Posted by Jed Lewison on Thu Jul 17, 2008 at 12:32 PM Pacific

The Trip: Take the Risk, Reap the Reward

Next week will be all about Barack Obama's overseas trip. From what I can tell, it seems that the trip will have two components -- one part of it will be a five-nation swing through England, France, Germany, Jordan, and Israel, and the other part will be a trip to Afghanistan and Iraq.

He'll be accompanied by Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed on the Afghanistan and Iraq part of his trip, but there has been literally no mention of it in recent coverage, presumably because of security concerns. (I'm not reporting anything that hasn't been written about already -- so don't worry about me creating a risk!)

The big news is that at some point next week, all three network news broadcasts will originate from stops along the trip. I presume they will be each broadcast from different points on the trip, but I don't know.

There's already a bit of cluck-clucking from the McCain campaign about whether it's fair that Obama's trip is receiving all this attention, but as Steve Benen points out, you get what you ask for. They are partially responsible for elevating the stature of the trip by focusing on it on an almost daily basis.

And as NBC's First Read argues, would the McCain campaign really have wanted the same level of scrutiny paid to McCain's trip in March? If they had, his Sunni-Shia gaffe-a-thon would have hurt his candidacy far more than it actually did.

The fact is that there's a real risk with this trip for Barack -- and if it goes well, he will deserve every bit of favorable coverage it receives.

The political backdrop for this trip illustrates its potential perils: McCain already does have a clear advantage in polls on the "Commander-in-Chief" question, and while Barack doesn't need to close the gap entirely, he does need to at least be in the same general ballpark. (I'd define that as something north of say 55%-60% of voters saying he passes the threshold, and less than 30% saying he doesn't, depending on how you asked the question.)

Having the network broadcasts along for the ride magnifies the risk as well as the reward.

If things go smoothly, as I suspect they will, he could return from the trip having effectively quashed the possibility of any serious challenge from McCain on whether or not he is capable of being C-in-C. (Obviously, I think the question is the other way around, but I'm trying think in terms of the campaign dynamics.)

On the other hand, if Barack makes any McCain-style gaffes -- claiming the existence of a non-existent country, or severely confusing who is on what side of which battle -- the presence of the media will make the trip a nightmare. It is of course totally unfair that Barack is held to such a different standard than McCain, but that's the way the media thinks. What can you do other than point it out and hope they come to their senses?

As I said, my prediction is that the trip will go pretty well. Assuming that it does go well, there will be a fair bit of cynical reporters complaining that Barack has gotten a free ride, but the thing they have to remember is that in embarking on the trip, Barack took a real risk. If things go well, and the coverage reflects that things went well, it's not that he's been the beneficiary of puff-puff coverage -- it's that he avoided falling into the traps which could well have made his trip a nightmare.

Yeah, our media discourse is twisted. But it is what it is, and given that Barack Obama is taking a risk that things could go poorly on this trip, if they go well, he will have earned every last drop of positive press he gets out of it.