Obama Trip Helps McCain: Polls Tighten
newsmax.com ^| July 25, 2008 | staff

DENVER -- In the face of Barack Obama's overseas tour de force, rival presidential candidate John McCain struggled to be heard. Yet amid the awkward moments, he managed to campaign busily in key battleground states and to raise millions of dollars at fundraisers.

Polls in many swing states are close, and some are tightening. The Arizona Republican sought to turn this to his advantage in what was clearly a difficult week to be a stay-at-home candidate.

He repeatedly emphasized his long military and congressional background, scolded Obama from afar on foreign policy, and kept playfully fueling speculation that he was close to picking a running mate.

McCain faced another opportunity to showcase his history as a Vietnam prisoner of war in a speech Friday in Denver to the American GI Forum Convention, a largely Hispanic military group. That also gave him a chance to court the valued Hispanic vote. McCain was also to visit the Dalai Lama in Aspen, Colo., before heading home to Sedona, Ariz., for the weekend. It was to be his first visit with the Tibetan spiritual leader.

Everywhere he went — in New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio and here in Colorado — the Arizona senator drew warm and appreciative crowds. No matter that many, if not most, of those in the audiences were senior citizens. Seniors vote in big numbers.

For the most part, the side-by-side images weren't pretty:

—Obama meeting with leaders in Iraq, McCain on a golf cart in Kennebunkport, Maine, with the first President Bush.

—Obama before a sweeping Israeli landscape, McCain holding a news conference in a supermarket in Bethlehem — Pennsylvania, that is — and narrowly escaping an attack from a tumbling stack of mayonnaise jars.

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