Obama Abroad, McCain Looks to Change the Subject

John McCain may not be the shoot from the hip maverick of old, but he hasn’t lost his sense of humor. After a long day of loading on and off buses and planes, a press wrangler tonight told reporters the campaign had a “surprise” gift, adding that it is one that campaign officials, at least, consider “pretty funny.” With that, the staffer walked down the aisle and handed out laminated press ID cards emblazoned with the words “McCain Press Corps JV Squad” underneath a photo of the Statue of Liberty. The caption? “Left behind to report in America.” The reverse side of the ID offered a French translation of the same text along with a picture of a beret wearing pseudo-Frenchman pouring a glass of wine. Mon Dieu!

The “gift” was the latest in a succession of not so subtle hints that the McCain camp is displeased with the coverage of Barack Obama’s foreign trip. With Obama earning largely positive reviews abroad, McCain spent today fighting back. The Arizona senator slammed his rival for opposing the surge in troops that McCain famously backed when it wasn’t politically popular to do so.  He ridiculed Obama for never having met David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, before this trip. And he suggested that Obama must not understand what is happening in Iraq since he is refusing to acknowledge recent success there. But even with his campaign’s increasingly well-honed message, the Arizona senator has faced difficulty waging the debate on his terms. As the situation in Iraq improves, most Americans are focused on their desire for the war to end, a discussion that favors Obama. That reality, however, hasn’t stopped McCain from trying to redefine the conversation.

“This is a clear choice the American people have,” McCain told a crowd of about 400 gathered at a town hall meeting in Rochester, New Hampshire yesterday afternoon. “I had the courage and the judgment to say that I would rather lose a political campaign then lose a war. It seems to me that Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.” The inclusion of the phrase “in order to” sparked much chatter amongst the press corps traveling with McCain, who sit in town hall meeting after town hall meeting, often without hearing anything discernibly different. McCain’s words yesterday in New Hampshire—the state is in many ways a second home to the Arizona senator, having twice brought McCain’s political fortunes back from the dead—clearly represented a ratcheting up of his rhetoric. Add to the mix newly leaked reports of a McCain veep pick this week and it’s hard not to conclude that the McCain camp has an aggressive strategy for staking its claim to this news cycle. (Conservative columnist Bob Novak is on record saying he feels “used” by what he now thinks was a deliberate ruse by the McCain camp to gin up buzz for their candidate by leaking him bad information about McCain announcing his vice president this week. The alleged tactic comes as McCain’s team openly gripes about what they view as a media juggernaut bolstering Obama’s prospects with fawning coverage of his foreign trip).

You can’t blame the McCain camp for battling hard on many fronts. McCain can’t afford to cede any ground to Obama this week. According to recent polls, McCain is well ahead of Obama when it comes to voters’ perception of who is a stronger commander in chief. But McCain’s advanced age, lack of speaking polish and admitted weakness on the economy make it especially critical for him to maintain his edge on national security issues. To that end, McCain spoke extensively about Obama’s opposition to the surge yesterday. “My opponent said the surge would not succeed, that he wanted us out. If he had had his way we would have been out last March, we would have never done the surge, we would never have succeeded, and we would have had defeat,” McCain said at the town hall meeting, which was held inside a small opera house in downtown Rochester. Expect McCain to continue flogging the same message today when he takes advantage of Obama’s absence by barnstorming through the key swing state of Pennsylvania, with stops scheduled in Wilkes-Barre, Allentown, and Bethlehem.

For reporters on McCain’s plane the message discipline has its downside. McCain’s schedule has been tightly controlled with little of the freewheeling access that was once the norm. A small group of national reporters rotate covering press availabilities that are largely dedicated to answering questions from local reporters. Much of the senator’s time is also spent raising money. Yesterday a plane full of reporters flew to Baltimore solely so the senator could attend a fundraiser. Except for a small group of pool reporters, the press corps whiled away the evening at Mo’s Fisherman’s Seafood Factory, where the jumbo lump crab cakes were as big as baseballs. Some days may be slow, but at least they know how to feed us.