The Note: Road Warrior

July 17, 2008 -- You know it's summer when . . .

The most interesting thing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has done lately is get a haircut (yes, we know, she's moving from left to right) . . .

While the most interesting part of an Obama event is that he shared it with two people on the long short list.

Team McCain casts Sen. Barack Obama as President Bush on foreign policy (no, really) . . .

While Sen. John McCain himself praises Obama (seriously).

McCain aides are tussling with reporters over camera shots . . .

But somehow not acting to can another rogue surrogate (when will Team McCain learn the technological wonder that is Google?).

And the Rev. Jesse Jackson's mouth. . .

Is causing as much trouble as Sen. Elizabeth Dole's brain.

A great day, all in all, to put out some pretty good fundraising news: Obama raised $52 million in June, his campaign announced Thursday morning -- a number that should quiet questions about whether rejecting public financing was a good idea, at least for the time being. (It was announced, naturally, as part of a fundraising appeal.)

For the scorekeepers among us -- per ABC's Jake Tapper, this far exceeds Obama's $22 million May -- as well as McCain's personal record of $22 million in June, not to mention previous reporting that put Obama's June in the $30 million range.

It also approaches the $55 million Obama raised in February -- but doesn't come close to the $100 million at least one Obama fundraiser was predicting. Given that this was the first (almost) full month that he had the nomination, was a record month impossible?

(And we'll need the actual report to see the burn rate, and to count the big Clinton names. .)

Money aside, what's happening in this slow summer stretch really does matter in a big way. By controlling the direction of the race's discussion, every day that goes by allows Obama, D-Ill., to answer some of the questions that surround his candidacy for himself.

In a race that's approximately five times more about Obama than it is about McCain, that may be all he needs to do.

Team McCain tries to answer some questions for Obama on Thursday, with high-profile surrogates holding a 3:30 pm ET press conference in Washington to unveil a new video: "The Obama Iraq Documentary: Whatever the Politics Demand."

Says a McCain aide: "The video doesn't lie, and taken together, it presents a candidate willing to let his political ambition dictate his position on what is obviously the most critical national security issue we face."

And the reception that awaits Obama in Iraq may be mixed: Abroad, at least, the details matter.

"There was, as Mr. Obama prepared to visit here, excitement over a man who is the anti-Bush in almost every way: a Democrat who opposed a war that many Iraqis feel devastated their nation. And many in the political elite recognize that Mr. Obama shares their hope for a more rapid withdrawal of American forces from Iraq," Sabrina Tavernise and Richard A. Oppel Jr. write in The New York Times. "But his support for troop withdrawal cuts both ways, reflecting a deep internal quandary in Iraq: for many middle-class Iraqis, affection for Mr. Obama is tempered by worry that his proposal could lead to chaos in a nation already devastated by war."

Throngs will greet him in Europe, but that's only a start. "Regaining some of that international respect (and admiration) is one thing," Time's Karen Tumulty writes. "But just as crucial for Obama is whether all the diplomatic theater can persuade American voters that he is capable of taking the helm of a superpower. That depends, to some degree, on how comfortable Obama seems standing shoulder to shoulder among those he would be dealing with as this country's President."

"Obama is discovering that travel abroad can be both a broadening experience and potentially hazardous," Kathy Kiely writes for USA Today. "He has ruffled feathers in Jerusalem by telling U.S. Jewish leaders last month that he regards the ancient city as Israel's undivided capital -- and then amending his statement after Palestinian protests."

Cue some controversy: "Even as Sen. Barack Obama prepared for an overseas trip by convening a foreign-policy roundtable Wednesday, he already was making waves overseas," Amy Chozick and Marcus Walker write in The Wall Street Journal. "In Germany, politicians disagreed on where the Democratic presidential contender should speak during a stop there, while officials from Ireland and Lebanon complained they had been left off the itinerary."

Yet while his messaging in Iraq and the Middle East may wind up muddled, his foreign trip is building up to be huge: He'll be joined by all three network news anchors at stops along the way. (Does anyone think McCain could draw anywhere near that level of attention?)

"Barack Obama's upcoming swing through Europe and the Middle East is now guaranteed to be a major media event, certified by the presence of the three network anchors," Howard Kurtz reports in The Washington Post. "That means the Obama camp will have drawn the anchors halfway around the world by offering access."

"The extraordinary coverage planned for Mr. Obama's trip, though in part solicited by aides, reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first black presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage," Jim Rutenberg writes in The New York Times. "But the coverage also feeds into concerns in Mr. McCain's campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the news media are imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season."

And Wednesday brought another clear shot at defining himself: "Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday criticized the Bush administration for failing to protect the American people from weapons of mass destruction and said he would take aggressive measures as president to lessen the threat from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and from cyber-terrorism," Josh Meyer and Peter Nicholas write in the Los Angeles Times.

"It sounds good on paper, but I get the sense that this is being put out to shore up his national security credentials," said Arthur Keller, until 2006 a CIA expert on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. (Um -- ya think?)

But such is the veepstakes season that the event was most interesting in the sense that Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and former senator Sam Nunn, D-Ga., joined Obama on stage in Indiana.

"It was a cross between 'The Dating Game' and '24' as Sen. Barack Obama was flanked by two potential running mates Wednesday while criticizing President George W. Bush's efforts to confront emerging forms of potential terrorism," John McCormick writes in the Chicago Tribune.

And they didn't say they didn't want the job . . .

Said Nunn: "Certainly I would talk to Senator Obama if he wanted to talk about it but I think the chances of an offer are pretty slim."