Sen. Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, right, are seen following their joint press conference after their meeting at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Friday, July 25, 2008. (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)

by Frank James

In a performance likely to make American conservatives even more suspicious of the French than they already are, President Nicholas Sarkozy, a French-style conservative, toed the line, almost seeming to endorse Sen. Barack Obama.

At a joint press conference after the two men met, Sarkozy said:

"Of course, it's not up to the French to choose the next president of the United States of America. Whomsoever that may be, we will work with him happily and gladly. But I am especially happy to be meeting with the senator I met back in 2006 when we talked in such impassioned terms about Darfur, what was happening there. And there were two of us in that office, and there were two of us in my office. (Laughter.) And one of us became president. Well, let the other do likewise. Well, I mean, that's not meddling."

Actually, that's going to sound to a lot of people like meddling, as if Sarkozy was essentially saying Obama should be president.

Sarkozy did try to back away from his non-endorsement endorsement. For instance, he said:

"So good luck to Barack Obama. If he is chosen, then France will be delighted. And if it is somebody else, then France will be the friend of the United States of America. And likewise when -- for him, when there are elections in France, he won't say, well, it's up to the Americans to choose the French leader. Of course not."

That "somebody else" would presumably be Sen. John McCain.

This is the second time in a week in which a world leader who seemed to be friendly to President Bush appeared to do a little self-serving double-dealing. Over the weekend, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he favored Obama's 16-month Iraq withdrawal timeline.

Today it was Sarkozy, who reportedly enjoys a warm relationship with Bush, seemingly giving Bush and his preferred successor, McCain, the back of his hand.

by Frank James

The Republican National Committee e-mailed a transcript from an MSNBC report this afternoon by correspondent Andrea Mitchell.

The RNC wanted people to focus on the part of Mitchell's report where she said that the Pentagon told Sen. Barack Obama's campaign that the presidential candidate could visit wounded soldiers at Landsthul Medical Center if he only brought a single Senate aide but no campaign staff in order to keep the event from being a political one.

The RNC obviously wants to put Obama on the defensive for allowing this seemingly minor condition to prevent his visit.

But that's not the only noteworthy part of what Mitchell reported. She also said that Obama campaign people were angry at the Pentagon for creating a fuss about an event whose details the campaign thought they had finalized more or less

ANDREA MITCHELL: "Spin from both sides: the Pentagon would have told you that these are rules that everyone follows. That he was welcomed, he could have gone if he had gone with just a Senate aide, but that no campaign aides could go with him. Privately, some people are suggesting that one of the issues was a general - Scott Gration -- who travels with him who's a campaign aide and retired Air Force general and that the general was told that he could not use his privilege as a retired member of the military to accompany Senator Obama because he is now joined the political campaign.

... So that may have been one of the stumbling blocks. ... The Obama people certainly feel resentful. They had a planned event. They were planning to leave the press corps on the tarmac and go in themselves, and that they feel the pentagon made it difficult and reminded them of the rules, about which they didn't need to be reminded having just come from a similar visit in Iraq. But whatever the result, they feel that they have been treated badly by the Pentagon, and that is certainly creating some bad blood."

Question: which side needs the other more? It would seem the campaign needs the Pentagon (surely the senator's schedulers will want to get him onto military bases or into hospitals before the campaign is over) more than the Pentagon needs the campaign. So this is one where the Pentagon probably has the greater leverage.

by Frank James

There's something deeply troubling about a seminary student pulling from the Western Wall in Jerusalem Sen. Barack Obama's prayer to God and turning it over to the media. Think about it. A seminary student. Here's hoping this person eventually goes into some other line of work.

In any event, that appears to be what happened to the prayer Obama wrote on King David Hotel stationery and tucked into the wall during his visit to the holiest of sites in Jerusalem.

We received a copy of the note yesterday. But the Obama campaign indicated it wasn't Obama's though it certainly appeared to be in his handwriting.

But even if we had been totally convinced of the prayer's authenticity, there was the question of privacy and whether the sanctity of a communication between a human being and his Maker should be violated.

Evidently, some journalists in Israel got past any qualms they might have had and published the purported Obama prayer note.

There are some people and journalists who believe anything a public official does is arguably in the public domain.

But even candidates for president of the United States, have human rights. One of them would seem to be the right to pray in private. Just because Jewish tradition calls for a prayer to be written down and placed in the wall shouldn't make it any less private.

One might hope that even if journalists didn't understand that, seminary students would. Apparently, that's not the case.

by Frank James

Candy Crowley of CNN interviewed Sen. Barack Obama before he left Berlin for Paris. Among her questions: Why are we in Berlin with a little more than three months before the election? And what message are American voters supposed to draw from this?

Part of Obama's answer was this:

"If we have more NATO troops in Afghanistan, then that's potentially fewer American troops over the long term, which means we're spending fewer billions of dollars, which means we can invest those billions of dollars in making sure we're providing tax cuts to middle class families who are struggling with higher gas prices that will have an impact on our economy."

It's hard to go wrong in the swing states with the argument that you have a strategy for lowering their taxes.

Of course, the European governments might have to raise taxes to fund the type of expanded military and nation-building role Obama wants them to play in Afghanistan. Which is one of the reasons NATO nations haven't committed more to the cause and why Obama, if he becomes president, is going to find himself challenged in getting significant boosts in troops and other assistance to Afghanistan.

by Frank James

It's a given that many journalists with Chicago links are understandably excited by the thought that the next president of the U.S. could be a Chicagoan. It's arguably like Chicago hosting the Super Bowl, the World Series and the NBA Finals all at the same time, only better.

But the Chicago Sun-Times's front page today gives one pause. "Wunderbar" or "wonderful" is the one-word headline superimposed over a photo of Sen. Barack Obama waving to the adoring Berlin crowd.

Now, it's a perfectly valid photo. Two hundred thousand excited people, mostly Germans, turned out in front of the Siegsaulle victory column in downtown Berlin to see and hear the Democratic presidential candidate.

But "wunderbar?" It's an understatement to say that "wunderbar" seems way over-the-top.

Small wonder that Sen. John McCain and many voters accuse so many of us in the media of being madly in love with Obama. "Wunderbar" just adds another piece of evidence to the mounting pile that when it comes to Obama many of us are having problems maintaining our journalistic cool.

(AP Photo/Chris Russell/Columbus Dispatch)

by Frank James

Campaigning in Columbus, Ohio today, Sen. John McCain took a shot at Sen. Barack Obama for giving a big speech in Berlin, Germany.

Here's a snippet from the Associated Press story:

"I'd love to give a speech in Germany. But I'd much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate for president," McCain told reporters after a meal of bratwurst with local business leaders at Schmidt's Sausage Haus und Restaurant in Columbus' German Village neighborhood.

At the same time, the Republican National Committee was running anti-Obama ads in Berlin, Pa., and other namesake villages in Wisconsin and New Hampshire.

A colleague of mine noted that the visuals of McCain's campaign stop should be low-hanging fruit for the late-night comics. Example: "The Straight-Talk Express stops at the fudge house." And because Steve Schmidt is McCain's campaign director, the name of this particular fudge house takes on special meaning.

Sen. John McCain with fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at a news conference in front of Schmidt's Fudge Haus in Columbus, Ohio, Thursday, July 24, 2008. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

by Frank James

While Sen. Barack Obama, the all-but-official Democratic nominee, was in Europe trying to shore up his foreign-policy credentials, Sen. John McCain, his Republican counterpart, was plugging away stateside where the U.S. voters are.

And it appears that many of those voters are increasingly receptive to McCain's message, especially in some of the battleground states.

Our friends at the LA Times's Top of Ticket political blog report on a new poll that shows McCain gaining ground on Obama.

If John McCain and his loyalists were hoping for something to brighten their day amid the blizzard of coverage of Barack Obama's foreign tour, they've gotten it with new poll results from four key states -- Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The survey by the Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, conducted between July 14 and Tuesday, contains especially good news for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in Colorado and Minnesota.

The poll found McCain making even greater strides in Minnesota, host of the convention where McCain will formally become his party's nominee in early September. Obama's advantage over McCain there now is negligible -- 2 percentage points -- compared with a 17-point lead the same survey gave the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in June.

by Mike Dorning

BERLIN--Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama came to a city once divided by the Cold War and sustained in crisis by the Atlantic Alliance to call today for a strengthened commitment to international alliances for an era of new threats.

In a setting that evoked historic addresses by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, Obama came not as the leader of the free world but as a candidate for the office. The speech offered an opportunity for him to demonstrate his capacity to represent American ideals to the international public.

Obama drew a crowd that stretched much of the way down a nearly mile-long mall in front the site of the speech, Berlin's Victory Column, which marks 19th century military successes. At the beginning and end of the speech, the European crowd chanted Obama's campaign slogan in English: "Yes, we can."

Berlin Police estimated more than 200,000 people were at the speech, more than twice as large a crowd as Obama has drawn at any event in the United States.

Obama used the imagery of the Berlin Wall to argue that the challenges of the modern era demand a strengthen rather than diminished commitment to the Atlantic Alliance that defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War and to international alliances elsewhere.

"The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another," Obama said.

"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand," he continued. "These now are the walls we must tear down. "

by John McCormick

Amid swimming and sprinting and gymnastics, there will be $5 million of "Change We Can Believe In."

There is no word yet on the exact spots that will run, but Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is planning to run commercials on the NBC network during its broadcast of the Summer Olympics next month, AdvertisingAge is reporting.

Obama has already done some advertising on national cable channels, but his campaign has kept most of its focus on television spending in 18 states it is targeting.

by Jill Zuckman

A Republican friend of the Swamp helpfully points out that Sen. Barack Obama seems to have time to visit the gym for a workout today, but not to visit the troops during his stay in Germany tomorrow.

According to Spiegel Online, which is tracking Obama's every move, at 1:42 p.m. it learned that "Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday."

Thanks to a statement from senior adviser Robert Gibbs, the issue seems to be one of ethics and propriety, rather than time.

"During his trip as part of the CODEL to Afghanistan and Iraq, Senator Obama visited the combat support hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad and had a number of other visits with the troops," Gibbs said. "For the second part of his trip, the senator wanted to visit the men and women at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center to express his gratitude for their service and sacrifice. The senator decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign."

But that didn't cut it for the McCain campaign: "Barack Obama is wrong. It is never 'inappropriate' to visit our men and women in the military," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.

Regardless of whether Obama made the right call about visiting Landstuhl on Friday, he still managed to squeeze in some workout time despite a heavy schedule leading up to his big speech at the Siegessäule, or Victory Column, around 7 p.m. Berlin time.

"4:49 p.m.: Obama enters the luxury Ritz Carlton hotel wearing a T-shirt, black sweatpants and white trainers -- apparently to work out in the hotel's gym. He kept up the campaigning on the way there, smiling and waving at tourists and other onlookers," the breathless Spiegel ticker reported.

(Photo credit: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

by Frank James

Members of the peace movement who saw Sen. Barack Obama as their candidate, presumably after the ardently anti-war Representatives Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul exited the primaries, don't like what they're hearing from the senator from Illinois and are issuing a warning: Don't assume you've got our votes.

This from a press release issued by Kevin Zeese, executive director of Voters for Peace, whose board includes the nation's most famous anti-war activist, Cindy Sheehan.

As Senator Obama continues his tour of Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe many peace voters are warning him: Do not take out vote for granted. In a petition, signed by thousands in one day, peace voters are expressing concern about his plans for Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Kuwait.

Obama's recent promise to escalate the number of troops in Afghanistan with 7,000 additional troops. Currently, 60,000 NATO troops are in Afghanistan, 36,000 of them U.S. soldiers. The Soviets and British learned this is a country not easily tamed by foreign troops. Afghanistan could become a more difficult quagmire than Iraq.

On Iraq, Americans who want to see that war ended may be disappointed by the details of his Iraq strategy. While his rhetoric is "end the war" and withdraw combat troops within 16 months, the details of his plan are: redeploying of combat troops to Kuwait to serve a strike force in Iraq, as well is to Afghanistan; and leave a "residual force," whose size Obama has not identified, but aids have said could be 30,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq. Obama has defined the mission of this force broadly telling Larry King they will: fight terrorists and al Qaeda, protect U.S. bases and interests and train Iraqis. When Obama is asked about private security contractors, like the infamous Blackwater, he told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now that he would not remove these 140,000 private troops from Iraq. Adding it together Obama would leave as many as 225,000 troops and mercenaries in Iraq after his withdrawal is complete.

By Amanda Erickson

A House subcommittee Wednesday began examining whether gay men and women should be allowed to serve openly in the armed forces for the first time in15 years.

Congress had not reconsidered the controversial 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy since it was approved by former President Bill Clinton in 1993. Currently, recruitment officials are not allowed to ask enlistees about their sexual orientation and service personnel may not engage in homosexual conduct or aggressively display homosexuality.

At the 2½-hour hearing, lawmakers focused on two key questions: What effect a change in the policy would have on troop unity and whether the current policy is hurting recruitment and retention of service members who are gay.

Occasionally, the debate got heated, such as when Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, which opposes gays in the military, suggested that allowing gays to openly serve in the military would increase the number of HIV-positive cases among service members. Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) called that contention "inappropriate" and said under that logic "you ought to recruit only lesbians to the military because they have the lowest incidence of HIV."

But the hearing mostly drew on the personal experience of openly gay former service members, retired sergeants and the head of a group that opposes allowing gays and lesbians to serve.

Capt. Joan Darrah, who served in the Navy for 30 years and won several commendations, spoke of the stress the policy caused her. Darrah had been at a meeting in the Pentagon just minutes before it was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Seven of her colleagues were killed.

"The reality is that if I had been killed, my partner then of 11 years, would have been the last to know," she said. "I had not dared to list her in any of my paperwork."

by Mike Dorning

JERUSALEM--Barack Obama made a brief visit this morning before leaving Israel to the Western Wall, one of the best-known holy sites in Jerusalem, a section of the western supporting wall of the ancient Temple Mount, per a pool report by Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times.

Appearing unannounced shortly before dawn, Obama, who wore a white skullcap, was surrounded by dozens of onlookers as he made his way down a walkway toward the wall escorted by the Rabbi of the Wall, Shmuel Rabinovich. The rabbi quietly read Psalm 122 as both he and Obama flipped through a holy book on a wooden stand by the wall.

After the prayer, Obama walked a final few steps to the wall and followed the custom of placing a personal note between the stone cracks containing a prayer or wish. Then he put his hand on the wall, bowed his head and stood quietly for a few moments. When asked later what he wrote on his note, he declined to say.

While at the wall, he was heckled by a lone man about 10 yards away who shouted, "Obama, Jerusalem is not for sale!" but several other men tried to drown out the heckler with cries of "Obama, Obama, Obama."

As Obama left, a small group of onlookers cheered and reach out to grab his hand. Within about 10 minutes of arriving, Obama was back in his motorcade headed for the airport in Tel Aviv.

by Mike Dorning

AMMAN, Jordan--Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama completed a visit to Iraq on Tuesday acknowledging progress in the country over the past year but unwilling to declare that the Bush Administration troop surge he opposed has been a success.

"I believe that the situation in Iraq is more secure than it was a year and a half ago. I think that the definition of success depends on how you look at it," Obama said at a news conference in Jordan shortly after he landed here for the next stop on an international tour that also will take him to capitals in the Middle East and Europe.

After the news conference Obama met with Jordan's King Abdullah and then had dinner with the king and other Jordanian and American officials. Later in the evening, he was scheduled to go on to Israel, where he meets with government leaders Wednesday.

The international trip, which began with visits to combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, is an opportunity for the candidate to assure American voters of his capabilities as a potential commander in chief. Though polls show Obama ahead in the presidential race at the moment, many voters say they have reservations about his readiness to lead the country on national security issues, a key potential vulnerability.

At the news conference, held at the site of an ancient ruin that provided a striking panoramic view of the Jordanian capital, many of questions focused on his policy judgments on the Iraq War.

Obama stressed that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and even the Bush administration have in recent days moved closer to his signature policy on Iraq calling for a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops within 16 months after Obama would take office. Maliki said on Monday he favored a goal of removing U.S. combat troops by 2010, within a few months of the date Obama has proposed.

by Frank James

The ever thoughtful Shelby Steele has an interesting take on why Jesse Jackson obviously isn't feeling Sen. Barack Obama the way so many other African Americans are.

The editors of The Wall Street Journal's op-ed page gave Steele's piece the grabber of a headline "Why Jesse Jackson hates Obama."

According to Steele, one of the most interesting commentators on race in America, Jackson is angry at Obama because the senator from Illinois has turned his back on the tactic that civil-rights leaders used to gain leverage against whites, which is essentially white guilt.

He could have taken up the mantle of the early Martin Luther King (he famously smeared himself with the great man's blood after King was shot), and argued for equality out of a faith in the imagination and drive of his own people. Instead -- and tragically -- he and the entire civil rights establishment pursued equality through the manipulation of white guilt.

They ushered in an extortionist era of civil rights, in which they said to American institutions: Your shame must now become our advantage. To argue differently -- that black development, for example, might be a more enduring road to black equality -- took whites "off the hook" and was therefore an unpardonable heresy. For this generation, an Uncle Tom was not a black who betrayed his race; it was a black who betrayed the group's bounty of moral leverage over whites. And now comes Mr. Obama, who became the first viable black presidential candidate precisely by giving up his moral leverage over whites.

This is somewhat different than what many people assumed was really the cause for Jackson's outburst against Obama, that is, simple, or maybe not so simple, jealousy.

Black America has seen this movie before. There was the rivalry between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois at the start of the 20th Century. That contest was based partly on ideology as to the best way for African Americans to advance in a racist nation. But it was also personal.

Later, any number of civil-rights leaders like Roy Wilkens of the NAACP and Whitney M. Young of the Urban League were thought to be jealous of Martin Luther King Jr. for, in their view, not having paid sufficient dues and for giving short shrift to their organizations' civil-rightsefforts.

Given this, it's curious that Steele doesn't mention jealousy as a possible reason for Jackson's raw feelings expressed over that "hot mike."