KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine - Former President George H.W. Bush doesn’t advise his son, won’t criticize Barack Obama and wants John McCain to be the next occupant of the White House.

That was the gist on Monday after he hosted the presumptive Republican presidential candidate at the lush Bush family compound in Maine.

Bush, the 41st president of the United States, had nothing but praise for McCain, the man he hopes will succeed his son, George W. Bush.

“My respect for him knows no bounds. He will be a great president. I’m confident of that,” Bush said of McCain.

Bush let the Arizona senator take questions about Iraq and other hot topics of the day, which McCain did. Asked to comment about the appropriateness of Obama’s high profile trip to Europe, Bush demurred.

“A little jealous is all,” he said, noting he expected Germany to give the Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidadte a warm reception. “He’ll figure it out.”

And that was that. McCain had to leave for his next event but Bush appeared to enjoy the interaction with reporters, some of whom had covered him during his own White House years.

Some journalists poked around his property for a tour, which he was happy to let them do, while others stood and visited for a few affable minutes.

Topics:
    1) the Cold War and former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev (”When are we gonna see Gorby?” he asked an aide.)
    2) Renewable energy. He pointed out a windmill on his property and bragged about the new Smart car belonging to his wife Barbara.
    3) And his son, the 43rd U.S. president, who is close to ending an unpopular term in office. Bush said he hoped George W. would spend more time in Maine once he left Washington and admitted he would miss the access he has had to his former residence and White House staff.

But does Bush advise his son? Nope. At 84, he said the current president didn’t need advice from an old guy like him.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage

– Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder (Republican presidential candidate John McCain and former President George Bush answer questions from reporters in Kennebunkport, Maine on July 21)

NEW YORK - It’s a Sunday, Democrat Barack Obama is abroad, and John McCain is where? At a baseball game.  

The Republican presidential candidate, who is hoping to draw some attention away from his White House rival’s high profile trip to Europe and the Middle East, kicked off his week by taking in an afternoon of America’s favorite game.

Who needs to go to the Middle East to be hot?

Dressed in a cap and sunglasses on a boiling day, McCain joined his friend and former rival Rudy Giuliani at Yankee Stadium, signing baseballs for surprised fans and enjoying a hot dog. 

Giuliani, a big supporter of the Arizona senator since failing in his own bid for their party’s nomination, slipped in a few digs at Obama, who spent the weekend in Afghanistan.

“I think the fact that Barack Obama is kind of making his first tour, in essence, of the world, gives you an indication that John McCain is the man with the experience,” the former New York City mayor told reporters at the stadium, according to a pool report.

“John doesn’t have to go for the first or second time to these places. He’s been going for 20, 30 years. He knows the world. He understands the world.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Joshua Lott  (JohnMcCain and Rudy Giuliani take in a New York Yankees baseball game)

The big three networks -- and their big three evening news anchors -- are all over Barack Obama's trip to the Middle East. Extensive coverage is planned, interviews will be touted, and ABC, NBC and CBS are sure to document his every more.

So is this attention on his trip just more evidence that the media plays favorites with Obama, as some have argued? (Who can forget the SNL skit?)

One evening news anchor, CBS' Katie Couric,  made her feelings on the subject quite clear in a talk with TV critics. She believes there are "a number of really critical questions" Obama needs to answer about foreign policy.

"It's not as if it's going to be,  you know, 'How do you like the weather in Jordan, Senator?'"

Here's more on her take:

I think we've made a very conscious effort to be fair about how much attention we pay to each campaign and in the primary process as well.  I know there's been a lot of discussion about Barack Obama's upcoming trip and how much media attention it will receive, but I think editorially if you look at the fact that there have been questions about his foreign policy expertise and about his national security experience, prompted largely, quite 
frankly, by his Republican critics, and the fact that Iraq remains front and center in terms of how the United States may or may not extricate itself from that theater, then this is a really important trip newswise and editorially in terms of really being able to pin down Barack Obama on his foreign policy vision, if you will.

So much for the weather question.

 (Photo: Reuters)

WASHINGTON - For all those Internet-savvy supporters of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, there’s something new made just for you — that is if you have one of those new fangled iPhones unveiled by Apple last week.

You can now remind yourself just how soon it is until election day with a new “Countdown to Change” clock that is made for easy viewing on the iPhone. (For those of you in the more analog world, most Web sites are not easily formatted for viewing on Blackberrys and iPhones.)

The application was posted by Apple on July 16 and created by Nick Pettit, a software engineer and student at University of Central Florida, but he said he did not have a direct connection to the Obama campaign.

“The campaign did not hire me, and the application is not in affiliation with any political group,” Pettit said in an e-mail to Reuters. “Obama’s pragmatic approach to social media on the web definitely served as inspiration, however.”

Pettit said it has been viewed about 1,370 times as of Friday mid-afternoon.

Ironically when we pulled up the site on our desktop computer, just below the clock was an advertisement for Obama’s Republican rival Sen. John McCain .

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Potential Republican vice presidential candidate Rob Portman is already being hectored with job requests before he even knows if he’ll be Sen. John McCain’s running mate.
 
U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, receiving an award on Wednesday night for her work on trade, turned the spotlight on Portman who had introduced her on stage.
 
Portman, a former Ohio congressman now widely mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for McCain, was briefly U.S. trade representative before becoming President George W. Bush’s budget director and then returning to private practice.
 
Schwab plied him with compliments, insisting that any of the accomplishments she’s made since becoming the top trade negotiator two years ago were because of the groundwork that Portman had laid.
 
“I thank you for your leadership. I thank you for your vision and while you’re here and perhaps contemplating the vetting process, I thought maybe I’d give you my resume,” Schwab said to laughter from the Washington International Trade Association, a group of mostly lobbyists and lawyers.
 
“Just remember me assuming you end up where many of us hope to see you,” Schwab said, to more applause.
 
Portman looked at the resume, held it up for the audience to see, grinned and left the stage. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Portman in 2007 testifying on Capitol Hill)

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama drags with him a gaggle of reporters (wire services, newspaper, radio and television) wherever he goes, but when he heads overseas soon, he will have some television news stars accompanying him.

All three broadcast television network anchors, ABC’s Charlie Gibson, CBS’s Katie Couric and NBC’s Brian Williams, are negotiating to tag along, and according to the Washington Post they could each have an exclusive interview in different countries.

Obama is expected to travel through Europe (there has already been a kerfuffle about where he speaks in Berlin) and the Middle East, and he is also expected to make stops in Iraq and Afghanistan to see firsthand the status of the wars. He has been an outspoken critic of the conflicts, arguing the Bush administration took its eye off al Qaeda in Afghanistan to go to war with Iraq.

The interesting contrast the Washington Post and New York Times make about Obama’s trip is that when his rival, Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, went to London, France and the Middle East no television network anchors joined the trek.

But there are risks associated with having high-profile anchors and bright television spotlights along for the ride — if Obama makes a gaffe, it has the potential to lead the nightly newscasts and give McCain an opening to attack. 

One need only look at McCain’s March trip when got tangled up in Amman, Jordan, where he mistakenly accused Iran of backing the Sunni extremist group al Qaeda in Iraq. The United States believes it is Shi’ite militants that Iran is backing and Democrats jumped all over him. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Jim Young (Williams with Obama in May after an interview); Molly Riley (Couric before an interview in 2007)

OMAHA, Nebraska - U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain considers Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel a friend.

“A very dear, close friend of mine, and I’ve cherished his friendship for many, many years” is how McCain put it on Wednesday.

So what does he think about Hagel, an outspoken Iraq war opponent, going with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on a visit to Iraq and Afghanistan?

“I’m certainly pleased that Sen. Obama is being accompanied by Chuck Hagel, who has military experience, who has knowledge of these issues, even if we have some disagreements,” McCain told reporters.

Hagel, sometimes mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for Obama even though he is from the opposing party, has criticized McCain for supporting the Bush administration’s current Iraq war strategy.

What does McCain think about Hagel on Iraq?

“Sen. Hagel is wrong,” McCain said, while adding that at least Hagel had reached an informed conclusion based on visits to Iraq.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama mugs for the camera with Hagel and Sen. Richard Lugar at Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in January 2007) 

WASHINGTON - What is it about Czechoslovakia and people with strong national security backgrounds?

First Republican presidential candidate John McCain referred to the country twice in as many days, even though it has not existed since 1993, when it split into the separate nations of Slovakia and the Czech Republic following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Now comes former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, who mentioned Czechoslovakia while joining Democratic presidential Barack Obama on the campaign trail in Indiana.

Both men are recognized as strong voices on national security issues with a good handle on foreign affairs. But both had a slip of the tongue when discussing the Czech Republic, which has been negotiating with the Bush administration to host, along with Poland, part of  a U.S. missile defense system.

Here’s Nunn’s slip-up on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON - Did we miss the memo that it was National Satire Week? 

First the New Yorker magazine tried to satirize some of the myths about Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama but drew widespread condemnation.

Now those funny guys at JibJab have put out their latest cartoon poking fun at the 2008 presidential campaign.  Does this work better than the New Yorker?

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

CHICAGO - Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama is determined to keep his process for choosing a running mate a closely guarded secret, but he will appear in public on Wednesday with two men, Evan Bayh and Sam Nunn, who are widely thought to be under consideration for the No. 2 slot.

Bayh, an Indiana senator, and Nunn, a former Georgia senator, will appear with Obama at an event in Lafayette, Indiana that will focus on national security.
The event, billed as a “Summit on Confronting 21st Century Threats,” will cover such topics as nuclear non-proliferation, bioterrorism, cyber security and emerging national security threats, the Obama campaign said.

The Lafayette appearance comes a day after Obama renewed his call for an end to the Iraq war in a speech in Washington in which he urged the United States to refocus attention on Afghanistan and other national security priorities.

Obama, a 46-year-old first-term Illinois senator, is trying to counter the criticism of John McCain, his Republican rival in the November election, that he lacks the foreign policy seasoning to serve as commander-in-chief.

The Washington speech was aimed at laying out Obama’s views ahead of his upcoming trips to Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Jordan, Israel, Britain, Germany and France.

Nunn, 69, is a former chairman of the Armed Services Committee and is a respected voice on foreign and military policy.

The 52-year-old Bayh campaigned intensely for Hillary Clinton during the Democratic nomination battle but he has since thrown his support behind Obama. As a member of the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committee, he has been vocal on foreign policy issues.

Bayh is said to have an even temperament that might be a good fit with fellow Midwesterner Obama. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama makes foreign policy speech in Washington, July 15, 2008)