Obama Abroad: We Get the Picture

The image of Barack Obama on his trip abroad -- Obama meeting the troops, meeting the generals, meeting prime ministers and kings, drawing a huge crowd in Berlin yesterday -- has trumped anything journalists have said or written about him. In short, though Obamapalooza was not quite the lovefest that some expected, news outlets provided a spotlight so bright that their own people were left in the shadows. "The pictures bring people into the story," says Jerry Rafshoon, who was President Jimmy Carter's media adviser. "In the television age, the more people who can see him in the role of commander in chief, the better it is for him." By contrast, Rafshoon says, when John McCain was seen riding around Kennebunkport in a golf cart with former president George H.W. Bush, "you're seeing him with his generation, the older generation. They looked like the past." The loudly debated charge that news organizations are fawning over the Obama trip -- especially when contrasted with the meager attention paid to McCain's foreign travels -- seeped into the coverage itself.