IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.

He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.

The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”

Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq’s $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That’s the high-rolling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The “change” that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality — sometimes through Mr. Obama’s instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it’s change you happen to believe in or not.

Looking back now, we can see that the fortnight preceding the candidate’s flight to Kuwait was like a sequence in an old movie where wind blows away calendar pages to announce an epochal plot turn. First, on July 7, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, dissed Bush dogma by raising the prospect of a withdrawal timetable for our troops. Then, on July 15, Mr. McCain suddenly noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan than Iraq and called for more American forces to be sent there. It was a long-overdue recognition of the obvious that he could no longer avoid: both Robert Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already called for more American troops to battle the resurgent Taliban, echoing the policy proposed by Mr. Obama a year ago.

On July 17 we learned that President Bush, who had labeled direct talks with Iran “appeasement,” would send the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama’s, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page: “Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.”

Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled a “general time horizon.” In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar of his own that, like Mr. Obama’s, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation’s troops by early 2009.

But it’s not merely the foreign policy consensus that is shifting Obama-ward. The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has now joined another high-profile McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in knocking the McCain nostrum that America can drill its way out of its energy crisis. Mr. Pickens, who financed the Swift-boat campaign smearing John Kerry in 2004, was thought to be a sugar daddy for similar assaults against the Democrats this year. Instead, he is underwriting nonpartisan ads promoting wind power and speaks of how he would welcome Al Gore as energy czar if there’s an Obama administration.

The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts. After the Democrat ran ads in 14 states berating chief executives who are “making more in 10 minutes” than many workers do in a year, a newly populist Mr. McCain began railing against “corporate greed” — much as he also followed Mr. Obama’s example and belatedly endorsed a homeowners’ bailout he had at first opposed. Given that Mr. McCain has already used a refitted, hand-me-down Obama campaign slogan (“A Leader You Can Believe In”), it can’t be long before he takes up fist bumps. They’ve become the rage among young (nonterrorist) American businessmen, according to USA Today.

“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.

Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.

The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.

When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.

Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.

During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.

The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.

ATLANTA — Warren Ballentine, one of black talk radio’s new stars, was on a tear against Senator John McCain as he broadcast from the Greenbriar Mall here last week, blithely dismissing Mr. McCain’s kind words about Senator Barack Obama at the recent N.A.A.C.P. national convention.

“He came out talking about how good of a race Barack Obama was running, and how proud he was of Barack,” Mr. Ballentine said. “You know he went back home and said, ‘I can’t believe I spoke in front of all those Negroes today!’ ”

“He was pandering to the crowd, talking about how he felt when Martin Luther King Jr. died,” Mr. Ballentine went on. “However, he didn’t vote for the holiday of Martin Luther King Jr.”

Rush Limbaugh, meet your black liberal counterprogramming. Mr. Ballentine is one of the many African-American radio hosts and commentators who are aggressively advocating for Mr. Obama’s election on black-oriented radio stations daily.

Since Mr. Limbaugh first flexed his tonsils two decades ago, Democrats have publicly worried about their lack of an answer to him and his imitators, who have proven so adept at motivating conservative Republicans to go to the polls, especially for President Bush.

Now it is Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who has a harmonious chorus of broadcast supporters addressing a vital part of his coalition, feeding and reflecting the excitement blacks have for his candidacy in general. Mr. Obama is getting support from white liberal talk radio hosts as well, but the backing he is getting from black radio hosts could be especially helpful to his campaign’s efforts to increase black turnout and raise historically low voter registration enough to change the math of presidential elections in battlegrounds and traditionally Republican states like this one.

“Urban stations can be in ’08 what Rush Limbaugh delivered for conservatives a generation ago,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has a two-year-old radio program that is now syndicated on stations throughout the country, including in states like Georgia, Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina. “If you look at the political map of where our shows are, it matches the gap of unregistered voters.”

Mr. Limbaugh and other conservative hosts generally support Mr. McCain, though perhaps with less enthusiasm than they displayed for the man he hopes to replace.

When it comes to criticism from black radio hosts like Mr. Ballentine, Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said, “John McCain believes every person is entitled to their opinion, no matter how outrageous.”

“But John McCain is an inclusive candidate,” Mr. Bounds added, “and he will be the president of all Americans.” (Mr. Ballentine was correct that Mr. McCain voted against the Martin Luther King holiday, in 1983 — but Mr. McCain later expressed regret and supported the holiday in his home state.)

While debate may continue over whether Mr. Obama is drawing an inordinate share of attention from mainstream news and entertainment outlets, there is generally little pretense of balance in major African-American media outlets. More often than not, the Obama campaign is discussed as the home team.

Mr. Obama conducted frequent interviews with black radio personalities during the primary season, appearing on programs like “The Tom Joyner Morning Show,” where his swing through the Middle East was referred to as a “pre-victory tour” on Friday; the “Michael Baisden Show,” where the host has joked that the savings from the gasoline tax suspension Mr. McCain supports would help him buy a pack of “Now & Laters” candy, and “The Steve Harvey Morning Show.”

Those three shows report reaching a combined audience of nearly 20 million, though industry analysts say exact, national numbers are hard to peg and programs generally are known to exaggerate their audiences.

The favoritism extends beyond talk radio.

This month’s Ebony magazine lists Mr. Obama first among the “25 Coolest Brothers of All Time,” alongside Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. Caribbean stations play songs about him, like “Barack Obama” by Cocoa Tea and “Barack the Magnificent” by the calypso star Mighty Sparrow. “We spin them three, four times a day,” said Sir Rockwell, the morning D.J. at WDJA in Delray Beach, Fla.

Earlier this year, attendees of the Black Entertainment Television network’s annual awards program, including the stars Alicia Keys and P. Diddy, turned it into an impromptu rally for the candidate (“Obama, y’all!,” Ms. Keys shouted upon receiving an award before a television audience of nearly six million people).

The network is planning to show Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention live, but not Mr. McCain’s. “This is an historic occasion, so that demands some special treatment from us,” Debra L. Lee, the BET chairman, said of the Democratic convention. Her smaller rival, TV One, said it would not cover the Republican convention at all.

Within the black media, there have been questions about whether Mr. Obama is keeping his distance from them and their audiences to avoid being too identified by race. Some black radio hosts now complain that he is avoiding them at worst and taking them for granted at best as he courts white voters through more mainstream outlets.

“There is the appearance he will go to a Larry King before he will go on black radio in, say, Arkansas,” said Bev Smith, a black talk radio pioneer based in Pittsburgh. She placed the blame on Mr. Obama’s staff, not the candidate, who has occasionally visited her program. The Obama campaign has come under similar criticism from some members of the major trade group for black newspaper owners, the National News Publishers Association, after Mr. Obama declined invitations to appear at the group’s events.

Aides to Mr. Obama said he has been busy transitioning to a general election footing, part of which has included outreach to other voter groups less familiar with Mr. Obama. But, earlier this week the campaign hired a new communications strategist, Corey Ealons, to focus exclusively on black media and help with an intensified effort to take advantage of their excitement about Mr. Obama’s candidacy.

“As Senator Obama expands his outreach to voters during the general election, African-American media will continue to be a very important part of expressing his priorities for the community,” Mr. Ealons said. Mr. Obama is to appear Sunday at a gathering of minority journalists in Chicago called the Unity ’08 Convention. Mr. McCain declined an invitation to speak to the group.

Whatever criticism the black media has of the Obama campaign, it has generally not shown up heavily on the air or in print. Earlier this year, the PBS and public radio host Tavis Smiley, one of the best known black radio and television voices, resigned as a regular commentator on Mr. Joyner’s show after receiving a hail of angry e-mail messages and phone calls for questioning Mr. Obama’s commitment to black issues.

One caller to Mr. Ballentine’s show last week laid out some boundaries for him, as well: “All of us coming down on him and criticizing him before we give him a chance, you know, that might hurt his campaign — let’s get him in there first,” the caller said. Mr. Ballentine responded, “Brother, I would never criticize him — until he’s in the White House.”

Mr. Ballentine, who says he has an audience of three million people nationally, usually broadcasts from his home town of Durham, N.C. His special appearance at the mall here — with a predominantly black clientele — provided a vivid example of just how helpful hosts like him can be.

“Even if you are a convicted felon, you can go and vote,” he told his listeners, although the laws vary from state to state. “We need to be registering people with tremendous numbers.”

At each commercial break, he invited his local audience to come to the mall to register; he did not mention that the man signing up voters was an Obama staff member.

Mr. Ballentine has plenty of company in the registration drive. “I really push to get out the vote,” Ms. Smith, the host from Pittsburgh, said. Ms. Smith said Mr. Obama could turbo-charge the efforts by appearing on black radio more, though she understood the complexities.

“Barack Obama is walking a thin line because whites will accuse him of being too black and blacks will accuse him of being too white,” she said. “I think he’s a godsend — whether he’s on my show or not, I’m going to talk about him every day.”

Overall, the reviews have been stellar for Barack Obama’s foreign trip. A fortuitous news cycle laid out the red carpet for the presumptive Democratic nominee in Afghanistan when John McCain decided to announce that more U.S. troops were needed there. And the pattern was repeated again in Iraq, where the prime minister specifically endorsed the Illinois Democrat’s withdrawal plan mere days before receiving him.

But in Israel, there persists a sense among some observers that Obama failed to deliver on his oft-repeated promise of “change” during his visit this week.

“From my personal point of view, I was really disappointed,” said Israeli former deputy national security adviser Gen. Israela Oron. “There was no special message that you wouldn’t expect from any other politician. He didn’t say anything that he would regret. But since he is selling some kind of new promise in American political life, I expected him to say or to do something unusual, but he didn’t,” she told the Huffington Post, adding somewhat playfully: “But who am I to judge an American candidate?”

In fairness, Obama’s visit to Israel was perhaps destined to be more politically dicey than his tour of Iraq, a country upon which American public opinion appears settled in favor of withdrawal. By contrast, the question of Israel and its enemies — Iran, Hezbollah, and stray Palestinian rocket fire — connects back to issues ranging from the substantive to the bogus that have long proved tricky for the Obama campaign.

On the one hand, the 46-year-old first term senator is working to counter John McCain’s advantage on the question of who is more ready to become commander in chief. At the same time, Obama must parry the scurrilous, lingering rumors that he is a Muslim Manchurian candidate who cannot be trusted. Those realities, added to the fact that the margin of his advantage among American Jews could be decisive in key states like Florida, may have ruled out any bold proclamations about the Palestinian cause while in Israel.

Still, no one ever said change would be easy. As the liberal Israeli Ha’aretz put it in a Thursday editorial:

Obama offers the American voter “something new.” Therein lies his charm. Israel and the rest of the region’s countries need diplomatic innovation as well. But it seems that Obama – like his opponent John McCain and like U.S. President George W. Bush before him – is attempting to assure potential Jewish voters at the expense of promoting the peace processes in the region. …

To survive as a Jewish and democratic state, Israel needs an American leader who does not fear the reaction of American Jews and non-Jews who do not believe in dividing the land to reconcile its two peoples.

Of course, the Obama campaign may have calculated that disappointing Israel’s more dove-ish trends was something they could afford to do, so long as they didn’t exit the country’s airspace with a problem among hardliners. Judged by the coverage of Israel’s more hawkish Jerusalem Post, Obama sounded all the right notes. When they headlined a story about Obama talking “tough,” the target of said toughness was Iran, not West Bank settlements. Another Post editorial judged his previously bungled position on Jerusalem as “succinct,” and also reported that the conservative Likud Party’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu came away “impressed with Obama’s understanding of the Iranian threat.”

David Kimche, a former deputy head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, described the Jerusalem Post’s coverage as key to understanding the fine line Obama walked while in Israel. “With such a sensitive audience, I think he passed the exam very well, in every sense of the word,” Kimche said. “I would say that some people were very reluctant to admit he passed the threshold [on security]. Among the more radical elements who are scared stiff of peace, there was a great worry that Barack Obama would be not for the good of Israel. And they were rather reluctant in having to admit that he made all the right sounds. … You can see it in the statements of some of the Likud leaders, including Netanyahu, who was very careful to not to criticize Obama but had in the past shown his doubts … They had to admit it when he said the right things.”

But not all of the former Israeli officials interviewed by the Huffington Post viewed Obama’s trip as devoid of courage. Former national security adviser and deputy IDF chief of staff Gen. Uzi Dayan said Obama risked inspiring new worries when he said he would take a more active role than President George W. Bush in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “It was maybe a bit daring, [Obama's talk] about the role of an American president and the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations,” Dayan noted. “What he said, if we take him seriously, is that he is willing to sit in the driver’s seat. This [has long been] an American dilemma. Not just whether you facilitate or you can coordinate or can implement. But are you going to be a driver or just a facilitator? I think this was his most significant remark.”

However, Gen. Oron appeared a bit more jaded on that score, saying: “I’m not sure that he meant that the American government will play a more active role.” Suggesting that she had heard as much in previous years, Oron wondered: “What does it mean to play an active role? I don’t know what’s ‘active’ anymore.”

But still, Oron could at least give Obama some points for connecting on an emotional level with Israelis during his visit to the border town of Sderot, often the target of Palestinian Qassem rockets. “It seemed as if he understood our frustration when he was talking about his daughter, and how he would react if it was his family being attacked. I think that he was able to deliver some words of understanding about our frustration — that we cannot just sit still and do nothing when this happens, but we also cannot use all our military force.”

In the end, despite her own disappointment at the lack of political boldness during his trip, Oron conceded that Obama had made a good impression overall. “He knows what he’s talking about. He’s very well informed. And of course he’s very intelligent.”

Barack Obama touched hearts during an impassioned speech to a 200,000-strong crowd in Berlin, German newspapers agreed, but suspicions remain about the White House contender’s motives for courting a European audience.

Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel wondered whether so many young people had ever gathered for a political event in Germany and said that Obama’s address — which echoed speeches by former U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan when the divided city was in the Cold War frontline — could only have been made in the German capital.

“Barack Obama’s address might not have been statesmanlike and it definitely wasn’t worldly-wise. But with its symbolism and the message of this 46-year-old, it certainly was the signal of a new era for a new generation on both sides of the Atlantic,” the newspaper said.

“What better thing could have happened to us than the potential next president of the U.S. sending this message to the world from here?”

Obama moved on from Germany to France on Friday where he was due to hold talks with President Nicolas Sarkozy. He is also slated to meet British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and opposition leader David Cameron in London later Friday.

German tabloid Bild said Obama had articulated his version of the American dream — the idea that politics can change the world: “Unlike George W. Bush, he wants to do this in cooperation with others, especially Europe. That’s his message from Berlin: Let’s try this together!”

But Bild warned that an Obama presidency would place fresh demands on traditional allies such as Germany, which fell out with Washington over the war in Iraq and has refused to contribute combat troops to NATO operations in Afghanistan. iReport.com: View photos from the scene

“He didn’t say what he expects, but it’s not hard to figure it out. He’ll call for more German participation during international crises; he’ll call for more German soldiers,” said Bild. But it concluded: “No matter how you might feel about this: A President Obama would be Germany’s friend — and a fan of Berlin!”

Munich’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung sounded a more cautious note, warning that an Obama presidency would be “expensive for Germany.”

“He explicitly called for German soldiers for Afghanistan — he did not say ‘more soldiers’ but that was what he meant,” said commentator Reymer Kluever. “And Obama also indicated this: he will want support as president to wind up the Iraq adventure.”
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The paper noted too that the speech had been intended less for the crowds gathered in Berlin’s Tiergarten park than for “hesitant white voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Colorado and Virginia” and said that Obama had proved himself to be a clever tactician, capable of shifting positions to suit his audience.

“He wants to convince (voters) that the world will also listen to a black president… And there’s one other thing one shouldn’t forget when talking about Obama: He easily reworks even positions that have been written in stone and adjusts to new requirements.”

But nobody in the German press appears to have been quite as smitten by their visitor as Bild reporter Judith Bonesky, who had the opportunity to work out with Obama in the gym of the Ritz Carlton Hotel earlier in the day.

“Obama (with toned arms and a strong back) puts on his headphones for his iPod to listen to pop music. He hums quietly. Then he jumps on a fitness bike. He pushes three times on the pedals — but then can’t be bothered with it.
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“He picks up a pair of 16 kilo weights and starts curling them with his left and right arms, 30 repetitions on each side. Then, amazingly, he picks up the 32 kilo weights! Very slowly he lifts them, first 10 curls with his right, then 10 with his left.

Quickly I ask: “Mr. Obama, could I take a photo?”. “Of course!” he answers, before asking my name and coming over to stand next to me. “My name’s Judith” I reply. “I’m Barack Obama, nice to meet you!” he says, and puts his arm across my shoulder. I put my arm around his hip — wow, he didn’t even sweat! WHAT A MAN!”

Nine of 12 targeted Republicans running in the most competitive Senate races this fall are either skipping the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., or have not decided whether to attend.

Among those who will not attend are Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who is not close to presumptive presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is a McCain loyalist. Stevens and Collins will use the convention week to focus on their campaigns.

Also sending regrets is former Rep. Bob Schaffer of Colorado, running for the seat being vacated by retiring GOP Sen. Wayne Allard.

Six others — Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Gordon Smith of Oregon and challengers John Kennedy of Louisiana and Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico are still on the fence. Their spokesman offered responses ranging from “there are no plans yet” to “no decisions have been made.”

By contrast, most Democrats in those races are either planning to attend the party’s late August convention in Denver or are leaning toward attending the event that will formally make Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois the party’s nominee for president.

The Republican convention will be bookended by speeches from President Bush, whose low approval ratings have caused many candidates to keep him at arm’s length, and McCain, who is still trying to mend fences with conservatives. But none of the absentees or potential no-shows is publicly citing Bush or McCain as the reason for their decisions.

Instead, they and their campaign aides point to the difficult campaign landscape and limited opportunities to campaign.

Stevens, for example, is focusing on Alaska’s Aug. 26 primary, which will take place during the Democratic convention, and will stay at home to campaign the following week when Republicans gather to anoint McCain. Because of the timing of the primary, Democratic candidate Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, will also miss his party’s convention.

Collins will spend the week campaigning, said spokesman Kevin Kelley. Her opponent, Rep. Tom Allen, will be in Denver. Asked if Allen would attend, speak or raise funds at the Democratic gathering, spokeswoman Carol Andrews replied, “Yes, yes and yes.”

And while Schaffer eschews Minnesota to campaign in Colorado, his Democratic foe for the Senate seat, Rep. Mark Udall, can keep campaigning while attending his party’s convention, since it is in his home state.

Kennedy’s opponent in Louisiana, Sen. Mary Landrieu, is bound for Denver, as are Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley; Sununu’s challenger, former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen; and Pearce’s foe, Rep. Tom Udall.

While Wicker, the newest senator, has not officially sent regrets, his opponent, former Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, is definitely staying away from Denver. “He’s not a delegate or an alternate delegate, and it’s more important for him to spend the time in the state campaigning,” a spokesman said.

Dole’s Democratic challenger, Kay Hagan, has not committed to attending the Denver convention, but an aide said the campaign has discussed the possibility of a brief stay.

So who among the top targeted Republicans is going to St. Paul?

For starters, Senate Minority Leader McConnell will be there, as will Sen. Norm Coleman, who pushed to bring the GOP bash to his home state. His campaign is already promoting a fundraiser at nearby bar for 40 convention attendees under the age of 40.

Coleman’s likely Democratic opponent, Al Franken, does not know whether he’ll head to Denver. Spokeswoman Jess McIntosh noted that the convention comes right in the middle of the Minnesota State Fair – a key opportunity to campaign. But, she said, “We’re thrilled to stand with Sen. Obama, and we’re trying to work out a time when Al can come out to Denver and be a part of history. But plans are not finalized yet.”

There is at least one state that will send both Senate candidates to their respective conventions — Virginia. Both former Govs. Jim Gilmore, a Republican, and Mark Warner, a Democrat, plan to spend at least some time at the conventions.

Senator Barack Obama was a big hit in Israel. The local TV last night and press this morning was in gushing form. According to Israel’s most viewed news show, on Channel 2 TV, Israel’s leaders (all of whom the Illinoisan senator met, from both government and opposition) entered something of a beauty contest over who could look most photogenic alongside the visiting presidential hopeful/rock star.

Obama spent an intense thirty-six hours ticking off the boxes of all the necessary sights and sounds — from Yad Vashem to the Western Wall, from Labor leader Ehud Barak to Likud front man Benjamin Netanyahu, and everyone in between (including of course the Prime Minister and President). But the most symbolic stop on this whirlwind tour was in Sderot, and not for the reasons you might assume — a topic to which we will return shortly.

For a day Israelis enjoyed being the center of world attention for a refreshingly non-angst ridden reason. To the extent to which Barack Obama had trailed John McCain in popularity ratings among Israelis, it was largely due to a lack of familiarity with the young Senator. That is something that this visit lay to rest, and that will likely be reflected in future, equally meaningless polls. All this should of course play very well back home, in particular with parts of the American Jewish community, which after all was the reason for Israel being on his trip itinerary in the first place. The Israeli media respectfully acknowledged this fact. By the way, and as was noted at Huffington Post, the entire exercise may have been somewhat unnecessary when one considers that a new J Street poll found that Obama is even more popular amongst American Jews than Joe Lieberman, with a thermometer positive rating of 57.8 % compared to Joe “Hagee is Moses” Lieberman who scored 41.7%.

If anyone was looking for balance (and few were), the Illinois Senator spent forty-five minutes with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at his Ramallah headquarters. Forty-five minutes out of thirty-six hours is not much, but its forty-five minutes longer than what John McCain spared during his recent visit. He made do with a phone call — and yes the Palestinian leadership has made an art form out of looking happy and expressing gratitude when it is being insulted and demeaned.

As for how serious the Israelis were taking the visit, here’s the unusual yardstick that I would suggest we judge things by — unlike the standard operating procedure accorded to visits by leading dignitaries of the current administration, no announcements on settlement expansion were made while the potential forty-fourth president was in town — although the Israeli Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee could apparently not restrain itself any longer and voted after Obama’s departure to approve new housing units in Maskiot in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank.

All cynicism aside, the signs are that this was a serious, well-managed, and successful visit to Israel. Obama’s message in the region was consistent with his message back home, Israel heard the reassurances that Obama had spoken previously but they sounded better on terra sancta. In addition to the pledges regarding the US-Israel relationship and Israel’s security, Obama expressed support for the current Israeli proximity peace talks with Syria (something the Bush Administration is reluctant to do) and promised to engage on Israeli-Palestinian peace-making from day one were he to be elected (again, unlike the Bushies, who launched Annapolis after almost seven years of disengagement).

On Iran, only time will tell how responsive Israel’s leaders will be to Obama’s message of combining unconditional diplomatic engagement with pressure and sanctions (“big carrots and big sticks”). In public at least, Obama chose to present a rather watered-down version of his case. This is a shame. The case for diplomacy with Iran is a strong one, especially when compared to the dramatic failure of the current policy to register any change in Iranian behavior or progress on the nuclear file. Nevertheless, with the Bush administration sending its 3rd top diplomat to Geneva, albeit underutilizing the extremely accomplished and able Undersecretary of State William Burns, the debate is shifting on this issue. And the less said about Jerusalem the better.

But it was the Sderot visit that was replete with an ironic symbolism that has been almost totally overlooked. Sderot is the Southern Israeli town that is closest to Gaza, has borne the brunt of rocket attacks from there and consequently has become the site of pilgrimage for visiting dignitaries around the world. Obama was accompanied to Sderot by no less than three Israeli cabinet Ministers and was feted by local leaders. Sderot certainly has suffered in the last years and the empathy and understanding on display from the presumptive Democratic nominee was genuinely appreciated. Israeli papers even recounted the story of Obama’s visit to the Amar family home, which had been damaged by rocket fire and his encounter with that family’s young daughter, who upon seeing the young Senator yelped, at which point he apparently yelped back to her obvious delight. Reporters noted that of all the many visitors to the Amar home, Obama would be remembered as one of their nicest guests.

Obama chose the Sderot location for his only Israel press conference. Yes, Sderot is a symbol of the unacceptable hardships that Israelis face (in a surprise to no one, Obama chose not to acknowledge any sites of Palestinian hardship). But today Sderot is also becoming a symbol of something else. For a Presidential candidate, or anyone for that matter, to have held an outdoor press conference in Sderot without everyone being on edge, listening out for the next rocket siren alert, would have been unimaginable just one month ago.

Then, on June 19th, Israel made a move that could be viewed as being straight out of the Obama playbook: it tried a diplomatic rather than a military solution to the problem of violence emanating from Gaza. Via Egyptian mediation a cease-fire was reached with the Hamas leadership that controls Gaza — with the support of the other armed Palestinian factions. Despite minor infractions on both sides, that cease-fire has largely held. And Sderot is an incomparably more secure place today as a consequence — so secure in fact that Obama and the press corps could enjoy a relaxing Q and A together. Let’s be clear, that cease-fire is fragile, it could break at any moment for a host of reasons (see my piece here). Much could be done to strengthen the cease-fire that is not being done. But even if it does break down, it will ultimately be returned to, as Israelis have realized that this is their only realistic option (Israelis are not enthusiastic about a military incursion — been there, done that). Rather than embracing this symbol of what the hard-headed, tough diplomacy alternative looks like and how it can be effectively deployed, in a moment of great irony, Obama ignored it. What we got instead were the normal platitudes:

I will work from the moment that I return to America, to tell the story of Sderot and to make sure that the good people who live here are enjoying a future of peace and security and hope…If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.

Obama went on to implicitly negate the very efforts — negotiations, albeit indirect, with Hamas — that are proving more effective than all those undertaken by the military for so many months. Amongst others, one reason he gave was this: “It is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation state.” This is the kind of flawed logic that the Democratic candidate deserves to be called on — every Palestinian representative or group falls into that category; there is no Palestinian nation-state, so by the same token one cannot negotiate with any Palestinian.

But wait, in that previous quote, Obama did he say we would do “everything” to stop the rockets — and isn’t one of Obama’s messages that everything should include diplomacy? Right now that interpretation sounds like a stretch, but if Obama’s message of hope and change is to have any relevance for Israelis and Palestinians, then the logic that he applies elsewhere will have to be applied here as well.

The corridors of the Sderot town hall were empty yesterday. Mayor Eli Moyal did not report to work and many of the top officials’ offices were locked.

In the streets, election posters for the mayoral candidates were evident but there were few signs of activity. All of these were symbols of the locals’ need for leadership.

Judging by conversations with residents on the eve of Barack Obama’s visit to the town, it seems that the only leadership that might be able to affect the fate of Sderot is the United States’ presidency.

Obama is scheduled to visit the home of the Amar family, which is being renovated after a Qassam strike, and the Sderot police station. Sasson Sara, a mayoral candidate who operates a kiosk in the town, plans on “ambushing” Obama and giving him a letter with a request to change Iraqi law so that his family’s assets, left behind when they immigrated to Israel, can be restored to them.

Sasson is serious. He has a detailed list of the assets. “This way, [Obama] will have to take a stand on Iraq,” he explains. His daughter, meanwhile, asks whether the profits from sales of the family’s property in Iraq will suffice to buy a house in Caesarea.

Sasson is not the only one in Sderot who seems to think that Obama has the power to change the world. Koby Avital, sitting at the Tnuvaleh restaurant, explains. “I wanted Clinton, but maybe someone who came from behind is better able to think in both directions. Maybe if he’s close to Islam he can connect the both sides, to do something that hasn’t been done before.”

Sderot Police Chief Shimon Nahmani agrees with Avital. “Obama, because he’s black, could have fallen into the trap of saying things to please the Jewish majority,” Nahmani explains. He says he’s happy Obama avoided the pitfall; despite the temptation to talk about war in order to gain votes, he speaks about peace in the Middle East. Nahmani is slated to brief Obama on the security situation in Sderot today.

Pini Amar is happy the senator will be his family’s guest. “The fact that a presidential candidate is coming to the people to see the situation from up close is very impressive,” Amar said.

If Barack Obama has a problem among Jewish voters, then Sen. Joseph Lieberman is in monumental trouble.

Among the most high-profile Jews in Congress, Lieberman is viewed far more unfavorably than the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to a new poll. Only 37 percent of Jews view the Connecticut Independent in a favorable light compared to 48 percent who have a negative perception. As for Obama, 60 percent of Jews view him favorably while 34 percent view him unfavorably.

The findings were released as part of a recent survey of American Jews by the new progressive pro-Israel group J Street. They seem to upturn some of this year’s conventional political wisdom.

Obama, who is set to travel to Israel this week, is often described in the press as facing significant obstacles to winning Jewish support, in part because of false claims that he is a Muslim. Lieberman, meanwhile, is regularly quoted disparaging Obama’s credentials on topics considered dear to the Jewish voter’s heart: toughness on Iran and support for the Jewish state. Asked recently whether he should be questioning Obama’s commitment to Israel, the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee responded, “why wouldn’t I do that?”

Lieberman does score better among the 900 Jewish voters polled than other major political and religious figures. President Bush is viewed unfavorably by 74 percent of Jews, compared to 22 percent who see him in a positive light. McCain, meanwhile, is viewed favorably by just 34 percent of Jews, while 57 said they had a negative perception. On the lowest end of the spectrum stood Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who was viewed favorably by just five percent of Jews and unfavorably by 68 percent.

For Lieberman, however, the findings present another piece of dreary news in a month filled with controversy. In early July, Quinnipiac University found that the Connecticut Senator’s approval rating among his constituents had dropped to 45 percent, with 43 percent expressing disapproval. One week later, the Senator watched as a petition, signed by 43,000 individuals, was sent to members of the Senate’s steering committee urging them to boot him from the party.

Not that there is tremendous significance to these developments or numbers. Lieberman has eagerly taken to his role of McCain attack dog, in the process alienating large portions of the Democrats that make up both the Jewish community and his Connecticut constituency. Not to mention the relatively common misconception that Jews naturally are aligned with Lieberman’s hard-line tilt on foreign affairs. According to J Street, 38 percent of respondents had a positive view of the conservative leaning AIPAC, compared to 44 percent who viewed the liberal MoveOn.org in a favorable light.

As for the rest of J Street’s finding, they provide a mixed bag for Obama. The Illinois Democrat – who one percent of the population thinks is Jewish – has a substantial lead among Jews in the presidential race: 62 percent to 32 percent. But that margin is smaller than what both Al Gore and John Kerry earned in their perspective races.

On the flip side, the study suggests that there is room within the Jewish community for the presumptive Democratic nominee’s support to grow. As Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent noted in a review of the J Street poll, Jews are “liberal as hell.”

“Seventy-four percent of us view Bush unfavorably and 83 percent of us disapprove of his job performance,” Ackerman wrote. “While 76 percent of the country as a whole says the U.S. is on the wrong track, an astonishing 90 percent of American Jews say the same. Only 21 percent of us approve of the Iraq war and only 29 percent think Bush is good for Israel, and those are clearly the shmucks that kissed ass in Hebrew school and snitched when the rest of us used the synagogue phone booth and cloakroom to make out.”