Obama Takes His Campaign Around the World

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign today released details of the candidate's upcoming trip to the Middle East and Europe, while dismissing criticism from the McCain camp that the trip is all show.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., embarks on a world tour, taking his campaign to Paris, Berlin and London, in addition to expected stops in the Middle East that include Israel and Iraq. He will also stop in Afghanistan.

(ABC News/AP/Getty)

"This is not a political trip," Obama's senior adviser Robert Gibbs said. "This is a trip of substance," ABC News' Jake Tapper reported.

The campaign confirmed some of the leaders Obama will meet, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown; he'll also stop in Germany to meet with German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, and will deliver a "substantive" speech on European-American relations, said Gibbs.

Read Tapper's latest blog on the Obama trip here

The campaign has still not publicly confirmed -- presumably for security reasons -- that Obama will go to Iraq and Afghanistan, although the candidate has mentioned in recent weeks his intention to go there for a fact-finding trip.

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The campaign confirmed that Obama would go to Jordan to meet King Abdullah, and to Israel to meet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian National Authority.

For Obama, the trip is a chance for him to be seen as a world leader, but with the klieg-light attention on him, any mistake could be crippling to his effort to be seen as a capable commander in chief.

"A gaffe could be a killer for Obama,"ABC News' George Stephanopoulos said today on "Good Morning America."

Susan Rice, a top foreign policy adviser to Obama, told reporters that the goal of the trip is "to deepen -- even further -- important relationships," and to "exchange views with leaders whose partnerships with the U.S. are critical."

The Middle East is a minefield that will challenge whoever is the nex president.

"He is facing a lot of tricky balancing acts as he goes to Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel," Stephanopoulos said. "How is he going to kind of change the perception out there because our latest poll shows that most Americans, even most Democrats, say that Sen. John McCain would be a good commander in chief. Fewer than half of those polled feel that way about Obama."