For Barack Obama, the road to the White House is about to take a 12,000-mile detour.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will try to boost his résumé next week with a five-country European and Middle East tour that threatens to turn into Obamapalooza.
In contrast to the low-key coverage of Republican John McCain's European and Middle East trip in March, Obama will be accompanied by a campaign plane of reporters and trailed by three network broadcast anchors. McCain got some headlines, but did not have a traveling press corps.
Obama is "going to be a rock star," said James Thurber, an American University political scientist who recently taught a course in Brussels. "Expectations are high," agreed Christian Hacke, a retired professor of foreign policy at the University of Bonn. "I think too high."
Obama lived in Indonesia as a child but lacks the foreign policy experience of McCain, a Navy veteran and the top-ranking GOP member of the Senate's Armed Services Committee.
Obama leads McCain in the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. But when asked whether each candidate can handle the responsibilities of being commander in chief, eight in 10 said McCain could, compared with 55% for Obama.
This week, Obama delivered two foreign policy speeches and began airing a TV ad touting foreign policy plans. On Wednesday, he told an Indiana audience he would try to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Obama is discovering that travel abroad can be both a broadening experience and potentially hazardous. He has ruffled feathers in Jerusalem by telling U.S. Jewish leaders last month that he regards the ancient city as Israel's undivided capital — and then amending his statement after Palestinian protests.
In Germany, an Obama plan to speak before the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol of German reunification, "went over like a lead balloon," said Janet Day-Strehlow, an American voter who lives in Munich and supports the Democrat. Still, Day-Strehlow added, "I think there will be a good bit of forgiveness because he's new on the world scene."
Overseas interest in Obama's visit is high. "Germany is Obama-land," Karsten Voight, a German official in charge of relations with the U.S., told a German newspaper earlier this year. A May poll of more than 6,000 Europeans for London's Daily Telegraph showed Obama favored over McCain by wide margins in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.
In the Arab world, Obama's candidacy has left many "pleasantly surprised with him and the United States," said Hussein Ibish, senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. Ibish cited Obama's Arabic middle name, Hussein.
While foreign experience can enhance a candidate's stature, history shows it can also backfire.
In 2004, stories about Democratic nominee John Kerry's family ties to France hurt him. In 1999, a hug between then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Suha Arafat, wife of then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, nearly derailed Clinton's fledgling Senate campaign in New York.
For Obama, a rapturous overseas reception may be exhilarating, but "whether blue-collar workers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan think it's great is questionable," says American University's Thurber.
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