Obama’s Afghanistan Visit Already Reaping Political Dividends

Although his overseas trip in many ways resembles a political minefield, you can already see how Democratic presumptive Presidential nominee Barack Obama’s overseas trip can earn him political dividends in a news cycle containing stories about him sounding the alarm on the increasingly difficult situation in Afghanistan.

Look at this AP story:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says the situation in Afghanistan “precarious” and “urgent.”

In an interview broadcast Sunday during his first trip to Afghanistan, Obama said the U.S. needs to start planning now to send in more troops. He has called for an additional one to two brigades — or about 7,000 troops — to be sent to Afghanistan to help counter a resurgent Taliban and quell rising violence.

Obama told CBS News that Afghanistan has to be the central focus in the fight against terrorists.

He said the Bush administration allowed itself to be distracted by a “war of choice” but now is the time to correct the mistake.

And look at the Washington Post’s lead:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met here Sunday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, capping the end of a two-day tour of Afghanistan as casualties continued to mount from violence in the war-torn country.

Obama joined Karzai for a “working lunch,” marking the first meeting for the Afghan president and the presumptive Democratic nominee. Obama’s colleagues in the congressional delegation visiting Afghanistan, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), were also at the lunch, said Humayun Hamidzada, Karzai’s chief spokesman. Hamidzada said the nearly two-hour meeting, which was also attended by the heads of Afghanistan’s ministries of defense, foreign affairs and Karzai’s national security adviser, was “positive” and “friendly.”

The politicians discussed a range of topics that included education, health care and the state of the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police force.

The significance?

1. It allows Obama to point out the very real crisis for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

2. He’s sounding the alarm louder and more frequently than political rival Republican Senator John McCain on this issue so far. This means, as more stories about the situation emerge, they will be embedded in the minds of some voters with Obama’s warnings.

3. He’s burnishing his foreign policy creds — even though a short visit overseas does not exactly qualify as a lifetime in foreign policy knowledge or expertise. In terms of imagery, it negates some of what McCain is saying about him. Unless he politically stubs his toe, stories such as this and images on TV will make him imaginable in the eyes of many voters as a Commande- in-Chief.

4. He played basketball with the troops…a game he’s good at. He learned to stay away from bowling alleys…

And press coverage of his trip in Afghanistan shows imagery-shaping in the making:

The International Herald Tribune:

Senator Barack Obama met with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan here on Sunday, the second day of a high-profile foreign trip in a country that is increasingly the focus of his clash with Senator John McCain over whether the war in Iraq has been a distraction in hunting down terrorists.

Even as Obama met privately with American troops, military leaders and Afghan officials in the eastern part of the country on Saturday, McCain was questioning his judgment on foreign policy. In a radio address on Saturday, he said Obama had been wrong about the increase in troops in Iraq, a strategy McCain said should be the basis for addressing deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan as well.

As the American presidential campaign unfolded across borders and time zones, Obama received support from an unexpected corner: Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, told a German magazine that he endorsed the Obama plan to withdraw most American troops in a gradual timeline of 16 months.

Obama flew on Saturday to eastern Afghanistan, near Pakistan, to get a firsthand look at the region where American troops are feeling the brunt of increased attacks from militants infiltrating the border. In selecting Afghanistan as an early stop in his first overseas trip as the presumptive Democratic nominee, he was seeking to highlight what he says is the central front in the fight against terrorism. He made no public statements on his first day here.

ABC Online using a n AFP/Reuters report:

US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been criticised by the Illinois senator for not doing enough to rebuild his war-torn country.

The meeting, which lasted nearly two hours and included lunch at the presidential palace in Kabul, covered a range of issues including terrorism and Afghanistan’s vast narcotics trade, Mr Karzai’s spokesman said.

“The discussions were focused on the significant progress that we’ve made but also on the unmet challenges that we still have ahead of us,” Homayun Hamidzada told reporters as Senator Obama and his party headed to the airport.

“The discussions also focused on the difficulties we’re facing, the difficult challenges in the fight against corruption, counternarcotics and also the continuing threat of terrorism and fundamentalism,” he said.

Senator Obama has made Afghanistan a key part of his foreign policy pledges, saying it - not Iraq - should be the focus of the so-called “war on terror” and promising to send more troops to battle insurgents here if elected.

USA Today On Politics:

In his first interview with an American TV network since landing in Afghanistan yesterday, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said the “situation is precarious and urgent here” and that Afghanistan must become the “central front in our battle against terrorism.”

On CBS’ Face the Nation this morning, Obama also told correspondent Lara Logan that because Afghanistan has again become a place where terrorists are planning attacks and where the drug trade is giving them the money to carry such attacks out, he believes — as he has been saying for more than a year — that an additional two brigades, at least, of U.S. troops are needed in the country.

On the issue of terrorist training camps in neighboring Pakistan, Obama said “we’d like to see the Pakistani government take out those training camps.” He said the U.S. has made a “strategic error” by “taking its eye” off Afghanistan and the largely lawless border areas between that nation and Pakistan…..

….Asked about whether he has enough experience in foreign affairs to be president, Obama said that “people who are very experienced in foreign affairs … don’t have those doubts” about him, “the troops that I’ve been meeting with … don’t seem to have those doubts” and that he has “never” had any doubts about his ability to handle such issues.

But all isn’t roses for Obama.

He may be helped politically by the fact that Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst has blasted Obama’s “war agenda,” and in Canada the Edmonton’s Sun Eric Margolis blasts him for falling victim to propaganda.

In the U.S., the Arizona Republic’s Robert Robb thinks the trip shows off his shortcomings — and New York Times acid-penned columnist Maureen Dowd has a few choice words…such as:

Even if Obama is treated as a superstar by W.-weary Europeans, some Obama-wary Americans may wonder what he’s doing there, when they can’t pay for gas, when the dollar is the Euro’s chew toy, when Bud is going Belgian and when the Chrysler Building has Arab landlords.

“I don’t know that people in Missouri are going to like seeing tens of thousands of Europeans screaming for The One,” a McCain aide snarked to The Politico.

Once Obama gets done with his European feats, which will have to include a knockout speech in Berlin, once he figures out where the dour Angela Merkel will let him soar, he has more labors at home.

Instead of obtaining the girdle of the Amazon warrior queen Hippolyte, Obama has to overcome the hurdle of the Amazon warrior queen Hillary. He has to figure out how to let her down easy on the vice presidential deal, while wooing the frantic Clinton sisterhood and Hillraisers who would rather see a McCain Supreme Court than support the glib, cocky young guy who presumptuously sped past their gal.

Meanwhile, McCain supporters in the campaign, new media and old media continue saying the trip shows media bias. Why all this publicity for Obama when he goes overseas?

Perhaps the response comes from Dick Polman, who writes:

The McCain campaign is whining about the media. That is not a misprint. John McCain, of all people, a politician who for years has been treated as a demigod by the Washington press corps - and who, in fact, has enjoyed yet another easy ride during the ‘08 campaign - is grousing, via his spokeswoman, about all the media attention that Barack Obama will receive during his impending overseas trip.

Jill Hazelbaker said the other day, “It certainly hasn’t escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama’s trip.” The implication, of course, is that McCain won’t get nearly the same attention while Obama is abroad.

Regarding that lament, I will now quote actor Steve Buscemi, who, in the role of Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs, rubbed his thumb against his index finger and said, “Do you know what this is? It’s the world’s smallest violin.” It’s tough to pluck the strings of sympathy for McCain, since, in the first place, he made such a big issue about Obama’s lack of overseas travel. He made that a campaign issue, and banged away at it for weeks.

And then Polman puts into writing what many of us who worked in the news media would tell anyone in an instant who asked why the media was jumping all over this story — anyone who wasn’t a partisan with his or her fingers held in his or her ears to avoid hearing the actual reason why and not a chance to score political points:

The journalistic judgment is easy to explain. It’s Obama’s first national security trip as a candidate, his first trip to a war zone. He’s new to the national scene. And, more broadly, he’s a new kind of candidate, an historic first. He garnered more spring coverage than McCain because his protracted contest with Hillary Clinton was also an historic first. The press does indeed have a bias. It favors what is new, and it favors firsts.

And when a campaign starts grousing about the press, it is a sign of political weakness. In the case of the McCain campaign, it reflects a basic fear that its candidate will lose.

The fact is, McCain hammered Obama on his lack of experience and for not going to to Iraq, so Obama clearly felt he had to respond but not on McCain’s timetable, so he waited a while — and is now doing it.

If Obama makes a gaffe on the trip that undercuts his campaign or does something truly dumb, McCain’s hectoring will be considered to have been a political masterstroke.

If Obama benefits, it may one day be seen as a pivotal point where McCain helped push Obama into an event that generated massive media coverage that helped erase some of the image of inexperience that had hampered the Illinois Senator’s candidacy.

Photo by Reuters