by Evie Stone

Happy Monday morning, folks.

After struggling to gain traction with the debate over the surge last week, John McCain's campaign found what they consider to be a meatier issue to use against Barack Obama: his cancelled visit to injured troops at Landstuhl hospital in Germany last week. Over the weekend, the two campaigns filled reporters' inboxes with crossfire over the issue, much of which was back-and-forth over this McCain ad called "Troops." It's pretty snarky to accuse Obama of only wanting to visit the wounded servicemembers for a photo-op and then bailing after "the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras." The Obama campaign's counter-claim is that the very reason he didn't go to the hospital was because the visit would be considered a photo-op and he didn't want to politicize the troops. (Irony!)

The ad is McCain's toughest hit yet on Obama's character, and the claims in it may or may not sway voters (for one thing, as many in the blogosphere have pointed out, it accuses Obama of ignoring the troops while showing footage of him playing basketball with, um...troops). But on the other hand, if everyone is writing about McCain's ad — even if they're tearing it apart — they're by definition NOT writing about Obama's 200,000-person crowd in Berlin, or Nouri al-Maliki's agreement with Obama on a US troop withdrawal timeline, or McCain's variety of gaffes last week. So if nothing else, the ad provides a useful distraction.

Meanwhile, the chattering classes are back to rampant veep speculation.

 

The Olympics are fast-approaching, and it's been widely theorized that the candidates will have to announce before the world turns its attention to Beijing or risk not making much of a news splash. Yesterday on Meet The Press, Obama described what he's looking for in a running-mate:

I'm going to want somebody with integrity; I'm going to want somebody with independence, who's willing to tell me where he thinks or she thinks I'm wrong; and I'm, I'm going to want somebody who shares a vision of the country where we need to go, that we've got to fundamentally change not only our policies, but how our politics works, how business is done in Washington.

Sounds like he'll be looking for someone outsidery. Which, as First Read points out, might rule out a sitting Senator. (Sorry, Hillary, Joe, Chris, Evan, and Jack...)

On the McCain side, recent speculation has appeared to focus on a Gov and an ex-Gov. Today's Boston Globe has a front-page look at Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty. And yesterday Robert Novak speculated that native son Mitt Romney (Michigan-born, Utah-loved, Massachusetts-elected) could shore up Michigan — a key swing state — for John McCain.

And finally: the WSJ reported Friday on a mini-victory for the Republicans in the online fundraising wars, which have thusfar been dominated by Democrats: they launched a GOP Toolbar that uses a Yahoo!-based search function and donates a few cents to the RNC with every search. A few charities, including the Susan G. Komen foundation, already use the technology. The idea to re-imagine it for political fundraising came from former McCain strategist John Weaver, who was ousted from the Straight Talk Express in last summer's shakeup.