The candidate plans to spend today in his hometown of Chicago after his roughly 16,000-mile journey and later in the week visit Missouri, Iowa and Florida.
The economy is still "paramount," Axelrod said Friday at Paris' Elysee Palace, the French president's residence.
McCain, too, is seeking to build an advantage on a domestic issue: energy. Polls show that most voters agree with McCain's positions in favor of increased drilling for offshore oil and building nuclear power plants. On Saturday, McCain criticized Obama for opposing both.
As political theater, Obama's trip was an epic -- a campaign version of "Around the World in Eighty Days" that lured the anchors of the three major television networks out of their studios. It displayed him in photogenic locations meeting troops at U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, praying at Jerusalem's Western Wall and speaking to a huge, cheering crowd in Berlin -- complete with American flags distributed by the candidate's campaign aides.
Obama provoked not only the customary polite reception from most foreign leaders but an effusive embrace from France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said: "If he is chosen, then France will be delighted."
More important, and perhaps more helpful to Obama's presidential chances, were the virtual endorsements he received from leaders of Iraq and Israel for his most controversial foreign policy positions.
In Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said he favored an early withdrawal of U.S. combat troops and called Obama's proposed timetable of 16 months from January 2009 "suitable."
After pleas from the U.S. Embassy, Maliki's spokesman softened the statement, a little: He said the Iraqi government favored a withdrawal by the end of 2010.
The Bush administration and McCain have opposed setting a fixed timetable, although the White House has agreed to discuss a "time horizon" based on military conditions. And by the end of the week McCain endorsed that idea too.
In Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other officials praised Obama's understanding of their country's concerns; they especially lauded his strongly worded assurance that he considers it unacceptable for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.
"For every fear, query or question, Obama immediately produced a suitable Zionist answer," wrote columnist Itamar Eichner in Israel's largest newspaper, Yediot Aharonot.
