women of this country that he's someone who gets what they go through."

On Monday, Michelle Obama spoke to hundreds of women at a Chicago luncheon and made a point of praising Clinton.

"My husband is a better candidate because of her. My daughters will think of themselves differently because of her," she said.

Michelle Obama also offered a long list of the campaign's efforts to reach women: 3,500 house parties, over 200,000 phone calls, 250,000 post cards to undecided women, nearly 300 groups on the campaign Web site, including "Obama's Mamas," a group of older supporters.

Women are a group that holds potential for Obama - especially suburban married women, who have been swing voters in recent election.

Men, by contrast, chose President Bush over Democrat John Kerry 55 percent to 44 percent in the last election. The GOP held an even greater advantage among white men, who favored Bush 62 percent to 37 percent, according to exit polling.

In recent polls, Obama has had a significant edge among women. A Quinnipiac University poll released July 15 found women supported Obama over Republican John McCain, 55 percent to 36 percent. Among men, McCain had 47 percent and Obama 44 percent.

However, Obama hasn't had an advantage among independent women voters, who gave him 45 percent to 42 percent for McCain, well within the margin of error.

Obama also has work to do with some Clinton supporters. A recent poll by The Associated Press and Yahoo News found that just 12 percent of former Clinton supporters say they are excited about Obama.

"I'm not saying these women are bitter ... but they don't understand how to take this devotion and energy and put it behind the candidate who took her away from them," said Susie Tompkins Buell, a prominent Clinton fundraiser with deep reservations about Obama.

She said Obama must demonstrate his respect for Clinton - by working harder to help retire her campaign debt, for instance - and prove that he understands the concerns of female voters.

Obama supporters argue their candidate is more in tune with women's views, pointing out that McCain opposes abortion rights, opposes making it easier for women to sue over unfair wages and doesn't want to require insurance companies to cover birth control. They argue that he would do little to help families pay for insurance and that his economic policies would amount to a continuation of the Bush administration.

McCain supporters counter that his policies would do more for women. They argue a McCain administration would mean families keep more of their money instead of paying it to the government in taxes, while McCain's health plans would minimize government bureaucracy by giving families tax credits to pay for insurance as they see fit.

McCain, an Arizona Republican senator, sees potential among women who are conservative Democrats and independents in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, states Clinton won by questioning whether Obama was prepared for the White House or whether he understands the economic problems of working-class families.

"There's an opportunity for our campaign to win over the undecided women's vote," McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker said in an e-mail.

Democratic superdelegate Ruth Rudy of Pennsylvania said that rural parts of her state, that face a struggling economy, should be fertile ground for a Democrat, but many people feel they don't know Obama well enough yet.

He has to prove he can protect America and be a good leader, she said.

"They have to have money to buy gas to get to their jobs. They have to have money to buy food for their children," said Rudy, a past president of the National Federation of Democratic Women.

Several women said Obama's views on abortion or domestic violence definitely matter, but women's support will hinge on a much longer list of topics.

Liz Shirey, director of the Ohio Democratic Women's Caucus, said, "You can't say 'women's issues' anymore, but 'issues important to women.'"

By Michael D. Shear and Shailagh Murray, The Washington Post, July 29, 2008

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama need running mates to help balance their strengths and weaknesses. McCain could use a younger running mate with conservative appeal. Obama could use someone with foreign policy experience who appeals to white swing voters in key states. Decisions are expected soon. Vegas oddsmakers have declared Romney and Clinton the favorites.

A new USA Today /Gallup national poll shows Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain 47%-44% among registered voters. However, when the sample is reduced to only those likely to vote, McCain jumps to a 49%-45% lead. The survey, taken July 25-28, "showed a surge since last month in likely Republican voters and suggested Obama's trip may have helped energize voters who favor McCain." The poll surveyed 900 registered voters and 791 likely voters.

Other Polls Show Obama Up The Gallup daily presidential tracking poll shows Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain 48%-40%, down from a 49%-40% lead yesterday. The survey polled 2,674 registered voters from July 25-27. The Rasmussen Report automated daily presidential tracking poll for July 28 shows that while Obama opened a wider lead over the weekend, it closed again in yesterday's survey of 3,000 registered voters. Obama now leads McCain 45%-42%, and 48%-45% if leaners are included. A Democracy Corps (D) poll of 1,004 likely voters taken July 21-24 shows Obama leading McCain 50%-45% in a two-way race or 49%-43% if Bob Barr (L) and Ralph Nader are included.

Trip Not A Plus For Obama? The Gallup poll, along with polls from battleground states and other national polls, are starting to generate commentary in the media on whether or not Obama's foreign swing in fact helped his campaign. Fox News' Special Report reported, "The political effect of Obama's tour of the Middle East and three European capitals...appears to be negligible. ... Late last month McCain trailed Obama among likely voters by six points." Fox News added "the Real Clear Politics average of all recent national polls shows a tight race with Obama leading McCain by just over three points about where he was before his overseas odyssey began." On MSNBC's Hardball, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell said the trip was "too much like a tour of a president, when he is -- he had to say, I'm not a president, I'm just a candidate, but that almost seemed a little bit disingenuous because he did seem like a touring head of state." On Fox News' Special Report roundtable, Fred Barnes said, "I think people are recognizing that he's just a regular old pol. He's a liberal one. He's an extremely well-spoken one. He carried off a great trip to Europe that was well staged and he didn't say anything foolish at all. But he spins and quibbles and makes up things and denies things and pretends like he says things that he didn't, and all this stuff that we have seen politicians do so many times."

U.S. News & World Report, July 29, 2008

Just in case you're keeping score, yet another Democratic politician has said he would decline to be the vice presidential running mate of Sen. Barack Obama.

This one was a surprise, too, because, to be honest, not one living soul on the planet had mentioned his name as a possible Democratic VP.

Bradley took care of that query with his usual long-winded eloquence.

"No," he said.

He joins a growing list of folks who've said modestly, no thank you, in advance of being asked. (Obama wouldn't want a pro showing him up with three-pointers anyway.)

The VP naysayers include Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton during the dogged primary season and chief executive of a crucial state on the electoral map; Virginia's pistol-packing Sen. Jim Webb, a former Reaganite who took himself out of the running before the gun sounded; and Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, who said the vice presidency is "a position I have no interest in."

Of course, saying "no" now protects anyone from being rejected later since they've already said "no," even though they might really mean "call me."

The No. 2 spot on a presidential ticket has been known to be a quickly-acquired interest once the No. 1 on the ticket pops the ...

... question. Witness Obama's cousin, Dick Cheney, who thought he was researching other VP candidates in 2000 when he was really auditioning for George W. Bush.

So, you'll notice, Reed, an ex-Army Ranger who accompanied Obama on the Middle East portion of his recent field trip, did leave himself some wiggle room.

And, frankly, during the dog days of summer when Americans are vacationing, eating hot dogs and donning sunscreen that instantly attracts flecks of grating sand, the vice presidential "mysteries" are about the only thing the politicians and media have going to maintain readers' interest.

Who will it be? Someone as exciting and memorable as Lloyd Bentsen? Or William Miller? Who?

The candidates know this, of course. So they string everyone along as long as possible. Despite the obligatory prodding, Obama was smilingly mum about his VP pick on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, except to say the usual yada-yada about the integrity and intelligence and candor that the running mate must have. As if any nominee would pick a political partner with only a few indictments.

And Obama repeated how the VP wouldn't be doing global funeral duty, even though the VP will be doing global funeral duty.

Think, say, Spiro Agnew.

Obama did say something about his VP short list, however. Answering one of Tom Brokaw's questions, the Illinois senator confirmed a recent L.A. Times article and Ticket item that quoted a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter whom Obama had called to schmooze a bit.

Obama reassured the woman, Jill Iscol, that Clinton was indeed on his short list, an unverifiable claim possibly designed to soothe recalcitrant supporters of the New York senator. Iscol also said Obama mentioned a "complication" involved in a Clinton pick, a complication everyone assumed is named Bill.

Obama did dodge the complication question Sunday, saying he would love to have the ex-president campaign for him this fall.

Wait a minute. Maybe that's a perfect mid-summer opening to start the rumor that when Obama says "Clinton would be on anyone's short-list of vice presidential picks," he doesn't mean Hillary.

He means Bill!

Oh, sure there might be some kind of minor historical crisis if Bill ever had to assume the top job again. But what a dynamo combo!

It'd give the Republicans fits again by having a Southerner on a Democratic ticket. Like Bill Clinton and Al Gore. And John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. And Jimmy Carter and what's-his-name who was always going to funerals around the globe.

And Bill Clinton is one of a shrinking number of Democrats who hasn't yet said "no." Spread the word. B&B in '08.

By Andrew Malcolm, Los Angeles Times, July 29, 2008

Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) presidential campaign, thinks that if Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) picks Clinton as his running mate it would trigger a "50-state sweep."

"How do you not ask Hillary Clinton?" McAuliffe asked Monday morning on MSNBC. "We would sweep all across the country.

McAuliffe said the Obama campaign has "an extensive travel schedule" planned with Clinton that will begin this week. The New York Democrat has not appeared on the campaign trail with Obama since their joint event in Unity, N.H.

Last week, McAuliffe seemed to throw his support behind Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D), telling a group that Kaine would be Obama's best choice. McAuliffe again brought up Kaine's name as a possible running mate, but made clear that Clinton is the obvious choice. "It's not even a close call," McAuliffe said.

McAuliffe added that Clinton will "probably" be speaking on the second night of the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

While McAuliffe was promoting Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) again insisted that she does not think an Obama-Clinton ticket is likely.

Hillary still made history. She did it on many levels and in many ways. She was the first woman to have a serious chance to win a major party's nomination. She redefined the role of first lady - both in and after the White House. She even redefined the first family - only in the case of "Clinton" is it unclear which spouse is intended. Yet with so many historical "firsts," the focus remains riveted on the single way she did not make it.

Even in not winning the Democratic Party's nomination she made history. Her failure to win the nomination ranks as one of the greatest upsets in presidential politics.

No non-incumbent frontrunner had ever run so far in front for so long. In fact, Hillary Clinton was a de facto incumbent. Since 1992 and her husband's first presidential campaign, she had held the spotlight. Her 18 years in it was far longer than most presidents' - with whom the public is generally saturated in eight years at most. Since leaving the White House, she had been her party's unofficial leader, easily eclipsing both Al Gore and John Kerry in star power. Not content to be just a former first lady, though this certainly would have sufficed to launch her run for president, she won and then grew into the role of senator.

When she did enter the race, she did so with an unmatched organization and establishment support. So superior seemed her effort that at times it appeared her rivals were merely filling out the field, though they were accomplished politicians. She defined the race to the point that it was as much about her as the incumbent President Bush. When early setbacks came, they only seemed to add drama to a foregone conclusion. Even when the end came, it was as much about her losing as it was about Sen. Barack Obama winning.

Some will engage in hindsight predictions that she alienated substantial numbers of voters or could not raise sufficient money. Certainly she had high unfavorable ratings in the general electorate, but these were primarily conservatives and independents, not Democratic primary voters. And money only became an issue in the wake of Mr. Obama's incredible fundraising, heading in to the primaries Hillary was hardly underfunded.

All this begs the question: Has anyone ever been more likely to win a race and failed to do so? No shortage exists of famous races with surprising outcomes. Bill Clinton in 1992, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon in 1968, John F. Kennedy in 1960, and even Warren Harding in 1920, all were winners that no one could have predicted. But this only makes them surprises, not upsets.

Even the most famous upset of modern American history, Harry Truman's 1948 presidential victory over Thomas Dewey, does not quite measure up. First, most of that "upset" was really unscientific polling's overestimation of Dewey's strength. Second, Dewey had lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 (albeit respectably) and did not secure his party's 1948 nomination until the third ballot. Finally, his play-it-safe approach, in which he reprised the role of hare to Truman's tortoise, amounted to him virtually eschewing campaigning for coronation. Truman overcame his own poor ratings and expectations, but he did not beat a surpassingly strong Dewey.

Each of these historic races has elements but not the crucial component of this year's Democratic primary outcome. Usually they were open fields that produced great races but not great upsets. The only true giants in these races - even if Dewey were considered one - did not run. Lyndon Johnson withdrew in 1968 and Teddy Roosevelt died in 1919 before he could run in 1920. In contrast, Hillary ran and ran and ran - all the way to the end. She finished stronger than she began - an element that further makes this race such an enigma - and she only seemed to run out of primaries, never will. Some pundits will seek to lay blame for her defeat at the feet of many - her husband, her advisers, her gender, her opponent - but none can blame it on her lack of determination or advantages that she brought into the race.

Political precedents do not really exist. Perhaps sports gives us the closest comparison and it too occurred this year. The New England Patriots were similarly positioned to make history. The first team to go a perfect 16-0 in the regular season, their Super Bowl victory was all but guaranteed. It was their presence and their loss that defined that game. History will forever see it as the game that the Patriots lost, more than the one the New York Giants won.

In both cases, there is an inherent feeling that if the primary season were held again or the Super Bowl played over, the outcomes would be different. But history only writes its story once. It does not do sequels or hypotheticals. In so doing, Hillary still made her mark on it, just not all, or how, she wanted to.

"He was someone I'd worked hard to get," said Bass, 19. "I couldn't let him go, not after seeing how far he'd come."

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.

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. Obama, who himself led a huge voter-registration drive in Chicago in 1992, has said he could compete in states such as Mississippi by increasing black turnout by 30 percent.

A Post analysis suggests it will take more than that to win across the South. If Obama matches Kerry's performance among white voters and increases Democrats' share of black voters to 95 percent, he will still need to increase black turnout in Georgia by 64 percent and in Mississippi by 51 percent to win. Virginia and North Carolina would be in closer reach, requiring increases of 30 and 36 percent, respectively.

The drive is unprecedented in scale and exemplifies Obama's call for government that works "from the bottom up." But as Bass's efforts in Georgia show, the undertaking is laden with challenges, raising questions about the kind of return the campaign will get on its big investment of manpower.

Black turnout overall does not lag behind the national average by much, and Obama's rise already inspired many blacks to get involved for the first time during the primaries.

That means that in seeking to further drive up black turnout, the campaign is in many places reaching out to a disconnected segment of the population that long ago gave up hope in politics.

Latasha Edwards, 20, a college student in lime flip-flops, flatly said that her vote would not make a difference. "There are a million other people on Earth," she said.

But Bass won her over by stressing an inequity in Macon that she said Obama will address: the gap in quality between public schools and the private schools where many white families send their children.

Several others averted Bass's gaze, gave her a cold stare when she approached or signaled with a curt "I can't vote" that they are felons, who under Georgia law are not allowed to cast ballots. Bass reminded them that they can register after they finish probation.

She asked Dontrell Rozier, 20, who signed up the week before, how his efforts to register his friends were going. Not well. "Most of my people believe their votes don't count," he said, citing the 2000 election recount in Florida.

Bass's last sign-up of the afternoon was Anthony Harris, 40, a beer deliveryman who said he has never voted because "I'm a religious type. My god can make a positive change for mankind, but I've never seen a politician make a positive change. There's still starvation; there's still war." It took five minutes before he relented.

In three hours, Bass collected 20 registrations -- a good haul. After a month, she and two other volunteers have collected more than 700.

In the area around Macon, an estimated 40,000 African Americans are eligible to vote but are not on the rolls, out of about 600,000 black people in the state who are eligible but unregistered. The campaign's goal is to sign up at least 4,000 in Macon.

With months to go before the Oct. 6 registration deadline, there was an increase of 367 black registered voters in Macon's congressional district in June, compared with 24 white voters. Statewide, the rate of registered African American voters is 28.1 percent, up from 27.2 percent in January.

Bass is aware of the hurdles ahead in turning the registrations into votes, though the campaign has signed up 300 Macon volunteers to assist with that. "It's a monumental challenge," she said. "You see how mentally shackled and jaded people are, because they've seen politicians let them down in the past."

But Rep. Jim Marshall, a conservative Democrat whose district includes Macon, appears less confident. He has declined to endorse Obama, and his chief of staff, John Kirincich, was skittish about discussing the benefits that the candidate's push to turn out more black voters would hold for Marshall, who barely won reelection in 2006 and faces another challenge.

Marshall "is not really interested in commenting on the presidential race. It's not his ballgame," Kirincich said. Pressed, he said: "We will accept more people voting for him from [wherever] they come."

Whatever the broader ramifications, they seem distant on the ground. In Columbus, 90 miles west of Macon, several volunteers were recently canvassing a housing project that looks across the Chattahoochee River at Alabama.

Nikasha Wells, 28, a Florida lawyer who took a leave to volunteer, was glad to meet Linda Cross, who was not only registered but also willing to make calls for Obama. Cross, 49, a Wal-Mart employee, said she always votes because of her family's ties to the civil rights movement -- marchers had camped on their land near Selma, Ala.

But next door, Renea Thomas, 27, a janitor and mother of four, was puzzled when Wells asked her to register to vote. "To who?" she said. She has never voted. "I just never thought about it," she said.

"Just tell me one thing Barack Obama has done that you admire," I asked a prominent Democrat. He paused and then said that he admired Obama's speech to the Democratic convention in 2004. I agreed. It was a hell of a speech, but it was just a speech.

On the other hand, I continued, I could cite four or five actions -- not speeches -- that John McCain has taken that elicit my admiration, even my awe. First, of course, is his decision as a Vietnam prisoner of war to refuse freedom out of concern that he would be exploited for propaganda purposes. To paraphrase what Kipling said about Gunga Din, John McCain is a better man than most.

But I would not stop there. I would include campaign finance reform, which infuriated so many in his own party; opposition to earmarks, which won him no friends; his politically imprudent opposition to the Medicare prescription drug bill (Medicare has about $35 trillion in unfunded obligations); and, last but not least, his very early call for additional troops in Iraq. His was a lonely position -- virtually suicidal for an all-but-certain presidential candidate and no help when his campaign nearly expired last summer. In all these cases, McCain stuck to his guns.

Obama argues that he himself stuck to the biggest gun of all: opposition to the war. He took that position when the war was enormously popular, the president who initiated it was even more popular and critics of both were slandered as unpatriotic. But at the time, Obama was a mere Illinois state senator, representing the (very) liberal Hyde Park area of Chicago. He either voiced his conscience or his district's leanings or (lucky fella) both. We will never know.

All politicians change their positions, sometimes even because they have changed their minds. McCain must have suffered excruciating whiplash from totally reversing himself on George Bush's tax cuts. He has denounced preachers he later embraced and then, to his chagrin, has had to denounce them all over again. This plasticity has a label: pandering. McCain knows how it's done.

But Obama has shown that in this area, youth is no handicap. He has been for and against gun control, against and for the recent domestic surveillance legislation and, in almost a single day, for a united Jerusalem under Israeli control and then, when apprised of U.S. policy and Palestinian chagrin, against it. He is an accomplished pol -- a statement of both admiration and a bit of regret.

Obama is often likened to John F. Kennedy. The comparison makes sense. He has the requisite physical qualities -- handsome, lean, etc. -- plus wit, intelligence, awesome speaking abilities and a literary bent. He also might be compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt for many of those same qualities. Both FDR and JFK were disparaged early on by their contemporaries for, I think, doing the difficult and making it look easy. Eleanor Roosevelt, playing off the title of Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, airily dismissed him as more profile than courage. Similarly, it was Walter Lippmann's enduring misfortune to size up FDR and belittle him: Roosevelt, he wrote, was "a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for office, would very much like to be president." Lippmann later recognized that he had underestimated Roosevelt.

My guess is that Obama will make a fool of anyone who issues such a judgment about him. Still, the record now, while tissue thin, is troubling. The next president will have to be something of a political Superman, a man of steel who can tell the American people that they will have to pay more for less -- higher taxes, lower benefits of all kinds -- and deal in an ugly way when nuclear weapons seize the imagination of madmen.

The question I posed to that prominent Democrat was just my way of thinking out loud. I know that Barack Obama is a near-perfect political package. I'm still not sure, though, what's in it.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean said the sum is unprecedented for a presidential campaign and represents a show of Democratic confidence that Latino voters could prove pivotal in states including New Mexico and Michigan.

Although Republican rival John McCain represents Arizona, a state with a strong Hispanic presence, Dean cited a poll last week by the Pew Hispanic Center showing Obama's approval rating with registered Latino voters at 66 percent nationwide, compared with 23 percent for McCain.

"We need to cement that," Dean said of the Pew lead. "There's enormous potential in the Latino population."

Targets will include Florida; Western states such as Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico; and Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, industrial battlegrounds with sizable Hispanic populations. The money will be spent on niche advertising and other outreach, along with mobilization efforts aimed at identifying, registering and turning out new Democratic voters.

Over the weekend, the campaign held a training session in Las Vegas to teach local organizers how to canvass Hispanic communities. A similar forum will be held soon in Florida, Dean said, and sessions in other states are in the planning stages.

The investment is intended to benefit other Democratic candidates as well, including high-profile House and Senate races in Colorado, New Mexico and Florida.

Last week's Pew poll suggested that Obama's support among Hispanics has climbed steadily since the primary season, when the increasingly influential voter group broke solidly for Hillary Clinton. But McCain also is competing aggressively for Hispanic support, and his campaign said a grass-roots effort is well underway.

"We've been doing all that," McCain spokeswoman Hessy Fernandez said of Obama's efforts.

The McCain campaign has zeroed in on a similar group of states, and the candidate will hit three of them this week: Nevada, Colorado and Florida. McCain is running Spanish-language radio, online and television ads and has hosted forums with Hispanic small-business owners, among other events.

Fernandez conceded that the Republican Party's poor standing with Hispanics, attributable partly to its stance on immigration, has harmed McCain. She said the challenge is to distinguish the candidate from the party, reminding voters that McCain's ties to the Hispanic community run deep. McCain has long advocated a middle ground on immigration, especially on the issue of illegal workers.

By Shailagh Murray, The Washington Post, July 29, 2008

WASHINGTON - Governor Timothy Kaine of Virginia has told close associates that he has had "very serious" conversations with Senator 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.

Senators Evan Bayh of Indiana and Joe Biden of Delaware 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 vice presidential picks.

Kaine and Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas are the only state leaders believed to be under serious consideration, according to sources close to Obama.

By Michael D. Shear and Shailagh Murray, The Washington Post, July 29, 2008

"I'm going to want somebody with integrity; I'm going to want someone with independence, who's willing to tell me where he thinks or she thinks I'm wrong; and, I'm going to want somebody who shares a vision of the country where we need to go, that we've got to fundamentally change not only our politics but how our politics works, how business is done in Washington."

-- Barack Obama on his vice presidential pick during an interview with "Meet the Press" host Tom Brokaw (emphasis added).

Barack Obama pledged several months ago that he would not speak publicly about his vice presidential pick again until he was ready to announce his (or her) identity. And, to the disappointment of political reporters everywhere, the Illinois senator has largely kept to that pledge -- keeping his deliberations about his second-in-command almost entirely private.

Given the paucity of information coming from either Obama or his campaign about the pick, statements like the Illinois senator made over the weekend during a taped appearance on "Meet the Press" are put under a microscope for signs of how he is thinking about the choice.

Ears perked up all over Washington when Obama offered Brokaw a laundry list of characteristics important to him in selecting a vice president -- particularly when Obama seemed to suggest that his veep pick would need to be a change agent ready to shake up Washington.

Conventional wisdom quickly formed: Obama was signaling his preference for an outside-the-Beltway pick (Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine or Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius) rather than a Capitol Hill type like Sens. Evan Bayh (Ind.), Joe Biden (Del.), Chris Dodd (Conn.) or even Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.).

Maybe -- but also maybe not.

Obama and his team have been extremely careful to let almost nothing slip when it comes to his opinions about what sort of politician would make the best vice president. It's hard to imagine then -- given that level of secrecy -- that Obama would let such a major piece of news about the traits he is looking for "slip" during a taped appearance on the most-watched Sunday talk show.

While there is little doubt that Kaine, and perhaps to a lesser extent, Sebelius are under VERY serious consideration as Obama's number two, it is equally true that Bayh, Biden and Dodd also remain contenders.

Our guess is that no matter who Obama picks -- whether it is a fresh face or someone who has spent considerable time on Capitol Hill -- he will cast that choice as a change agent.

If it's Kaine or Sebelius, the case is far easier made since neither has ever served in Washington. But, if it's Bayh or Biden or Dodd, Obama can pick and choose from their respective records in Congress (or, in Bayh's case, his eight years as governor) to highlight ways in which each man has been a change agent in his own way.

In other words, don't read too much into what Obama had to say over the weekend. Could it be a window into his thinking? Of course. But, it's equally plausible that Obama's definition of "change" is broad enough to include almost anyone he is seriously considering.

The Associated Press, July 28, 2008