IT'S JULY...:

Challenges await Barack Obama at home: His overseas trip was a success, analysts from both parties agree. But rival John McCain is building an assault on the domestic issue of energy. (Doyle McManus and Michael Finnegan, 7/27/08, Los Angeles Times)

Barack Obama conquered the Middle East and Europe last week, but on Saturday he returned to face a more challenging battleground: middle America.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, wrapped up his weeklong overseas tour with a statement that -- for all the television coverage his travels from Afghanistan to Britain received -- he was eager to get back to domestic issues.

"We've been out of the country for a week," he told reporters outside the British prime minister's official residence at 10 Downing Street. "People are worried about gas prices. They're worried about home foreclosures."

...to the extent that most Americans even noticed he was gone all they took away from the trip is that Germans really like him.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 27, 2008 9:29 AM