Auditioning For President

by Steve Soto

AP photo

While both Democratic candidates toss around asinine explanations on what they meant in their latest pie fight, John McCain takes a foreign tour aimed at helping voters visualize him already as Bush’s successor. Team McCain is running down the field unopposed right now to cement in place a narrative of inevitability as the next president, knowing that Hillary and Obama will consume each other and allow the passport file story to grab several more news cycles of their attention.

Simply put, the Democrats are stuck playing "small ball" with each other while McCain is allowed to focus on generating good pictures for the folks back home, with Joe Lieberman along in every frame to put a sheen of phony bipartisanship on McCain's effort.

Obama isn't going to win Pennsylvania no matter what he does, nor will Hillary catch him. Both Hillary and McCain benefit from every day that Obama spends dealing with her ankle-biting instead of portraying himself as a world leader to counter McCain's certain argument against him. He could benefit far more by carving out a week for his own grand European tour, generating photo ops and his share of pictures shaking hands with world leaders, being visualized as a president getting rock star treatment in direct contrast to McCain. Rather than let Hillary tie him down in meaningless brick throwing, Obama needs for people here at home to see him as a possible president on a world stage, reminding Europe that McCain advocates more of the same vision-less Iraq policy, no matter what he says differently about global warming and torture. Obama needs to show Europe, the world, and American voters here at home what a new direction overseas looks like with a new forward-looking leader at the helm, perhaps with Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd by your side.

Perception is everything, and pictures tell the story far better than words. Senator Obama, pull yourself away from battling Hillary and start running against McCain now.