US:The consensus among US strategists was that Obama's overseas tour had been a near-rout, writes Dan Balzin London
BY ALMOST EVERY measure, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's overseas tour that concluded on Saturday was a clear success, with meticulously planned and deftly executed events designed to beam back images to the United States of a politician comfortable on the world stage.
What isn't measurable is whether it worked. Will a week of one-on-one meetings with foreign officials, cheering crowds, favourable and voluminous press coverage and plain good fortune on the debate over getting out of Iraq overcome the doubts he faces at home about his readiness to be president? And if it doesn't, what will? As Obama moved from Iraq and Afghanistan to Jordan and Israel and then to three European capitals before flying back to Chicago on Saturday night, strategists back home measured the political fallout for the senator from Illinois and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain on an almost hourly basis. Their consensus was that the week turned into a near-rout for Obama.
John Weaver, who once was McCain's top political strategist, said his old boss made a big mistake by virtually daring Obama to go to Iraq and Afghanistan, only to see the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, generally embrace the Democrat's plan for withdrawing combat forces when he went there.
"McCain lost the week badly, let's be honest," Weaver said on Friday. "John is still in striking distance, thanks to his own character, biography and memories of the McCain of previous election cycles. But he cannot afford another week like this one."
Obama foresees no quick payoff from his foreign trip. Aboard his campaign charter, as he prepared to leave Paris for London on Friday, he talked at some length about what he had seen and how he thought it might play at home.
"I'm not sure there's any short-term , and I know that seems strange since obviously we put a lot of work into it," he said. "I don't think that we'll see a bump in the polls. I think we might even lose some points. People back home are worried about gas prices, they're worried about jobs." Obama's assessment is that the payoff from one of the most ambitious foreign trips ever undertaken by a presumptive nominee could come much later. "The value to me of this trip is hopefully it gives voters a sense that I can in fact - and do - operate effectively on the international stage," he said. "That may not be decisive for the average voter right now, given our economic troubles, but it's knowledge they can store in the back of their minds for when they go into the polling place later."
Given the mismatch between the Obama and McCain campaigns over the past week, the other question for Obama is why the race for president remains as relatively close as it does. Obama said he believes that is because voters still have enough questions to keep them from committing.
He was familiar with the results of a new NBC News- Wall Street Journalpoll, which showed him leading McCain 47 per cent to 41 per cent. "The point is, with change comes some risk, and I combine two things." One is a shift in policies, the other a biography he said will take people time to process. "They're going to keep their powder dry and get as much information as they can the next three months," he added.
McCain advisers complained all week about what they labelled "a premature victory lap", and McCain made a joke of it. "With all the breathless coverage from abroad, and with Senator Obama now addressing his speeches to 'the people of the world', I'm starting to feel a little left out," he said in a radio address on Saturday. "Maybe you are, too."
From a sheer logistical challenge, what Obama attempted was unprecedented, a presidential-style trip without the resources and clout of the White House. But the result was a series of meetings with foreign leaders who seemed to go out of their way to court their guest as well a stunning visual images, from a press conference on a hillside in Jordan, with the ruins of the Temple of Hercules in one direction and the city of Amman as a backdrop, to the sea of humanity - estimated at 200,000 - that turned out in Berlin on Thursday night for Obama's only major public event of the trip.
Substantively the trip left questions for Obama. He struggled to square his opposition to the troop buildup in Iraq with the successes he witnessed and talked about. He initially said the buildup might even increase violence. Now that it has helped produce the opposite, McCain rather than Obama can claim he had superior judgment.-(LA Times-Washington Post)