WASHINGTON — MIDNIGHT, JULY 31

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has always seemed to fit more of Barack Obama’s needs as a running mate than any other potential candidate under consideration.

Not the least of which because his name not only fits on a bumper sticker, but it makes marketing magic in the overt and subliminal messaging.

OBAMA-KAINE

In one’s mind it unmistakably reads Obama CAN…Yes, I know there’s long E at the end there, but it still works. Obama CAN. He Kaine (Can) bring change. He Kaine (Can) bring hope. He Kaine (Can) win Virginia — crucial if the first two are EVER going to get done.

But it also works as an initial combination: OK in ‘08.

Of course you can see it now….the buttons, the bumper stickers, the posters, the banners, the hats, the T-shirts, the shoe-laces, the I-Phone covers, the face tattoos (most temporary, some not).

Other variations immediately assert themselves: Obama-Kaine: OK for Change; Obama-Kaine: OK on Hope; Change is OK with me!; I’m OK with Hope!; I’m OK, they’re OK!; Obama-Kaine, They’re OK by Me!

The mind boggles.

And if domain names such as these aren’t already snapped up…………………………………………………………….

But I digress.

I’m not suggesting this is the most important criterion for a Veep pick. But it’s one you have to at least think about.

Take Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana for example. He passes many tests with flying colors (Sentorial chops, national security experience, ties to vanquished Clinton empire, and an excellent rep with the political media).

But I wonder about the bumper sticker:

OBAMA-BAYH

Don’t you think Republicans would immediately turn that into: OBAMA-BYE!!!!

I think they might. Not that this would prove fatal. But it might be something to consider.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is also a top contender, and why not? She’s a solid governor, has red state popularity, Obama grew up in Kansas, and she’s a woman who might appeal to Hillary backers.

But, again, the sticky bumper sticker issues raises its gluey head (or frayed paper edge):

OBAMA-SEBELIUS

That’s seven vowels, six consonants and seven syllables. It would barely fit on most bumpers and would probably need a bigger font size just so the vowels don’t get all squeezed together. And as Americans shift from SUV bumpers to sedan bumpers, the font size on your bumper sticker is nothing not to brake for — if you get my meaning. Also, say it out loud to yourself: OBAMA-SEBELIUS.

Can’t you hear the Republican bumper sticker rejoinder: OBAMA R U SERIOUS?

I don’t know if any of these GOP bumper answers would actually surface. But I’m still stuck on how the GOP turned Gore-Lieberman into Sore-Loserman. Based on that creation, I don’t think I’m violating rules of poetic or political license by suggesting the Republican syllabic smashups outlined so far.

What about Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware? He really hits the foreign policy, senatorial suave, TV-savvy and media-friendly buttons. And the Obama-Biden bumper sticker is not overwhelming in terms of syllables (5), vowels (5) or consonants (5).

But I still think Republicans could do something with it. Something like: OB = Oh, Brother!, or OB = Off Balance, or Give BO the Heave-Ho!

Maybe, maybe not?

I’ve tried to come up with a GOP revision of Obama-Kaine and all I came up with was OBAMA-Kaine’T, which would read, of course, OBAMA-CAIN’T.

But I thought that wouldn’t work because it would beg the question, can’t (ahem, CAIN’T) what? Can’t win, can’t govern, can’t hit a three-pointer under tough two-guard pressure?

No political party worth its salt or sarcasm would permit such existential musings – on the freeway or anywhere else. And certainly not on buttons, hats or yard signs. Can you imagine if a yard sign proved an indirect path to existential self-inspection? Not only would no one’s lawn ever be moved, there might be all variety of vehicular house invasions.

No. Obama-Kaint’T simply won’t do.

What about Hillary Clinton?

We all know why that can’t work.

If the printer doesn’t reverse the names, most of her supporters will.

We’ll see if Obama and Kaine have a zest for bumper sticker marketing. If not, at least I hope they have a taste and tolerance for weak, late-night political satire.

WASHINGTON — 9:30 p.m. EDT

Several blog posts on Sen. Barack Obama’s prayer note from his pre-dawn visit Thursday to the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Officially, Obama’s traveling press secretary Jen Psaki denies the campaign in any way cleared release or pre-released Obama’s prayer note. Informally, I discussed this matter with Psaki in London before Obama’s press conference. She seemed genuinely unnerved and upset about publication of the prayer note. That doesn’t prove anything, I know. But I wanted to add that as a bit of context.

Here are today’s posts on this subject.

http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2Q1ZTYzMjQzYWRlYjAyZTc2ZGMxNjM0NWEwZWU0ZTk

http://www.redstate.com/diaries/redstate/2008/jul/28/obama-leaked-his-prayer-to-press-before-he-di/

I post this under the heading of FYI. I know from comments to my previous posts that some of you had suspicions. At this point, no one appears to know exactly what happened. But as many of you also mentioned in earlier comments, Obama and God know what happened and for both that’s all that really matters.

WASHINGTON — 9 p.m. EDT

I wanted to throw out for consideration and debate a question I’ve found myself asking Democrats, Republicans, Independents and economists for years: who is in the middle class?

In the 1990s, the answers I received were almost entirely linked to income figures – the income of a family of four, or three or of a single person in his or her twenties, or an elderly person on a fixed income determined how close or how far they were from “middle class” status.

About the time of millennium, I began to notice that the answer to who was “middle class” began to change from relatively precise figures to very broad income strata. It was as if politicians — particularly at the national level — began to believe that incomes varied as widely as the core cost of living. Therefore, an income designation, for example, linked to the U.S. Census Bureau definition of median or mean income for an individual or family, would no longer work as a means of defining with precision who was or was not middle class.

In other words, individuals or families in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston or other high-cost urban areas could earn three times the median or mean family income and still feel strapped by month-to-month costs.

In other words, middle class status seemed over time to be less rooted in specific income figures, but regional differences in income and cost-of-living. It also seemed to reflect a sense among politicians and some economists that “middle class” is not just a matter of figures, but also a state of mind.

At my suggestion, my colleague Bill Hemmer was kind of enough to ask Sen. Barack Obama in London how he defined the middle class.

Here is the transcript of that exchange:

HEMMER: You mentioned the economy. You travel back to the U.S. this weekend. You’re going back to a country with a limping economy, “ailing,” I think, is one of the words The Economist used at the end of last week.

You have suggested that taxes will be raised on some Americans. You have also suggested that taxes will be lowered for some Americans. In a limping or an ailing economy, why raise taxes on anyone?

OBAMA: Well, the — because we also have a $400 billion or so budget deficit, because we’ve also got to invest in infrastructure. We’ve got to deal with the fact that a lot more people are unemployed and are going to need unemployment benefits. We’ve got to shore up the housing market because people are experiencing foreclosures.

And that’s why I’ve structured a change in the tax code where if you are making $150,000 a year or less, you’re getting a tax cut, 95 percent of the American families will get a tax cut.

HEMMER: What do you consider…

OBAMA: And the people who are going to see their income taxes raised, go up, are making more than $250,000 a year. So you and I will pay a little bit more in taxes because we can afford it. And what that allows us to do is to help the vast majority of Americans who are really hurting in this economy.

HEMMER: I know we’re pushed for time. Can you give me a definition of the middle class based on income, within a range?

OBAMA: You know, what I would say is, if you are making more than $250,000, than you’re more than middle class. You’re doing better. If you are making less than $250,000, then you are definitely somewhere in the middle class.

And if you’re making $150,000 or less, than I think most Americans would agree that you’re middle class. So that’s why the fact that if you are making less than $250,000, you will not see your taxes go up under an Obama administration. And you will get tax cuts and more money in your pocket if you make less $150,000.

I think that’s the right way to promote the kind of bottom-up economic growth that’s going to make a difference in people’s lives.

 Here is how the government tabulates two different types of mid-point incomes in America. The Census Bureau calculates median income (the precise mid-point between all tabulated incomes) and the mean income (the average of all the tabulated incomes) of families and individuals. The figures below are for families and individuals for 2006.

(Source: Census Bureau: Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006, http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf and Current Population Survey: Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) Supplement, http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032007/faminc/new07_000.htm)

WASHINGTON — 8:30 p.m. EDT –

Still a bit jet-lagged, but wanted to share a headline from an Obamacampaign economic policy conference call. The call occurred after Obama  met with a high-voltage group of economic advisers from government, labor and the private sector.

On the call, The Bourbon Room got in the last question. I asked why Obama had declared in his opening remarks before the meeting began that the U.S. economy was in a state of “emergency” and what the group thought the number one priority was in addressing this economic emergency.

You can read the roster of economic figures who met with Obama at the end of this post.

More importantly, I wanted to share with you what Laura Tyson, former President Clinton’s head of the Council of Economic Advisers, said the group talked about in the context of a U.S. economy in the midst of an emergency.

I found her remarks incredibly sobering and prescient. Less than an hour after the conference call ended, Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. reported a $5.7 billion 3rd quarter write-down and said it would seek to raise $8.5 billion by selling new stock.

The investment banker and brokerage firm posted a $4.9 billion 2nd quarter loss and a $9 billion write-down, much of the pain linked to instability in the housing market and the foreclosure crisis. In announcing its stock sale, Merrill Lynch said the state-owned Singapore firm, Temasek Holdings, would purchase $3.4 billion of Merrill’s stock. Management announced it would also buy $750,000 of the Merrill stock.

Here is Tyson’s verbatim take, from the conference call, on what those in Obama’s economic forum were most worried about. I’ve italicized the most compelling parts.

“We discussed in the meeting two different  – they are related, obviously — but two different conditions that are of grave concern.

One is the state of the financial markets. We had a lot of discussion about what has transpired so far, about uncertainty going forward. There are a number of people from the financial markets at the meeting. No one feels that we know for sure that there aren’t other bank failures out there, that no one feels for sure that we have, uh, seen a solution yet to the potential down-ward cycle of falling home prices, falling asset values in financial institutions, unwillingness of financial institutions to lend, credit contraction, further falling housing prices bringing in prime real estate, bringing in credit card debt, etc.

The other area was —  we talked about how that was affecting demand. The primary driver of demand has been consumption. Americans are really very hard-pressed. They are hard-pressed by higher energy prices. They are hard-pressed by falling wealth in their houses. They’re hard-pressed by rising unemployment rates. They are hard-pressed because the expansion we’ve just gone through didn’t generate real income growth for the median worker and the median family. 

Those two issues, and they’re not separate, they’re related, were the focus of much of what we talked about. The stimulus package of course — is designed  – we’ve got to do something to try to put a floor on the falling housing prices, which this new housing bill can do, to some extent.

And we have to do something to help the consumer continue to spend, albeit at a reduced rate. We talked about a variety of different ways that one could add stimulus. There was a discussion about what size of the stimulus should be. Sen. Obama has suggested about $50 billion dollars. There was quite a strong consensus that infrastructure should be a part of it. Those were the kinds of issues that we talked about. That’s where the sense of emergency came from in looking at those two related sets of issues.”

That was what was on the minds of the following economic heavyweights who attended today’s Obama economic conference:

·         Jared Bernstein (Senior Economist, Economic Policy Institute)

·         Bill Bradley (Former Senator, D-N.J., U.S. Senate 1979-1997)

·         Warren Buffet (Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway) – joined the meeting by phone

·         Anna Burger (Chair, Change to Win; International Secretary-Treasurer, Service Employees International Union)

·         Jon Corzine (Governor, State of New Jersey)

·         William Daley (Chairman of the Midwest, JP Morgan Chase; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Commerce, 1997-2000)

·         James Dimon(Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase)

·         William Donaldson (27^th Chairman of the SEC 2003-2005)

·         Indra Nooyi (Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo Inc.)

·         Paul O’Neill(Special Advisor, Blackstone Group, Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 2001-2002; Former CEO, Alcoa)

·         Federico Peña(Managing Director, Vestar Capital Partners; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Energy, 1997-1998; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Transportation, 1993-1997; Former Mayor, City of Denver 1983-1991)

·         Penny Pritzker (CEO, Classic Residence by Hyatt)

·         Robert Reich (University of California, Berkeley; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Labor, 1993-1997)

·         Robert Rubin(Chairman andDirector of the Executive Committee, Citigroup; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1995-1999)

·         Eric Schmidt(Chairman and CEO, Google)

·         William Spriggs (Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics, Howard University)

·         Lawrence Summers (Harvard University; Managing Director, D.E. Shaw; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1999-2001)

·         John Sweeney (President, AFL-CIO)

·         Laura Tyson(Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; Former Chairman, National Economic Council, 1995-1996; Former Chairman, President’s Council of Economic Advisors, 1993-1995)

·         Paul Volcker

LONDON — 2:30 AM LOCAL TIME

There’s a heady feeling in the upper reaches of Barack Obama’s campaign, but not because of what the freshman senator has accomplished in an eight-day trip nearly around the world.

Yes, senior Obama officials believe, Obama acquitted himself ably in a trip that they divide into three component parts: war, peace, and trans-Atlantic aspirations.

They assert Obama navigated Afghanistan and Iraq well, drawing new-found emphasis on the need for more US and NATO troops there — even winning the unqualified commitment from French President Nicolas  Sarkozy for Europe to step up to the plate in that theatre of conflict.

Obama officials also say the push from Iraqi politicians for troop withdrawal schedules roughly in line with his (with the exception of Sunni chieftains who still fret about a rapid US exit). The language of “aspiration time horizons” agreed upon by Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and the Bush White House also gave Obama a glide-path in Iraq on the question of troop movements and nothing on they trip, they believe undercut that opening advantage

In Europe, Obama drew a huge crowd in Berlin and ebullient praise from Sarkozy.

Obama aides expect smooth-sailing here in Britain as the politically floundering Prime Minister Gordon Brown may well try to bask in the glow of Obama, a mere candidate for high office as Brown struggles against sagging poll numbers and recent election setbacks.

“The trip spotlights Obama’s judgment, skill and expertise in navigating very difficult foreign policy, national security issues,” a top Obama hand said. “It shows also how he has a strong team around him but how he clearly leads and sets direction.”

All this feels good in the upper reaches of the Obama brain trust.

But that’s not what has spirits so high in the Hyatt Regency Churchill hotel with an elegant bronze bust of Sir Winston in its wide, marble-floored and high-ceiling lobby.

What has them so enthused in what can only be described as a series of self-inflicted wounds on what before this week was indisputably John McCain’s strongest suit – his ability to talk persuasively about the way to win the war on terror in the twin battles of Iraq and Afghanistan.

McCain made several errors this week in matters fundamental to understanding how and when both wars began and finished the week coming within a hair of embracing Obama’s 16-month timetable for US troop withdrawals.

In the kinetic world of instant blog posts and furious back-and-forth between campaigns fighting like terriers on steroids over every miscue – real or imagined – it is sometimes hard to measure the damage done over the course of a week.

The Obama’s inner circle, they believe McCain set himself back not only with the general public but also with top-flight Republicans who will have to try to clean up McCain’s national security debris.

Here is what team Obama means.

* On July 21st, McCain said on Good Morning America that the situation was tough in Afghanistan, particularly, he said, “given the struggle on the Iraq-Pakistan border.”

* On July 22 in an interview Katie Couric of CBS, McCain said the troop surge President Bush ordered in January 2007 and which didn’t reach maximum tactical deployment for months after led to the so-called Sunni awakening or uprising against Al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists. While the surge no doubt gave greater confidence to Sunnis over time, the awakening began in the fall of 2006 with the moves against AI Qaeda by a collection of high-profile tribal sheiks.

* On July 23, McCain said the surge wasn’t really about more troops, but counter-insurgency tactics. And yet the political credit McCain seeks for the turn-around in Iraq is based principally on his advocacy if the surge – meaning more troops to carry out counter-insurgency missions. To say the surge wasn’t really about more troops undercuts much of McCain has tried to tell the public about what has changed in Iraq and why.

* On July 24th, McCain called Iraq “the first major conflict since 9/11.” Tell that to Hamid Karzai, current President of Afghanistan and brought to power by the US-led defeat of the Taliban in the months immediately following 9/11.

* And Friday on CNN, McCain said 16 months for a troop withdrawal from Iraq is “a pretty good timetable.” His campaign said McCain meant it was good so long as conditions on the ground warranted troop withdrawals. But the damage was done. Just check the profusion of blog posts in the hours immediately after the CNN interview with McCain.

The Obama campaign and the DNC is preparing an easy-to-follow guide to these McCain fumbles to assist any and all Obama surrogates in the coming debate over national security, Iraq or Afghanistan. Contrasting one or more of these against McCain’s contention that he alone “knows how to win wars” is likely to become a familiar TV jousting tactic.

The Obama camp believes, whether it’s true or not, that the massive publicity the senator’s trip inspired rattled and frustrated McCain.

The Obama team knew McCain and his allies would sift every word, gesture and footstep on the world stage for any blunder. Obama’s team believes the senator made no clear-cut mistakes and that McCain did, meaning they turned the tables at a time when McCain and the GOP were hoping for Obama to stumble.

“Some people watched the trip from sidelines waiting for a big mistake or a diplomatic blunder” said a senior Obama adviser. “It didn’t happen, frustrating the McCain camp which then escalated their rhetoric and lobbed increasingly desperate attacks.”

All of this is, of course, largely tactical and subject to interpretation. Polling data this week from Fox and Gallup showed little or no “bounce” for Obama and Quinnipiac surveys in key battleground states revealed some tightening of the race in McCain’s favor.

But Obama’s crew believes they earned points in their own right and McCain cost himself points that will take time and effort to win back as the national security and foreign policy debate continues.

(Note: Many of you have complained that this is a lousy transcript full of typos and other problems. I accept full responsiblity and apologize. This is a transcript derived from campaign embeds who type it out feverishly on the plane, always on a blackberry where typos are common, and then blast e-mail it to reporters covering the campaign. I received this transcript and hurriedly tried to proof it before posting it. I wanted to post it as quickly as possible becuase I wanted to give full voice to Obama’s side of the story. I appreciate there are cleaner transcripts out there. That puts me at a competitive disadvantage and I’ve hurt myself with this sloppy posting. Please understand I have no help with transcripts or other material for this blog and I post between live shots, script writing and radio reports. It gets a bit hectic. And for those critical of posts on this issue at all, what I have tried to do is provide information about a public disagreement between Obama and the Pentagon on a topic that may prove interesting to some. I’m not trying to flog this issue or editorialize, but simply provide all of the information I’ve obtained from the interested parties. In that pursuit, I posted a garbled transcript and that was a mistake. Please accept my apologies.) 

Robert Gibbs, a senior communications adviser to the Obama campaign, briefed reporters on the plane today. I just received this transcript as I am in London, having leap-frogged ahead due to requirements for live shots here. 

This is the full transcript about the Obama camp’s perspective on the back-and-forth with the Pentagon about the canceled visit to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Q: Do you think the Pentagon set you up?

Gibbs: No.

Q: The statement that you sent out said it was the senator’s judgment to not go visit…

Gibbs: The statement that I sent out and the statement that General Gration sent out are consistent in that what General Gration learned from the Pentagon that the trip from Ramstein to Landstuhl would be viewed as a campaign stop. The decision that Sen. Obama made with that information was that we would not put our wounded men and women in that position of being involved in a campaign stop and therefore he made the decision not to make the stop.

Q: Inaudible question

Gibbs: Based on the information that we received from the Pentagon that the environment of, anybody on the staff that was related to the campaign, including General Gration, (who is) a two-star general and two-sate Air Force (general). This apparatus that would have flown us to Ramstein, campaign advance people that the trip would be viewed as a campaign stop. He could go as a U.S. Senator ok. But it was pretty clear from the people at the Pentagon that the trip would be seen as a campaign stop.

Q: Inaudible question:

Gibbs: Given the information that we had received, Senator Obama had made the decision that we were not going to have wounded men and women become involved in a campaign event or one that might be perceived as a campaign event. So he made the decision that we wouldn’t go.

Q: How is the Pentagon perception different than just the set of facts? You are saying that the Pentagon told you in what it perceived as a campaign stop. Why is the Pentagon’s perception what governs your decision rather than actually what happens and you perception? Because there is no change in facts?

Gibbs: They pointed out, they interpreted their rules to denote that this would be a campaign event.

Q: So there was an official determination made

Gibbs: Yes

Q; How were those determinations made?

Gibbs: the point of the contact for General Gration, I don’t have exact names, but was legislative affairs for the office of Secretary of  Defense.

Q: How was that determination made, the official designation that this would be a campaign stop?

Gibbs: Let me check and see if the word  “official designation” was the accurate word. They cited regulation. Again and here’s what governed our making of choices, was the perception that anything, that we would be doing anything that would put our wounded men and women in the position of rightly or wrongly for whatever the determination into a situation where the back and forth would mean that this looks like a campaign event. As you know, several weeks ago Sen. Obama  made a visit to Walter Reed. He did it very quietly, as you all will remember. On Monday, Sen. Obama stopped into a combat support hospital in the green zone of Baghdad, some of you may have seen the show on HBO called Baghdad ER, that was this hospital. We had every intention of stopping at this hospital and we had no intention of not making it. And quite frankly, that even in the event we were going to be that forthcoming about what happened. It was his desire and continuing desire to visit the men and women that have served our country and sacrificed.

Q: Can I ask you- can we forget about the Pentagon for a minute. When did Obama decide to go visit Ramstein?

Gibbs: Denis (McDonough, a senior foreign policy adviser) made a call, Denis and Gration made calls when we landed. We determined when we were in the air that we weren’t going to do this.

Q: When did you originally decide to go?

Gibbs: I have to get you an exact date but it has been on the schedule for a long time.

Q: Did it not occur to anybody that this might be viewed as a political stop?

Gibbs: We had taken some of that into consideration, but we believed that it could be done in a way that would not create, it would not be created or seen as a campaign stop.

Q: The schedule was for this plane, with us in it, to fly to Ramstein. By the way we were expected to pay for the flight, what were you suppose to do with the entourage then?

Gibbs: You would have stayed on the plane.

Q: We would have stayed on the plane, would there have been any pool report?

Gibbs: there may have been, I don’t know if we ever came to a decision on that.

Q: Inaudible question

Gibbs: Here is what I understand and I will double check this. Sen. Obama could have gone and seen anybody from Illinois. As a United States Senator from Illinois, that is what I understand. But let me be clear. We believed that based on the information we received that any, we believed that any presence even his own and only his own would get into a back and forth about wether or not even his own presence was a campaign event. That is what caused us not, to decide that we would not put our troops in that position and ended up not going.

Q: If you had not made this decision, the decision that you did, was there (inaudible)

Gibbs: We made a determination based on the information that we had that we did not feel comfortable getting to a point where that might be a case.

Q: Robert when did you tell the Pentagon that you were going to make this decision?

Gibbs: I have to get back to you. It has been on schedules for as long as I know.

Q: But when did the Pentagon actually know?

Gibbs: For a number of weeks.

Q: For a number of weeks they’ve known that you are planning to do this?

Gibbs: Yes.

Q: And when did they tell you that it would be a campaign event?

Gibbs: General Gration received information sometime on Wednesday evening.

Q: Was that the first time you had been warned of this? Had you gotten any informal prior?

Gibbs: I don’t know what to make of it other than, again, when that came up as a potential we decided at that point, or not too long after that point, we just didn’t want to put people in an awkward position.

Q: And when you made those plans, who did you deal with at the Pentagon?

Gibbs: Again our point of contact throughout this has been the legislative affairs office of the Secretary of Defense.

Q: And it is several weeks ago you said?

Gibbs: Let me find out the exact, see if I can get a better date. It is not something that was added in the last few days.

Q: Why not just say it is never inappropriate to visit men and women in service- what is your response to that?

Gibbs: Again I would reiterate that we would not want to put anybody who had been wounded in service to our country in the potential position to be part of the political back-and-forth. Let me finish the question.  It is entirely likely that someone would have attacked us for having gone and it is entirely likely and it has come about that people have attacked us for not going. We decided, Sen.  Obama decided having made that decision he was far more willing to take the criticism from some political people or political opponents in a political atmosphere than to put our troops in the middle of our campaitn back-and-forth. That is the decision we made and we are comfortable with it.

Q: on Wednesday was the first time you had heard from Pentagon that there might be an issue (inaudible)

Gibbs: We got guidance that the involvement of General Gration that having had people obviously campaign apparatus like a plane go there. Again we are landing at an air force base, we are not landing at a public airport and that the involvement of staff of making the movements, some of those movements possible was to be perceieved as a campaign event.

Q: Did that lead to a prohibition on the visit

Gibbs; We believe it led us to a prohibition on the visit from the perception that this was going to be viewed by some as a campaign visit.

Q: inaudible question.

Gibbs:  As I understand it, and I will double-check on this that what we were told is that he could visit in a capacity as a senator of Illinois and see people in the facility that might be there from Illinois.

Q: And you would have been able to make the trip?

Gibbs: Yes, but hold on let me be very clear, we believe that at that point whether or not he could go in any capacity would be seen and viewed by the Pentagon and it would be transmitted to others as a campaign event. At that point Sen. Obama decided that that was not a position that we wer e going to put troops in and therefore.

Q: Inaudible question.

Gibbs: We believe that his presence would have been perceived as a campaign event. Based on the fact that there was any iota of chance that this could be perceived as a campaign event we decided not to risk putting our men and women who had been put in harms way in the middle of what was going to be perceived as a campaign event.

Q: Senator Obama was comfortable making the trip (inaudible) the Pentagon communicated otherwise and ….so they believed you could do this trip appropriately.

Gibbs: We believe we didn’t want to put anyone in the position of it being perceived as a campaign event. Therefore we decided that we would not go.

Q: Had advance people already gone out to the place to set up?

Gibbs: Let me double check on that, I believe I know the answer but, I don’t want to give something that is incorrect.

Q; I just want to make sure that if you did have some advance people there is no other indication?

Gibbs: Again I think that is true but I want to check on it.

Q: the point is if the Pentagon

Gibbs: You are asking me if we would have gotten previous notice than Wednesday night.

Q: Those guys must of known days ahead of time that you were planning on coming.

Q: Inaudible question.

Gibbs: This is all local time in Germany we made the decision in the air to not go. In the air from Tel Aviv, we talked about this on the ground, it was a very quick decision and as far, and I will double check this, I believe the call was made once we landed that we were not going to go.

Q: Who made that call?

Gibbs:  I have to check on that.

Q: No from yesterday?

Gibbs: I don’t remember it would have been, I cant remember what time wee landed in Berlin it would have been 10- 10:30 ish.

Q: Do you think that does create awkwardish for the troops that this has become such a political?

Gibbs: Yes and we sought to minimize that by not going because it is pretty clear that, I mean even now going would have been we are in the middle of a campaign back-and-forth and he enjoys visitng the troops. He did it most recently in Baghdad, we did it not long ago at Walter Reed and we simply weren’t going to put, we did not want to put anybody in that position.

Q: Inaudible question.

Gibbs: Let me double check but I assume that, you know we were planning on going up until very recently. I mean this was not a surprise, I don’t think this would have been categorized as a surprise.

Q: Inaudible question.

Gibbs; I will double check but I believe that we were under the impression that we were going to go.

END OF TRANSCRIPT ON LANDSTUHL

LONDON — 6:15 p.m. local time

This story is generating tremendous interest. Obama planned, but did not officially announce, a trip in Germany to Landstuhl  Medical Center, a hospital and treatment facility for injured U.S. military personnel near Ramstein Air Base. Landstuhl is the largest overseas medical facility operated by the Pentagon and is the principal treatment and early recuperation setting for those injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama called off the trip Thursday. At first, the campaign said it did not want to be accused of visiting the wounded troops as part of an overseas trip financed by the senator’s presidential campaign, fearing it would  be received and subsequently criticized as using the wounded as campaign props.

The McCain campaign quickly criticized Obama, asserting it is never inappropriate to visit wounded U.S. military personnel and Obama’s concerns about political attacks were unfounded.

The Obama campaign then said it was told by the Pentagon that the trip would be “perceive” as political and that became the basis for its decision to scuttle the trip.

The Pentagon denied this on-the-record and in a letter it sent to Obama before the senator canceled the Landstuhl visit.

To give everyone curious the full sequence of the statements on this matter, I list them here in their entirety and in chronological order.

Here is the first statement on the matter from Senior Obama Communications Adviser, Robert Gibbs:

“During his trip as part of the CODEL (congressional delegation trip) 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 troops. 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.”

Following McCain’s criticism Obama’s campaign released this statement from traveling military adviser, Maj. Gen. Scott Gration (USAF retired):

“Senator Obama had hoped to and every intention of visiting our troops to express his appreciation and gratitude for their service to our country.

We learned from the Pentagon last night that the visit would be viewed instead as a campaign event. Senator Obama did not want to have a trip to see our wounded warriors perceived as a campaign event when his visit was to show his appreciation for our troops and decided instead not to go.”

Today, Brian Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the following:

“As a sitting senator he obviously has an official interest in the well-being of our service members and how the wounded and ill are being treated and certainly is welcome to visit a military medical center any time that he wants. As you all know, we do have certain policy guidelines for political campaigns and elections and what is appropriate and what is not appropriate int those situations, but the Pentagon certainly did not tell the senator that he could not visit Landstuhl.”

Whitman was asked if the Pentagon said the visit would be “inappropriate”

“The issue here is that if you are both a sitting senator and a political candidate — when you are doing things like a visit to Landstuhl you need to do it in your capacity as a sitting senator or you have to do it with restrictions that apply to any other candidate out there that might be running for office that is not a sitting senator. So you have to be able to draw that distinction.

Whitman was then asked what restrictions apply to candidates.

“The military tries very had not to get involved in political campaigns. There are certain activities that are not appropriate — conducting a campaign speech, for example, on a military installation is not something that would be appropriate to do. You also have the issue when you visit any hospital — you have issues of patient privacy.

Whitman was then asked who was involved in discussions with Obama’s campaign.

“It wasn’t here. My understanding is either EUCOM (European Command) or Landstuhl themselves. We learned a few days ago that there was some interest in Sen. Obama going to Landstuhl and all we did was simply remind people that Sen. Obama is a sitting senator, and his visit would need to be done consistent with a sitting senator.”

Lastly, the Pentagon released this letter today from the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and REadiness, David Chu, that explained the guidelines for Obama’s potential visit. It was sent, the Pentagon said, to commanders at EUCOM (European Command) and top officials at Landstuhl.

The guidelines were listed as:

1. You can land at Landstuhl and any/all media can cover your arrival and departure.

2. You will only be allowed at the Hospital with ONE SENATE staffer and appropriate security.

3. The only media allowed to follow into the hospital would be a military still photographer. The photographer would have potentially shot pictures of Obama with hospital staffers, members of the military and any patients that would want to participate.

That’s the official back-and-forth. Obama has just finished his press conference with French President Sarkozy and will soon be here. More posts upon his arrival.

LONDON — 5 p.m local time

If I hadn’t  been to the Western Wall myself on Wednesday, I wouldn’t have believed anyone would actually remove a prayer not from the wall and have its contents reproduced in a Jerusalem newspaper. (Just to clarify in response to some comments already. I went to the Wall alone just before noon local time on Wedensday. It was not part of the Obama trip to the Wall).

But such is the case with Barack Obama’s prayer note, left after he visited the wall in the pre-dawn hours Thursday. Were this information not already a part of the public record in the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv, I would not reproduce it here. But interest in every Obama movement is high and the prayer itself is in its own way profound, compelling and gentle.

Here it is:

Lord -

Protect my family and me. Forgive my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.

The note was written on a “King David” piece of paper and published on Ma’ariv’s front page today.

It took Obama quite some time to wedge his prayer note in one of the few available cracks in the Western Wall. That someone who dare remove it would have seemed impossible to me had I not experienced first hand the disconcerting behavior of those in and around the Wall.

As I approached, I was immediately set upon by various petitioners who sought to “pray” for me and did so without my approval. I was then led into an adjacent library where scholars study the Torah. I was met by another man who placed a string around my wrist and said another unrequested prayer. Both men essentially cornered me in the library until I produced what little cash I had.

I then ventured to the Wall for I hoped would be a moment of solitude, contemplation and prayer. But as soon as I stopped before the Wall, I was immediately asked for money. Honestly, no sooner had I closed my eyes, leaned toward the Wall and set my forehead gently upon it, a man came up to me, shouted that I should tell him my name and proceeded, without my permission, to carry on with a “prayer,” not a word of which I could understand. Upon finishing, he demanded money and kept up his demands until I fairly had to shout that I was out of money, having already given it all to those who had just badgered me in the library adjacent to the Wall.

Based on this experience, I can say that I found this profound place of history, religion, prayer and magneticism to be less accommodating to solitude than a public restroom.

And it is therefore no surprise  to me that someone would desecrate Obama’s prayer note — a private message from one human being to his God — and disrespect not only Obama, but Obama’s God, and the fragile, imperfect  — and one would think private – human pursuit of faith.

LONDON — 3 p.m. local time

I apologize for note posting more. the travel schedule has been a bit hectic and TV requirements necessarily kept me away from the blog.

So much has been said about Obama’s speech. I wanted to offer a slightly different angle than I’ve heard so far and throw it out for debate.

Obama spoke of the rich and courageous history of Berlin. As he did so, he may have helped  educate a generation largely raised without a living memory of the Cold War or, at best, a dim memory of what it was, a sense of how long the struggle lasted and what the victory meant.

It’s an important lesson, one I fear may have been lost on many in a crowd so obviously taken with Obama’s personal charisma and political acumen. By the looks of the crowd and by the analysis of many German reporters who were there, I think it’s fair to say most who came to see Obama would identify themselves as liberals or social progressives. The loud applause for Obama’s line about ridding the world of nuclear weapons seems at least partial confirmation.

A generation ago, I suspect, many of the Europeans we came to see Obama yesterday would have either passionately or at least notionally identified themselves with the massive protest movement against NATO’s decision in 1983 to deploy Pershing II and Cruise missiles in Germany and England. This move, originally contemplated in the late 1970s, was NATO’s response to Soviet deployment of intermediate range SS-20 missiles, nuclear weapons capable of hitting every major capital in Europe.

The debate in Europe spawned anti-nuke protests in the U.S. and in many quarters on the American and European Left the deployments appeared to be both risky and provactive. Those who most aggressively pushed for them Gemrman Chancellor Helmut Kohl, British Prime Minister Magaret Thatcher and President Reagan saw the deployments in exactly the opposite light. The NATO deployments, Reagan, Thatcher and Kohl believed, were an essential signal to the Soviets that the West would not be intimidated and that despite public misgivings, NATO could summon the grit to call the Soviet bluff.

NATO deployed the Pershing II and Cruise missiles to force the Soviets back to the negotiating table on nuclear arms reductions. The strategy worked and in 1987 the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty in 1987.

Reagan’s now famous Brandenburg Gate speech summarizes this struggle and the beginnings of a thaw in Soviet behavior under Mikhail Gorbachev. Viewed now, it seems inconceivable that Reagan could have given the speech and its memorable lines — Mister Gorbachev, open this Gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” —  without the NATO deployment of the Pershings and Cruise missiles.

For those interested, here is a link to Reagan’s speech: http://www.reaganlibrary.com/reagan/speeches/wall.asp

I’ve also included a quick bit of history on the “ban-the-bomb” movement: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/the.bomb/opposition/

Here is also a bit of official history of the Pershing Missile:

http://www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/pershing_missiles.asp

I don’t know what Obama thought about the Pershing and Cruise missile deployments or his overall attitude toward this “hard power” move by NATO to confront the Soviets and increase the risks of nuclear confrontation as a bid to increase the West’s negotiating power in arms-reduction talks.

The RNC is currently fascinated with the subject, peppering reporters’ e-mail boxes with posts about a “missing” Obama thesis on U.S.-Soviet disarmament while at Columbia University. The university and Obama’s campaign say the thesis can’t be found.

The thesis, it seems, is less important than what Obama says here and now. Indeed, one of the reasons parts of Obama’s speech fell flat yesterday was that he confronted his adoring hordes with demands to spend more in terms of money and troops to win the war in Afghanistan, a NATO-led effort the senator said, sounding very much like one who understands “hard power” the alliance can’t afford to lose.

The crowd, and you can detect this from watching the speech, did not rise up in applause. Instead, it sat passively, almost inert. That was also the response to Obama’s call for more aggressive European cooperation in dealing with Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Europeans adore Obama’s willingness to negotiate directly with Iran. But Obama warned them that should he win the presidency and those negotiations fail, Europe must be willing to impose far tougher economic sanctions than have heretofore been contemplated. 

Obama could not be more specific than he was on these two issues because he’s not the president. But he pointed a general direction that left his vast and impressive audience cold, at least on the questions Obama has clearly identified as the most important to the future of the war on terror — how does the West win in Afghanistan and how does it keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Iranian regime.

This does not diminish the weight or importance of Obama’s speech. To the contrary, it may make it all the more important. For all the impressive pictures of fawning multitudes at his feet, Obama must confront the possibility, should he be elected, that he could find himself in open conflict with the European Left.

This would make Obama true heir, not just a rhetorical one as he was yesterday, to Reagan’s leadership on the world stage in a time of testing. But unlike Reagan, Obama owes his rise in American politics to the support of liberals who, in the main, opposed Reagan and joined the European Left in opposing his hard-line approach throughout the Cold War.

What Obama’s speech yesterday may have laid the foundation for, then, is a potential clash first with his most ardent supporters as he, if president, mush simultaneously confront the Taliban and Iran. And that may prove an even more formidable political challenge than Reagan faced. A true test of the tinsel strength of the politics of  “hope.”