The Note: Obama Land(s)

July 16, 2008 -- So Barack Obama's on his pink-tailed unicorn, and John McCain has ripped out his IV and is on board his tank (thank you, JibJabbers, for another memorable entry).

But remind us again -- how is this still a race?

How, that is -- given the national dynamics, McCain's flaws and flubs, and Obama's continued domination of the campaign discussion -- is this not a snoozer?

Two new polls suggest two different answers, but come up with similar spreads in a race that looks mired in the mid-to-high single digits. (Hint: Both answers have to do with Obama, and one he wears on his skin, the other on his sleeve -- at least when he's not on board that unicorn. And if you think a narrow lead is a comfortable lead, ask the National League all-stars.)

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll has Obama up eight among registered voters -- but only three among likely voters.

With Bush setting a new record-low -- a 28 percent approval rating -- why is the race to succeed him even close? "Holes in Barack Obama's foreign affairs resume are spurring doubt about his readiness for a crisis -- raising the stakes on his upcoming trip overseas and posing potential opportunity for his otherwise weaker Republican opponent," ABC polling director Gary Langer writes.

"Americans by a wide margin, 63-26 percent, pick McCain as more knowledgeable on world affairs, rate him much more highly in terms of readiness for the world stage and military leadership alike, and put him ahead of Obama by 50-41 percent in trust to handle 'an unexpected major crisis.' "

Obama has a 19-point edge on the No. 1 issue -- the economy -- and yet: "Sen. Barack Obama holds his biggest advantage of the presidential campaign as the candidate best prepared to fix the nation's ailing economy, but lingering concerns about his readiness to handle international crises are keeping the race competitive," Dan Balz and Jonathan Cohen write in The Washington Post.

"Questions about Obama's experience remain, particularly his ability to deal with national security and international issues," they write. "Forty-nine percent of those surveyed said that his level of experience would hamper his ability to serve effectively as president, while 40 percent said it would help. And asked whether he would make a good commander in chief, 48 percent said yes."

"This [foreign] trip is a big deal for Barack Obama, because there are some questions among voters about his ability to handle foreign affairs, especially when he stacks up against John McCain," ABC's George Stephanopoulos reported Wednesday on "Good Morning America." "He's going to have to show himself -- get people comfortable with the idea of him as commander-in-chief, handling the job of president."

One possible reason that it's so close among likely voters: A big drop in voting commitments among younger voters. "I think the long fight with Hillary Clinton, No. 1," Stephanopoulos said Tuesday on "World News with Charles Gibson." "And No. 2, all of the questions in recent weeks over whether or not Barack Obama is shifting positions, becoming quote-unquote 'a typical politician' -- that's turning some of them off."

Obama's response: The other guy flip-flops more (?). "If you compare sort of my shift in emphasis on issues that I've been proposing for years," Obama told PBS' Gwen Ifill, "if you compare that to John McCain's complete reversal on oil drilling, complete reversal on George Bush's tax cuts, complete reversal on immigration where he said he wouldn't even vote for his own bill, that I think is a pretty hard case to make that somehow I've been shifting substantially relative to John McCain."

(He cops to a "shift in emphasis"? Is that a flip-flop we're calling a "beach sandal" so it sounds refined?)

The New York Times/CBS News poll has it Obama 45, McCain 39. The angle: "The survey suggests that even as the nation crosses a racial threshold when it comes to politics -- Mr. Obama, a Democrat, is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas -- many of the racial patterns in society remain unchanged in recent years," Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee write in The New York Times.

"Among black voters, who are overwhelmingly Democrats, Mr. Obama draws support from 89 percent, compared with 2 percent for Mr. McCain. Among whites, Mr. Obama has 37 percent of the vote, compared with 46 percent for Mr. McCain."

The race belongs to Obama -- for better and worse. "The return of Iraq and Afghanistan to the forefront of the presidential campaign illustrates how both sides increasingly seem to view the race as largely a referendum on Obama, a first-term Illinois senator trying to become the first black president," the AP's Liz Sidoti writes in a paradigm-shifter. "Clearly, the race is on to define the still relatively unknown Obama, and whichever candidate does a better job making his case could well win the White House."

Obama gets an outside boost Wednesday: MoveOn.org is launching a $100,000 national cable buy to blast McCain over the Iraq war, officials tell The Note.

From the script: "In Chicago, in Saint Louis, and Seattle -- the American people are demanding a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. In Baghdad and Basra and Tikrit, the Iraqi people . . . and now the Iraqi Prime minister are also demanding a timetable. But John McCain doesn't want a timetable. He'll spend hundreds of billions of dollars more to keep our keep our troops in Iraq for years and years."

Vets for Freedom pushes back with the second ad in a "multi-million dollar ad buy," to run in Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico. "The surge works," veterans say in the ad, while quotes from Obama and other war critics float by.

McCain, R-Ariz., loves the turn to foreign affairs -- right? Well -- maybe he would have been better off spending the day in Czechoslovakia.

It was Obama who was forced to turn his attention to Iraq sooner than he wanted on Tuesday, but it was McCain on the defensive -- naming phantom countries, waffling on Afghanistan, even equivocating on gay adoption before the day was through.

(And he's not the one with the foreign policy problem?)

There's now a hint of agreement between the candidates over the need for more troops in Afghanistan -- yet maybe just a small disagreement in McCain's own head over where they should come from. "Just last week, McCain was calling for the U.S.'s NATO allies to increase their troop presence in Afghanistan and was resisting calls for more U.S. troops there," ABC's Jake Tapper reports.

"Yesterday was the first time McCain suggested moving troops from Iraq to what has been called the forgotten war, and his shift brought him in line with the direction long advocated by Obama, who has called for paying more military and diplomatic attention to Afghanistan for years," Jonathan Weisman and Juliet Eilperin write in The Washington Post.

(The shift on Afghanistan is the focus of the first Obama conference call of the day -- a 9:30 am ET number, featuring Susan Rice and Robert Gibbs.)

And could a Bush administration shift provide an Obama opening? "William Burns, America's third highest-ranking diplomat, will attend talks with the Iranian envoy, Saeed Jalili, in Switzerland on Saturday," the AP's Matthew Lee reports. "The talks are aimed at persuading Iran to halt activities that could lead to the development of atomic weapons, a senior U.S. official told the Associated Press on Tuesday. It will be the first time such a high-ranking U.S. official has attended such talks."

Watch the terrain move: "While Obama and McCain staked out their positions on Iraq months ago, the back-to-back speeches yesterday provided the clearest signal yet that Afghanistan -- where the military situation is worsening and where US and NATO deaths exceeded those in Iraq in both May and June -- has also become a key battleground in the 2008 campaign," Michael Kranish writes in The Boston Globe.