The Note: Patriot Games

June 30, 2008 -- What -- 50 states aren't enough for these guys?

The latest odd turn in the race that's seen everything has Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain seeing places that presidential candidates just don't visit very often.

McCain is next up with a three-day trip to Colombia and Mexico that starts Tuesday, after two previous foreign trips this year brought him to Europe and the Middle East.

Obama is planning an extensive itinerary for next month: Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Jordan, England, France, and Germany -- just as foreign policy is set to resonate on the trail again, as Obama talks patriotism, and as Democrats seek to grab the national-security mantle from McCain (under the cover of downed fighter planes).

This latest Obama introduction starts at home, with a "major speech" on patriotism scheduled for Independence, Mo., Monday morning. (Fun game: Count the American flags -- including the pin on Obama's lapel -- at the event site.)

Independence Day means patriot's week for Obama: "The message will be that love of country is not defined only by such traditional measures as serving in the military or tracing one's ancestors to the Mayflower," John McCormick writes in the Chicago Tribune. "Patriotism, he and his supporters will say, can be reflected in living the national dream, which in Obama's case means rising as the Hawaiian-born son of a Kenyan father and Kansan mother to professional and political prominence."

"In the coming days, Obama is expected to visit some traditionally red states as he seeks to broaden the electoral battleground," McCormick writes. "Over the weekend, his campaign also announced a trip this summer to Europe and the Middle East, where Obama's popularity could be on display and his standing as a diplomatic figure boosted."

We've done the math for you: The candidates' foreign destinations award a grand total of zero electoral votes.

But the coming trips provide opportunities for both men in the tentative definitional dance of the early stage of the general election. And risks: Gaffes carry a multiplier of approximately three when committed abroad, and the visuals are not always under the control of a campaign operating in foreign territory.

For McCain, R-Ariz., foreign travel may make him look presidential -- but if this race turns on the economy, shouldn't it be the American economy he's focusing on?

"It is an effort to pad his foreign-policy credentials, appear statesmanlike and drive home a message about trade and international relations," Laura Meckler writes of McCain's travels in The Wall Street Journal. "It isn't clear how much the trip will benefit Sen. McCain's No. 1 mission: being elected president. . . . Highlighting trade at a time when many Americans are nervous about their jobs may not be a political winner back home."

It's the presidency via passport: "This week, when Barack Obama campaigns in Ohio and Colorado, John McCain will be visiting Colombia and Mexico. It's an unusual path for McCain to follow. But even more, it's a risky strategy for his presidential campaign," Mark Z. Barabak writes in the Los Angeles Times. "Not since Richard M. Nixon traveled to all 50 states in 1960, fulfilling a pledge he came to regret, has a presidential candidate followed an itinerary that appears so at odds with his political needs."

What else is he looking for? "I don't think John McCain gains anything from anymore foreign trips," Matthew Dowd told ABC's David Wright on "Good Morning America" Monday. "I think that he's got that credential. I think that what he has to do is demonstrate that he has a voice on the economy and healthcare."

With foreign travel and affairs as backdrop, a new line of attack from Democrats. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark questions McCain's military record: "He hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded -- that wasn't a wartime squadron," Clark said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president."

Said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers: "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to question John McCain's military service, that's their right. But let's please drop the pretense that Barack Obama stands for a new type of politics."

Politico's Ben Smith has intriguing details to take the storyline a bit further: "Farther to the left -- and among some of McCain's conservative enemies as well -- harsher attacks are circulating. Critics have accused McCain of war crimes for bombing targets in Hanoi in the 1960s. Sunday, a widely read liberal blog accused McCain of 'disloyalty' during his captivity in Vietnam for his coerced participation in propaganda films and interviews after he'd been tortured."

Obama gets his foreign turn next month: He "will travel to Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Jordan, the United Kingdom, France and Germany," ABC's Jake Tapper reports. "He will be visiting Iraq and Afghanistan this time along with a congressional delegation, and will follow those visits with a separate international sojourn to the other countries," Tapper writes.

But he's not doing it entirely on his own terms. "Why have foreign affairs become the central battleground in the presidential race?" ABC's John Hendren reports. "For McCain, the answer is simple: The candidate who's acknowledged that economics aren't his strong suit is a veteran, a prisoner of war and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who's been to Iraq eight times. For Obama, there was little choice. He's been hammered repeatedly by McCain."

GOP operatives have been mocking Obama for how long it's been since he last visited Iraq -- and how does he win by going? If he acknowledges security gains, how does he not acknowledge that his plans for troop withdrawal may need to be altered? And if he doesn't, how does he not sound like a partisan?

"With the general election four months away, Obama's rhetoric on the topic [of Iraq] now seems outdated and out of touch, and the nominee-apparent may have a political problem concerning the very issue that did so much to bring him this far," George Packer writes in The New Yorker. "He doubtless realizes that his original plan, if implemented now, could revive the badly wounded Al Qaeda in Iraq, reënergize the Sunni insurgency, embolden Moqtada al-Sadr to recoup his militia's recent losses to the Iraqi Army, and return the central government to a state of collapse."

One McCain adviser tells The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder: "He is in a bad place. Caught between his promise to his base and the reality on the ground. Immediate withdrawal isn't a good place to be."

A hint of how careful he'll have to be: "In Iraq, my goal is to talk to the Iraqi leadership about making political progress so that we can start phasing down our troops in Iraq and obviously I want to congratulate the troops for the extraordinary work they've done in reducing violence there," Obama tells Radio Iowa's O. Kay Henderson.

The Washington Times' Joseph Curl rounds up the foreign-policy gaffes that have sidetracked Obama early on. "Mr. Obama, on the plus side, is extremely popular in Europe, and an enthusiastic welcome will likely play endlessly on U.S. cable news programs. But a major misstep will open the door to fierce criticism."

The real world intrudes: The New York Times' Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde have the scoop on a delayed "secret plan to make it easer for the Pentagon's Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda."

"But more than six months later, the Special Operations forces are still waiting for the green light," they write. "The plan has been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was meant to eliminate. A senior Defense Department official said there was 'mounting frustration' in the Pentagon at the continued delay." And Seymour Hersh, with another one of those New Yorker bombshells: "Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership."