Politics

Starting Gate: Confidence Rising?

By Vaughn Ververs

July 21, 2008 / 9:48 AM EDT / CBS News

So far, so good for Barack Obama in his much-hyped world tour. Great pictures of the candidate meeting with U.S. troops, walking with foreign leaders and receiving the kind of media attention usually reserved for a president, not a presidential candidate.

He even got a gift from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who seemed to endorse Obama's 16-month timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops in an interview with a German magazine before attempting to walk back from such outright backing. And Gen. David Patraeus added more weight to Obama's proposals to shift more resources to Afghanistan when he said there were indications that al-Qaeda is making that country its primary battleground.

It's enough to make a candidate start to feel pretty confident about his prospects this November. While Obama's interview with CBS News' Lara Logan made headlines for the candidate's characterization of the situation in Afghanistan as "precarious" and "urgent," there was a new tone the candidate.

When asked by Logan whether the trip was designed to quell concerns about his lack of foreign policy experience, Obama sounded like someone thinking about a return trip on Air Force One. "The objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to ten years," Obama said.

"It's important for me to have a relationship with them early, that I start listening to them now, getting a sense of what their interests and concerns are, because one of the shifts in foreign policy that I want to execute as president is giving the world a clear message that America intends to continue to show leadership, but our style of leadership is going to be less unilateral, that we're going to see our role as building partnerships around the world that are of mutual interest to the parties involved. And I think this gives me a head start in that process."

Who could blame the campaign for thinking ahead a little. While he clings to a somewhat narrow lead in national polls, just about every other metric is leaning heavily in his favor. If this week's dress rehearsal on the world stage concludes as successfully as it has begun, it could inspire even more confidence from the candidate with little on the horizon to change the momentum until fall.

Around The Track

One reason that the national numbers remains relatively tight could be the fact that John McCain outspent Obama on paid media in June by 3-1. McCain's campaign spent about $16 million on advertising last month while Obama's campaign spent about $5 million according to FEC filings.

Evangelical leader James Dobson made waves last winter when he said that he would never support McCain for president. But in a radio broadcast slated for today, Dobson will reportedly open the door to do just that. "I never thought I would hear myself saying this," Dobson will say, according to the AP. "While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might." More Dobson: "Barack Obama contradicts and threatens everything I believe about the institution of the family and what is best for the nation. His radical positions on life, marriage and national security force me to reevaluate the candidacy of our only other choice, John McCain."

Eight years after the Florida recount confusion and the nation's voting systems have made little progress towards fixing it, the USA Today reports.

"No matter how understandable it is given the newness of the candidate and the historical nature of Obama's candidacy, in the end it's probably not fair to McCain." – Project for Excellence in Journalism's Tom Rosenstiel, addressing concerns of an imbalance in coverage for Obama over McCain.