To hear some of the talk, Barack Obama's overseas campaign swing is risky political business.
The idea that there's a lot at stake in his trip to Europe and the Middle East is likely to get amped over the next few days. The threat, however small, that he'll commit a horrendous gaffe is one way to hype interest in the story. It also helps justify the remarkable decision by the TV networks to send their top news anchors along for the ride.
Experienced campaign strategists hoot at the negative chatter. They see Obama's venture as relatively low-risk - and a public relations windfall for the Democratic candidate, thanks to juiced-up television exposure.
"Nothing works more effectively in reinforcing the notion that somebody's an international leader than international travel," says Bill Carrick, a Democratic consultant in Los Angeles who is not working in the campaign. He dismisses dire predictions about the trip as "cocktail party nonsense."
For the record, here's a bit of the stuff being tossed about on both sides of the Atlantic:
European adulation for Obama will make him the continent's poodle. To voters back home, he could come off as elitist, more European than American (though, shades of Incurious George, he's apparently spent just 24 hours in Western Europe over the past 10 years).
He may weaken his shaky image among those independent swing voters who live bitter lives in working-class towns. Many already regard him as a suspiciously foreign anyway and could resent the rest of the world telling them whom to elect.
It didn't help John Kerry in '04 that he spoke fluent French and captured Europe's heart as that year's anti-Bush. And what about that notion that politics is supposed to stop at this country's shores?
"Let's drop the pretense that this is a fact-finding trip," Jill Hazelbaker, campaign spokeswoman for John McCain, said on Fox the other day. "Call it what it is: the first-of-its-kind campaign rally overseas."
Exactly.
The centerpiece of the journey is Thursday's speech in Germany, an apparently unprecedented decision to stage a U.S. presidential campaign crowd event on foreign soil.
Even before Obama clinched the nomination, Germans viewed him as "the new Kennedy." Over the next few days, that notion is likely to get conveyed to American voters, which is precisely what Obama wants.
