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The Sunday politics shows today centered on questions about the role of race in the campaign, Barack Obama's position on oil drilling, and the possibility of a balanced budget now that the deficit has reached more than $400 billion.

The McCain press office is spotlighting Tom Ridge's criticism of Obama on ABC's "This Week."

"You know every once in a while, we see [Barack Obama] playing basketball," Ridge said in a quote the McCain camp highlighted in a release. "And he's obviously a pretty good athlete. And probably has a pretty good head fake. So the head fake is 'well I'll deal with a compromise' but later on depending on the audience too, he's saying 'I don't favor drilling.'"

Ridge was referring to Obama's apparent willingness to allow for some offshore drilling under tightly controlled circumstances, despite his opposition to drilling in the past. He said last week he would be open to drilling "as part of a plan promoting fuel-efficient cars and developing alternate energy sources," as the Associated Press reports.

Sen. John Kerry addressed the issue on NBC's "Meet The Press," arguing that while Obama opposes drilling, he wants to "break America's gridlock by honoring a bipartisan effort, if that is the only way to move us towards alternative and renewable fuels and an energy policy that's comprehensive."

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The Sunday politics shows today centered on questions about the role of race in the campaign, Barack Obama's position on offshore oil drilling, and the possibility of a balanced budget now that the deficit has reached more than $400 billion.

The McCain press office is already spotlighting Tom Ridge's criticism of Obama on ABC's "This Week."

"You know every once in a while, we see [Barack Obama] playing basketball," Ridge said in a quote the McCain camp highlighted in a release. "And he's obviously a pretty good athlete. And probably has a pretty good head fake. So the head fake is 'well I'll deal with a compromise' but later on depending on the audience too, he's saying 'I don't favor drilling.'"

Ridge was referring to Obama's apparent willingness to allow for some offshore drilling under tightly controlled circumstances, despite his opposition to drilling in the past. He said last week he would be open to drilling "as part of a plan promoting fuel-efficient cars and developing alternate energy sources," as the Associated Press reports.

Sen. John Kerry addressed the issue on NBC's "Meet The Press," arguing that while Obama opposes drilling, he wants to "break America's gridlock by honoring a bipartisan effort, if that is the only way to move us towards alternative and renewable fuels and an energy policy that's comprehensive."

Obama advisor Robert Rubin also took on the issue on CBS' "Face The Nation," saying that "...if it means doing something that he has a lot of reservations about in order to accomplish something much larger that's constructive, then that's the way a legislative process should work, in a democracy."

On "This Week," meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will not allow a stand-alone vote on drilling, since it is a "decoy" as opposed to a solution, though she signaled openness to a vote on a "larger energy package" that included offshore drilling provisions.

The McCain campaign has accused Obama of playing the race card with recent comments about how his opponents are trying to scare voters because he doesn't look like other presidents on the dollar bill. Sen. Lindsay Graham took up the debate about race in the campaign on "Fox News Sunday."

“To say that Barack Obama did not intentionally inject the idea of his name and his race is a lie,” Graham said, adding that McCain “doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.”

"There is no doubt in my mind that Sen. Obama is trying to suggest that he is the victim of something,” he added.

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The McCain campaign held a conference call this afternoon criticizing Barack Obama for his comment a year ago that he would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea without preconditions.

If Obama is President on January 21st, the leaders of those countries will invite Obama to visit, Michigan Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra predicted on the call. "That would be an untenable position for the President of the United States to be put in," Hoekstra said.

He said that Obama "has set himself up for a performance measurement that he cannot meet," adding that the presumptive Democratic nominee "has set himself up for a policy direction that undercuts our allies."

McCain senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann said that Obama's answer to a question today about whether he stands by his position from a year ago is a testament to his inexperience, stubbornness, and malleability. Obama said today in Israel that he would be willing to meet with those leaders "at my time and choosing...if I thought it would promote the national security interests of the United States of America." He said "that continues to be my position."

Obama is attempting to "rewrite history," Scheunemann said. "He takes a position calculated to appeal to the extreme left in the primaries...then he changes his position and hopes the media won't call him on it," he added.

"I guess with Obama words matter expect when they cause an inconvenient truth," said Scheunemann.

John McCain today accepted invitations from the Ronald Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson presidential libraries to appear in joint town hall meetings with Barack Obama. “We are proud to accept the invitation from Mrs. Ronald Reagan, Lynda Johnson Robb and Luci Baines Johnson to hold joint town hall meetings at the Ronald Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Libraries,” the campaign said in a statement. “As Luci Baines Johnson said in her invitation, these meetings offer an opportunity to 'deliberate the great issues of our time.' The American people deserve a great debate about the future of our country, and we hope that Barack Obama will join us for these important events at these historic venues."

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis also has sent a letter to Obama manager David Plouffe, asking him to reconsider McCain’s original proposal to meet for ten town hall meetings between now and the conventions. Partial text:

Thank you for responding to our proposal. Just to reiterate, we have proposed at least ten joint town hall meetings once a week until the week before the Democratic Convention begins. As we understand your counter-proposal, you have proposed only one town hall meeting before the Democratic Convention.

In keeping with our original proposal, we are planning a joint town hall meeting in Minnesota next Thursday evening (June 19, 2008). We will hold time on our schedule for joint town halls every Thursday night until the Democratic convention. I hope Senator Obama would reconsider his position and agree to join Senator McCain as early as next week.

… However, at this moment, we fear that our negotiations over joint town hall meetings are turning into a debate about process. That is exactly what we have always hoped to avoid, and why we proposed a town hall format that would render many of these process issues moot. As Senator Obama has said, he is prepared to meet "anywhere, anytime" for a town hall.

We remain committed to this idea because joint town hall meetings offer the best format for presenting both candidates' visions for our country's future in a substantive way. We have a chance to change the way presidential elections are run and elevate the political dialogue. Americans deserve this kind of opportunity, and we hope that Senator Obama will join us at town hall meetings throughout the summer months.

Most all of our campaign rituals are rooted in some deep traditions of the nation’s past. Long before the mass-communicating age, candidates sometimes had to stand on tree stumps in order to be seen by crowds more than a few deep (hence the phrase, “stump speech). Today, Barack Obama’s words are amplified to tens of thousands of voters in huge arenas and millions more on television and the Internet.

Debates are a more fickle, and relatively recent, phenomenon. The Lincoln-Douglass debates are, of course, legendary and historic – but mostly for the way they crystallized the divide on slavery which was helping speed the country toward civil war. The first real presidential debate (Lincoln and Douglass were Senate candidates) would wait until the dawn of the television age in 1960 when John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon faced one another on the same set. Three more presidential elections would pass before two presidential candidates met again – and it’s become a campaign staple since.

The Commission on Presidential Debates last fall announced the schedule for 2008, which encompasses three presidential debates and one for the vice presidential candidates, beginning on September 26th. But John McCain doesn’t want to wait that long and has invited Barack Obama to a series of as many as ten joint appearances at “town hall” meetings across the country. Obama’s campaign has signaled that they are willing to do something like it but have yet to commit to any specifics.

It’s easy to see why McCain would want such an arrangement. He appears much more comfortable in these settings, where he can stalk around the stage and interact with the audience. Even when faced with hostile questioners, McCain comes across as more natural than he does when seated on a stage taking questions from a moderator. It was after McCain shed his front-runner trappings (by necessity) and returned to town hall forums during the primary that he brought his campaign back from the near-dead.

Obama hasn’t done them as frequently as McCain but the 22 debates and thousands of appearances he’s done has certainly primed him for just about any forum. There’s no reason to think he would perform any worse in a joint town hall meeting. But even so, there may be a reluctance to give the opponent an opportunity to improve himself.

Should these events happen at all, especially in the numbers McCain has proposed, it would be a historic and unprecedented series. But here’s a thought: If proven to be popular among voters, it could also set the stage for an interesting situation in the fall push. It could allow McCain to propose a continuation of them as a substitute for the flat, staged televised debates proposed by the commission. And, unlikely though it may be, that would be a victory for McCain.

John McCain's campaign has released to the public a letter from McCain to presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama inviting Obama "to join me in participating in town hall meetings across the country to discuss the most important issues facing Americans."

"I propose these town hall meetings be as free from the regimented trappings, rules and spectacle of formal debates as possible, and that we pledge to the American people we will not allow the idea to die on the negotiation table as our campaigns work out the details," McCain writes, calling for "at least ten town halls" beginning June 11 or 12 in New York City.

"What a welcome change it would be were presidential candidates in our time to treat each other and the people they seek to lead with respect and courtesy as they discussed the great issues of the day, without the empty sound bites and media-filtered exchanges that dominate our elections," McCain adds.

Last month, Mark McKinnon, a McCain advisor, suggested the possibility of joint town hall meetings. Obama called it a "great idea" but said "we would have to think through the logistics on this."

There are already three sanctioned debates between the presidential candidates already scheduled: Friday, September 26 at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS; Tuesday, October 7 at Belmont University in Nashville, TN; and Wednesday, October 15 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY.

McCain's full letter below.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign responds:

“As Barack Obama has said before, the idea of joint town halls is appealing and one that would allow a great conversation to take place about the need to change the direction of this country. We would recommend a format that is less structured and lengthier than the McCain campaign suggests, one that more closely resembles the historic debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. But, having just secured our party’s nomination, this is one of the many items we will be addressing in the coming days and look forward to discussing it with the McCain campaign,” said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

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Over the past few weeks, Barack Obama and John McCain have been squabbling over whether or not a president should meet with hostile foreign leaders – and, if he does, under what conditions.

Now a Gallup poll suggests a majority of Americans believe their president should talk to the leaders of enemy countries.

Roughly two out of three of those polled say such diplomacy is a good idea – including about half of those Republicans surveyed.

When asked specifically whether or not the U.S. president should meet with the leader of Iran, nearly 60 percent of those polled said yes.

Obama has said he would meet with leaders of hostile countries without preconditions, arguing that "strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries." (It should be noted that Obama's exact position on this issue is somewhat vague – he says there still need to be "preparations" before such a meeting were to take place, even if there aren't "preconditions.")

Both McCain and Hillary Clinton have criticized Obama for his position, suggesting it implies a naiveté and dangerous inexperience. President George W. Bush has implied that it amounts to the sort of appeasement that was employed in dealing with Nazis.

Appearing at a meeting of the Jewish lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee today, McCain said, "It's hard to see what such a summit with [Iranian] President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another."

Also today, Ahmadinejad once again suggested Israel "will soon be destroyed."

"I must announce that the Zionist regime, with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene," he said.