McCain's campaign has pounced on every Obama misstep and is sure to do so if he makes another one overseas.
"You may start out to demonstrate credibility and competence and end up showing just the opposite," said William A. Galston, a policy advisor in the Clinton White House.
In Kansas City on Thursday, McCain said Obama had shown "incredible naivete" about Iraq and Afghanistan. On Friday, McCain released a TV ad saying Obama "never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan," "hasn't been to Iraq in years" and "voted against funding our troops."
Obama's campaign called the ad "patently misleading."
Obama's stops in Israel, Jordan and perhaps the Palestinian territories are fraught with political risk. One of his main audiences back home will be Jewish voters in Florida, a battleground state where critics have sought to raise doubts about his support for Israel.
In Europe, where he is highly popular, Obama plans a speech in Berlin on U.S. relations with allies. He will probably find a warm, even rapturous, reception -- which poses its own challenges. "There's such a thing as being too popular overseas," said Galston, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And that may create some misgivings here at home."
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michael.finnegan@latimes.com
Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.
