About That Obama Trip...

By Holly Bailey 

With word that the three network news anchors will be joining Barack Obama on his trip overseas next week, the New York Times today raises the question of whether John McCain has been given short shrift when it comes to media coverage. It's been a festering complaint among McCain's senior aides, who haven't been shy about telling reporters (often down to the minute) how much time McCain has received on the evening news versus Obama. The Times correctly notes that the network anchors didn't travel with McCain on his last trip to Iraq in March, which also took him throughout the Middle East and Europe.

But there's a big difference between McCain's trip and the one Obama will embark on next week to Europe and the Middle East. In what could be interpreted now as a possible strategic misstep, the McCain campaign chose not to take reporters along for the ride, forcing media outlets who wanted to cover the newly elected GOP nominee to travel on their own without any guarantee of getting anywhere near the senator. The small group of scribes who made the trek (Newsweek chose not to) faced a logistical nightmare, from arranging last-minute foreign visas to struggling to keep up with McCain as they flew commercially from stop to stop. (McCain traveled by a military aircraft.) In contrast, the Obama campaign is inviting reporters on its tour, handling all the logistics--including transportation--for what will certainly be a much larger press corps than usual.

Why didn't McCain take reporters on his first overseas visit since clinching the nomination? For one, McCain was on official Senate travel, and aides rightly worried about an onslaught of stories questioning whether he was improperly using his Senate office to benefit his presidential campaign. It was also a campaign in transition, and they worried they didn't have the manpower logistically to handle a large press corps on an overseas swing. The Arizona senator did do several media interviews while abroad, including a pre-arranged sit-down with CNN's John King in Saddam Hussein's old palace in Baghdad. And some of the campaign beat regulars were on hand when McCain made a big time gaffe, confusing Sunnis and Shiites. It made headlines back home, but as First Read notes, it didn't create nearly the stir it would have had Brian Williams, Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson been reported their evening newscast from the scene.

Still, McCain aides were disappointed that the senator's trip didn't generate more coverage back home--headlines they hoped would highlight McCain's foreign policy expertise. Indeed, some notable moments of McCain's trip went largely unnoticed back in the States, including a made-for-campaign moment of pleasantly surprised tourists chanting "Mac is Back! Mac is Back!" as the senator arrived at a Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. In advance of Obama's trip, McCain aides have been critical of what they see as a double standard. This morning,McCain communication director Jill Hazelbaker called the Democratic nominee's jaunt a "first-of-its-kind campaign rally overseas." (On his bus this afternoon in Kansas City, McCain said he didn't agree with Hazelbaker's remarks and told reporters he would "talk to her.") Yet mixed with that criticism must be a degree of disappointment at what McCain's March trip could have been.

 UPDATE, 5:45 p.m.: Shortly after arriving in Michigan for a fundraiser, McCain went before reporters and clarified the remarks he made earlier this afternoon about Obama's overseas trip. McCain said he had been talking about Obama's trip to Iraq and Afghanistan-not the other stops on his tour-when he said he didn't think the visit was political in nature. "What Sen. Obama does in the other countries, whether political rallies or not, obviously would then give them a political flavor to say the least," McCain said.

The campaign organized the impromptu press conference after a quick campaign stop at Pronto Pup, a corn dog shop on the shores of White Lake in Western Michigan. As McCain spoke, Nicolle Wallace, a former White House aide who recently joined the campaign as an adviser, stood a few feet away, holding her cell phone toward McCain so that someone on the other end could hear. When McCain moved on to other subjects, Wallace walked away and began talking into the phone.

"If he has political rallies in other places, then obviously it's a political trip," McCain said. "Apparently it's gonna be if he is going to have a rally in Germany at the Brandenberg Gate, which is what is being publicly stated. Of course, if you have political rallies then it's a political event."