McCain to focus on domestic issues in swing state sweep

WASHINGTON -- As Barack Obama travels abroad, John McCain will visit battleground states.

The presumed Republican presidential nominee is lining up trips next week to Colorado, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania to emphasize jobs, energy and health care while Obama is in the Middle East and Europe.

McCain adviser Charles Black said McCain is prepared to critique Obama's trip, which the presumed Democratic nominee described as his chance to "assess the situation in countries … critical to American security."

"If they want us to respond to what he's doing over there, I'm sure we could make the time," Black said wryly, noting that ABC, CBS and NBC are sending their television anchors overseas to trail Obama. Black said the McCain campaign will ask for equal time if the networks run interviews with Obama.

Among McCain's scheduled events next week: a town-hall-style meeting in Rochester, N.H., and another in Ohio. McCain, a skin cancer survivor, will discuss research budgets and other policy aspects at the Ohio meeting, to be held Thursday at Ohio State University's James Cancer Hospital. Ohio was decisive in the 2004 election. New Hampshire is crucial because it is home to many independent voters.

McCain offered some "prebuttal" for Obama's trip, telling a Kansas City, Mo., audience on Thursday that his Democratic rival's plan to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq by the summer of 2010 threatens to reverse gains made in the war-torn country. The campaign also unveiled a video entitled: The Obama Iraq Documentary: Whatever the Politics Demand.

Jill Hazelbaker, communications director for McCain, challenged the motive of Obama's trip and derided it as more campaigning than fact-finding. "Let's drop the pretense and call it what it is: the first-ever campaign rally overseas," she said.

Obama's campaign responded that McCain had been urging Obama for months to go overseas, especially to Iraq and Afghanistan, to learn about U.S. national security problems at the ground level. "It's clear that the McCain campaign is getting nervous about being on the wrong side of the Iraq debate," said Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan.

The Democratic Party, meanwhile, is prepared to challenge McCain next week on economic issues, such as the Arizona senator's plan to balance the budget. "His math would blow a hole in our budget," Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera said.

Political analysts say there's only so much McCain can do to draw attention away from Obama next week and noted that it's still early in the general-election battle. "This too shall pass," said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of a non-partisan political report.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said McCain already knows what it's like to have the spotlight largely trained on Obama. "He doesn't get as much attention as Obama when they're both in the United States," he said.

The project surveys 48 news outlets daily, compiling the number of stories that focus on each candidate. Obama consistently gets more coverage: For the week of July 7-13, Obama was a "significant presence" in 77% of political stories, compared with 48% for McCain.

McCain probably will "have more success getting local media coverage than national media," Rosenstiel said. "That media is very important."