The Note: You're My Home

July 28, 2008 -- We're 100 days out now -- yes, that's it -- and at least the next seven of those will depend on which of these seven storylines matters most:

Will it be . . .

1. Sen. Barack Obama's move toward Sen. John McCain's Iraq position?

2. McCain's move toward Obama's Iraq position?

3. McCain's leftward mobility?

4. McCain's rightward mobility?

5. Obama's messaging flexibility?

6. Obama's messaging on inflexibility (a sore hip -- enough to keep him off the court for a stretch)?

7. Vice-presidential advisability? (Good chance of one pick this week -- but whose might it be?)

Or is it just the inevitable comedown that bears watching? "We had a good week," Obama tells Maureen Dowd. "That always inspires the press to knock me down a peg."

"I wouldn't even be surprised if that in some polls that you saw a little bit of a dip as a consequence we have been out of the country for a week," Obama told reporters on the last leg of his foreign trip, per ABC's Jake Tapper. (Seriously -- after THAT week?)

It's with just a little bit of Obama baggage -- and, spin aside, a little bit of extra Obama confidence (Gallup's daily tracking has his lead at nine points) -- that the campaign returns stateside this week.

If everyone knows this race is going to come down to the economy -- where's it been for us lately?

This is one of those rare openings for either candidate to shape the race: The No. 1 issue has been sorely neglected (no, McCain's adventures with processed cheese don't count), so there's a potential payoff for the first candidate to approach the economy in a way that gets traction.

Who wants it? Obama, D-Ill., spends Monday with economic advisers, to roll out some new steps to address the housing crisis and spiraling gas prices.

And after the week McCain stayed in the heartland to keep the focus on the economy while Obama was abroad, with both candidates now back home, McCain, R-Ariz., is turning up the heat on Obama on . . . foreign policy.

(Need another sign that the campaign is more than slightly more about one candidate than it is the other?)

McCain "suggested yesterday that Sen. Barack Obama had crafted a war strategy designed to further his own political advancement," Juliet Eilperin reports in The Washington Post. "The moves puzzled some GOP strategists, who said McCain would be better off touting a more positive message."

Said one strategist "with close ties" to the campaign: "They're doing it because the candidate, and the campaign, is not happy with where they are and they're lashing out."

"Senator Barack Obama signaled on Sunday that he would return his focus to the economy after a whirlwind foreign tour, but Senator John McCain's eyes remained very much fixed on national security, as he repeatedly attacked his rival," Michael Powell and Susan Saulney write in The New York Times.

Among the attacks . . . this one's the subject of his TV ad: "If I had been told by the Pentagon that I couldn't visit those troops, and I was there and wanted to be there, I guarantee you, there would have been a seismic event," McCain told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week."

"I'm not prepared to see the sacrifice of so many brave young Americans lost because Senator Obama just views this war as another political issue with which he can change positions," McCain said on CNN.

The backlash for the attacks: "I do not think it was appropriate," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. "I think John is treading on some very thin ground here when he impugns motives and when we start to get into, 'You're less patriotic than me. I'm more patriotic.' "

The new McCain ad tries to force Obama to keep his one small piece of baggage from this trip -- his canceled visit with troops in Germany.

But if you're going to attack Obama for not visiting troops, it helps to avoid footage of Obama visiting troops.

McCain aides will take any opening they can, per ABC's Ron Claiborne: "Even as they seethed [last week], they were watching Obama's every move carefully, looking for a slip of the tongue, for some error by Obama that would provide them an opening to attack the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee."

This brings the fight to a new level: "McCain has until now been loathe to employ the tack many strategists see as essential and which anonymous e-mailers and commenters with no apparent links to his campaign have been practicing since last summer: hitting Obama not on his record or his platform, but on his values and person," Politico's Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin report. "The tone is reminiscent of Hillary Clinton's disdainful mocking of Obama in the primary."

On Monday, Obama refocuses his message on the economy by holding a meeting in Washington with Warren Buffett, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, and some big names from labor: AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger.

"Participants in today's meeting will discuss how to restore balance to the economy so that entrepeurship is encouraged and hard work is rewarded," per the Obama campaign. "This was [?] more than just a discussion on how to meet the current challenge, but also how to build an economy for the 21st century in which the broadest number of Americans can share in our prosperity."

"I expect some further fine-tuning of short-term policies based on what's happened over the last several months," Obama tells Bloomberg News' Julianna Goldman (this is not -- repeat, not -- refining.)

"Obama said in his meeting with advisers he expects to 'get their read on where the economy is going,' and fashion some 'additional steps' to address the short-term economic and financial and housing issues," Goldman writes.

(What R's want you to remember about Robert Rubin.)

As for the confidence: "Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama says he has succeeded in expanding the electoral map in his race against John McCain, principally in southern and southwestern states but also in Montana and North Dakota," the AP's David Espo reports.

"It doesn't mean we're going to win all those states but at least we're making it a contest and giving voters something to choose from," Obama tells Espo. "Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia are all states where we are competitive," he said, adding he is going "toe to toe" with his rival in New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada.

One way it could happen: "At the heart of the Obama campaign's strategy is a national effort to increase registration and turnout among the millions of Democratic-inclined Americans who have not been voting, particularly younger people and African Americans," Alec MacGillis and Jennifer Agiesta write in The Washington Post. "Gaining greater African American support could well put Obama over the top in states where Democrats have come close in the past two elections, and could also help him retain the big swing states of Pennsylvania and Michigan."

Can McCain break his streak of bad luck? "The campaign's big photo op of the week turned out to be a visit to a supermarket in Bethlehem, Pa. -- where McCain was photographed in front of a display of processed cheese," Newsweek's Holly Bailey and Suzanne Smalley write. "As the candidate roamed through the store, his campaign's lanky cameraman knocked over a shelf of Mott's applesauce. The jars skittered across the floor past the senator's feet. When he paused to take questions from reporters, he was briefly drowned out by an announcement on the store's PA system."

(Talk about struggling to be heard . . .)

McCain named the bad guys on the economy, in his interview on "This Week": "I think that Wall Street is the villain in the things that happened in the subprime lending crisis and other areas where investigations and possible prosecution is going on," McCain said.

Here comes some help on one of the few economic issues that has GOPers confident: "Republicans are upping the ante on their bet that energy issues -- especially increased domestic oil production -- will be key to closing Democrats' imposing advantage with voters on the economy," John D. McKinnon, Elizabeth Holmes, and Stephen Power write in The Wall Street Journal.