July 26, 2008 10:22

Obama Arrives Home

The charter landed about a half-hour ago in Chicago, to news that the McCain campaign has launched what Halperin is calling its "toughest attack ad yet." But there's a little problem with this line:

And now, he made time to go to the gym, but cancelled a visit with wounded troops.

Sure enough, the accompanying footage shows Obama playing basketball ... with the troops in Kuwait.

Separately, here's a link to a story I filed shortly before we took off from Heathrow.

July 26, 2008 10:49

Hmmm

I guess John McCain would rather lose a war than lose an election.

July 26, 2008 9:36

Obama and Cameron on Time Management

The latest pool report has this revealing little exchange between a possible future President and a possible future Prime Minister:

Obama told Cameron he plans to take a week off in August. The two men then began to chat about the need for time to recharge. Obama then shared some advice he said he was given: "Somebody who was in the White House said, should you be successful, the most important thing you need to do is have big chunks of time during the day when all you do is think," Obama said.

Cameron and he then began to talk about how easy it is for politicians to have their days eaten up by minutae. Without downtime "you start making mistakes or you lose the big picture," Obama said.

The conversation then turned to more personal matters. Obama asked about Cameron's wife and the Tory leader began to tell the senator about her business designing handbags. They were talking about Obama's children when your pool was escorted out.

July 26, 2008 8:53

MORE: Obama in London

My London-based TIME colleague Catherine Mayer e-mails this account of what it looked like from the other end of the press scrum:

The special relationship came pretty much unstuck today. You see, the British press and especially the still photographers felt that the US press corps was getting preferential treatment. You were allowed to stand in Downing Street and then to sit on the ground, and then the Prime Minister's press spokesman came over to ask if you were comfortable down there. Meanwhile the ladies and gents of the Brit press were crammed like sardines under the scaffolding that's shrouding the backside of the Foreign Office at the moment, and with me perched in their midst and hoping nobody would remember that I'm one of you.

Seriously, tempers did fray. There was pushing and shoving among the hacks
but most of the anger was directed against Obama's campaign team. "This is
my f***ing country," shouted one. Another started singing his own version of
Rule Britannia: "Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the scaffolding." There was
a black photographer who seemed to be with Team Obama and was taken into
Downing Street at one point. When he came out, the British snappers thought
it simply hilarious to shout "senator!" at him.

The funny thing is, none of this aggression will spill over into coverage of
the Obama visit to London. This may have been more muted than Berlin and
Paris, but Britain is starstruck by Obama too. And anyway, it's not Obama
but his Downing Street host that everyone is queuing up to kick, especially
after Labour lost a safe seat in a byelection two days ago. The question in
America is who will win in November. The question here is whether Gordon
Brown can make it to November. In any case, I'm expecting headlines here
about tomorrow's man visiting yesterday's man.

July 26, 2008 7:09

Obama in London

If there is a perfect metaphor for the way that Obama seems to giving Europe the vapors, it was the first question he got this morning from the famously ferocious British press corps: Do you believe there's a special relationship between the United States and Britain? He might as well have been asked, "Do you love us--really, really love us?"

I couldn't hear much of the traditional sidewalk news conference that Obama held as he emerged from a meeting at 10 Downing Street with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who no doubt wishes some of the Democratic nominee's popularity might rub off. (Today's lead story in The Times is headlined: SHAPE UP IN 2 MONTHS OR GO, MINISTERS TELL BROWN.) From where I was sitting on the pavement with the traveling press corps, most of what Obama said was being drowned out by a crowd that had gathered several hundred yards away, on the other side of a security gate. It was chanting "O-ba-MA!" (Earlier, it had been "Yes we can"--sounding slightly unfamiliar in a British accent.)

Another British reporter asked Obama what advice he might give Brown in this difficult time, and the candidate had this to say (thanks to Maria Gavrilovic of CBS for transcribing her audio):

"I don’t have advice for Prime Minister Brown, I will tell you that you’re always more popular before you’re actually in charge of things (laughter) and then, and once you’re responsible, then you’re gonna make some people unhappy, and that’s just the nature of politics and, these things go in cycles. Even during the course of this campaign, there have been months where I’m a genius and there are months when I am an idiot, at least if you read the newspapers. It seems like I’m pretty much the same guy throughout this process but, you know, my actions and the results are gonna be perceived differently at any given time."

July 25, 2008 7:51

Sarkozy (Hearts) Obama

Bruce Crumley writes about one of the most truly remarkable performances I have ever seen by a politician.

July 25, 2008 2:58

This is More Pathetic

On behalf of a plane-stuck Karen Tumulty

Network guy on plane (third hour on tarmac) has gone from playing Edith Piaf to Don't Worry Be Happy. Need way more wine. Which, by the way, isn't French.

July 25, 2008 2:11

This is Pathetic

On behalf of a plane-stuck Karen Tumulty

A few hours in Paris, all spent on tarmacs and filing rooms. We are now stuck in the plane and one of the network guys is trying to make us feel better by playing Edith Piaf on the loudspeaker of his iPod. I'm living the dream.

Meanwhile, Sarkozy all but endorsed Obama. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up the Democratic convention keynote speaker. Bruce Crumley will post a story shortly.

July 25, 2008 10:20

When Is A Surge Not a Surge

Following up on Joe's comments from the other day -- and on the hubbub McCain's comments have caused in the blogosphere -- allow me to present two widely divergent responses to the idea that the "so-called 'surge'" inculcated/encouraged/allowed the "Anbar Awakening." First, McCain says when he said "surge" he didn't mean "surge," he meant “a counter-insurgency strategy." And since Army Col. Sean MacFarland started carrying out elements of counterinsurgency strategy as early as December 2006 -- the pre-surge surge? -- then, voila! The surge spurred the Anbar Awakening! The problem with this argument is that "the surge" is not, as I'm sure McCain would agree, a technical term. (The McCain camp once howled at Obama referring to leaving a "strike force" in Iraq exactly for its lack of a specific military meaning.)

McCain himself has used "the surge" to describe a few different aspects of Iraq strategy, including -- as the feisty foreign policy wonks at Democracy Arsenal point out -- the period before the surge. They have fun subbing his current definition of "surge" into the last time he got in trouble for talking about when it began. Two months ago, McCain told audiences, "I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels."

Of course, U.S. forces hadn't drawn down to "pre surge" levels. They are only now just getting back to 140,000, which is still above pre-surge levels. But that's beside the point. What was McCain referring in that moment? Was he saying "We are drawing back down to where we were before Colonel McFarland started using counterinsurgency tactics in Anbar as part of the Anbar Awakening." No, that is completely and patently absurd. He meant that we are coming back down to pre-January 2007 numbers when the "surge" actually began.

In fact, he added later:

"The surge, we have drawn down from the surge and we will complete that drawdown to the end -- at the end of July. That’s just a factual statement."

According to this statement John McCain is basically asserting that the surge is over. But based on his own definition today the "surge" actually equals the counterinsurgency strategy. So, is the counterinsurgency strategy over? I think that might be news to General Petraeus.

Now, semantics is not policy, and I imagine the important thing here is not what we call the change in strategy in Iraq, but what it accomplished. But McCain -- famously, perhaps foolishly, certainly stubbornly -- bet his entire campaign on that change in strategy, and on his assertion of a more sophisticated understanding of the situation in Iraq, and that is the standard that critics are holding him to. As for voters, well, maybe if someone writes a country song explaining the whole thing...

Actually, that would be helpful for me as well.

July 25, 2008 9:51

Friday Funnies

1. Jay Leno does the Veep thing: "“Well, it was leaked … John McCain could be leaning towards [Minnesota governor] Tim Pawlenty. I know what you're thinking – THE Tim Pawlenty? [Laughter] Apparently, McCain wants to lower his profile even more. [Laughter] I'm not even sure who Pawlenty was. And so I Googled him and it said, ‘Who?’ [Laughter, rim shot] … Pawlenty, doesn't it sound like a dish at the Olive Garden?” From Mike Allen's Playbook, which is required morning BlackBerry reading. (If only the oppo shops were so succinct.)

2. "And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness. . .And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light." From the Times (of London). Read the rest here.

3.

The spilled stuff is applesauce, and I think it has legs. (The tech doing the mic check before McCain's presser in Columbus last night spelled it out. "A-P-P-L-E-S-A-U-C-E." There was laughter in the pool.)

4. Also watch this, even though I can't figure out a decent excuse to post it in Swampland.