Posted by Jed Lewison on Mon Jul 14, 2008 at 4:15 PM Pacific

The road ahead

I have to admit that in the six weeks or so since Barack Obama clinched the nomination, I haven't felt like I've had a very strong handle on the contours of the campaign. Part of that is probably that there was this long stretch after June 3 in which just about everything on the campaign calendar was put together on an ad hoc basis.

Now that we are getting closer to the conventions, I'm starting to see the outlines of how things will go (or at least I think I am). So here's a shot at mapping out the road ahead. Please chime in here, by the way -- this is all off-the-cuff thinking.

Week of July 21: Barack Obama's overseas trip. Assuming this trip goes well, the media will deem him "presidential." The good news here is that the media has been so bad lately, and we've been making enough noise about it, that I think the media might actually be fair in their coverage.
Somewhere between July 28-August 5: Barack picks a VP. McCain might pick his VP as well during this period, because there is so little time following the DNC -- and because that time is Labor Day weekend.
August 8-24: Summer Olympics. Daily skirmishes, but probably nothing lasting. During this time period in 2004, the Swift Vets crushed Kerry, but this won't happen to Obama. Not only is he fighting back, he's got the convention after the Olympics, whereas Kerry had already had his convention, depriving him of a forum to redefine the debate.
August 25-28: Democratic National Convention -- Barack defines the central themes and promise of his presidency.
August 29-August 31: Barack tries to ride a bounce out of his convention; McCain tries to quash the bounce by announcing his own VP selection. (Pray for Romney! Also, note that since this is labor day weekend, it's possible McCain will wait until the convention to make his pick, or he might go ahead and do it in early August.)
September 1-4: GOP national convention.
September 26: First presidential debate, focused on domestic policy
October 2: First and only vice presidential debate
October 7: Second presidential debate, town hall style, both foreign and domestic policy
October 14: Third presidential debate, focused on foreign policy
November 4: Election day

This calendar helps me understand why the Obama campaign has seemed to be laying off McCain a bit. They are being extremely aggressive about counteracting his lies about Barack's record, but not nearly as aggressive in going after things like Phil Gramm.

What I think is going on here is that they want this overseas trip to go perfectly. If it does go well, then they want to roll out a VP and get through the dog days of summer in August, beginning their ascent in late August during the convention.

Now, assuming the overseas trip has gone well, it will mostly put to rest many of the "threshold" type questions that some will want to pose about Obama. This will free up Barack to focus on domestic issues and energy for most of the final two months of the campaign.

Perhaps the most critical period of the entire campaign will be from September 5-26, when the core issue well be fleshed out defined by both sides for voters just tuning in.

One thing which I think is a good thing, but I'm not sure, is that the first debate will be on domestic issues only, and the third one will be on foreign policy only. My thinking is that if we keep the focus on domestic policy, Barack Obama could have built up a large enough lead that the third debate won't matter that much.

One caveat though about all the debates as that these are just proposals from the presidential debates commission. I don't think either Obama or McCain have agreed to all the details, things could change.

Anyway, those are my guesses about the shape of the campaign going forward. What do you think?