Back in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, candidates for President of the United States didn’t have much truck with foreigners. They didn’t vote, they lived on the other side of the ocean, and they spoke funny, most of ’em. (If a Frenchman is a man, Jim points out to Huck Finn, “why doan’ he talk like a man?”) Even after America’s rise to global power, the only overseas travel seen as obligatory for a Presidential hopeful was to what pols called the Three-I League—Ireland, Italy, and Israel, venues that had more to do with the lingering tribal identities of big-city ethnics than with anything as highfalutin as foreign policy. (Let us note, in the currently fashionable spirit of joke-explaining, that the baseball allusion is to a long-defunct Class B circuit made up of teams from Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa.) Nor did the incumbent get around much during the first fifty-four years of his life. “Bush’s foreign travels,” the Associated Press reported a few days after the Supreme Court awarded him custody of Air Force One, “have been limited to three visits to Mexico, two trips to Israel, a three-day Thanksgiving visit in Rome with one of his daughters in 1998, and a six-week excursion to China with his parents in 1975.” Israel, check. Italy, check. He didn’t bother with the third I.

In our post-9/11, post-unipolar, and soon-to-be-post-Bush world, staying home is not an option—especially if you’re the “inexperienced” candidate and the opinion polls say that your war-hero opponent is better at foreign policy and national security than you are. Anyway, John McCain had spent months needling Barack Obama for not having lately visited the fourth I. So, last week, off to Iraq he went—and, while he was at it, he doubled and redoubled down, adding Afghanistan, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Germany, France, and Britain to his itinerary.

Just before the trip, a leading wire service summarized the prevailing view:
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s overseas trip will be a high-risk debut on the world stage—with the potential pitfalls at least as numerous as the likely rewards.

“On a trip like this, on a stage like this, there is no room for error,” Tad Devine, a veteran Democratic operative, told ABC News. “He needs to make sure every word is right, every setting is proper, and that he makes absolutely no mistakes.” And Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe predicted that the trip would be “an extraordinarily public test of a Presidential contender’s mastery of world affairs.”

Whether or not it was that, it was certainly a test of his mastery of political theatrics, his sure-footedness, and his willingness to take a calculated risk. On the first leg of the trip, Obama found himself in a military gym in Kuwait, a major staging point for Americans going to the war zones. The bleachers were packed with soldiers wearing fatigues. A basketball materialized. “I may not make the first one,” he said, no doubt imagining what a metaphor-hungry press would make of a miss or, God forbid, a whole string of misses, “but I’ll make one eventually.” With a spring of his toes, he put the ball up. When it came down, swish.

It was the three-point shot heard round the world, and, for the Obama campaign, things only got better from there. As the candidate whirled through Afghanistan and Iraq—talking with troops, huddling with generals, conferring with presidents and prime ministers—the policy dominoes suddenly began toppling his way, flicked by unexpected fingers. Commanders on the ground in Afghanistan made known their belief that more NATO troops are badly needed there, as Obama has been arguing all along. The Bush Administration sent an Under-Secretary of State to a meeting in Geneva with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, thereby edging toward the kind of direct diplomatic engagement with Tehran that Obama has been urging all along. The White House announced that President Bush and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, had agreed on the idea of a “time horizon” for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, thus seeming to endorse the general approach that Obama has been advocating (and his opponent just as firmly rejecting) all along. In an interview with Der Spiegel, Maliki went stunningly further. Asked to predict when most of the American troops will leave Iraq, he replied:

As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about sixteen months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

After four days of panicky spinning and backtracking from Washington and (at Washington’s prodding) Baghdad, an audio recording of the interview—the published text of which, in any case, had been provided to Maliki’s office in advance—surfaced, and its accuracy was confirmed. Maliki’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, had the final word: “We cannot give any timetables or dates, but the Iraqi government believes the end of 2010 is the appropriate time for the withdrawal.” By the time Obama’s plane touched down in Germany, an utterly unanticipated consensus seemed to have emerged: besides having been right about the Iraq war’s beginning (i.e., that it should not have had one), he is right, in broad outline, about the path to its ending.

There has been much discussion of whether it will prove politically advantageous for Obama to have addressed a mile-long crowd of two hundred thousand happy Berliners in the golden early-evening sunlight. Berliners are Germans, and Germans are foreigners, and since well before John Kerry was demonized for knowing how to speak French it has been axiomatic that heartland Americans don’t like foreigners piping up about our elections, however much brainland Americans may disagree. Obama gained nothing in the polls during his nearly flawless, arguably triumphant grand tour. Still, after seven years during which, even among our closest allies, contempt for Bush bled into resentment of the country that returned him to office, one would have to be an awful grouch not to be gratified by the sight of a sea of delighted Europeans waving American flags instead of burning them and cheering an American politician instead of demonstrating against one.

Back home, one such grouch had ample reason to be grouchy. McCain’s luck last week was as bad as Obama’s was good. McCain rode in a golf cart with Bush senior; Obama rode in a helicopter with General David Petraeus. Obama was hailed by the German multitudes; McCain, his planned photo op at an offshore rig preëmpted by an oil spill and rained out by Hurricane Dolly, held a press gaggle in front of Schmidt’s Fudge Haus, in Columbus, Ohio. Obama got a big kiss (“Obama? C’est mon copain!”) from the new President of France, a dashing conservative with an exotic background and an unusual name; McCain stood athwart the cheese aisle of a supermarket, complaining. The presumptive Republican nominee had a right to be irritated by what he was complaining about: Obama’s reluctance to admit that the surge in Iraq which he opposed has helped make the withdrawal from Iraq which he supports less problematic. But McCain had no right to accuse him, not once but repeatedly last week, of being willing to have his country “lose a war” if it would win him an election. That was shocking; that was unworthy. Obama drained a three-point shot; McCain committed a three-shot foul. The game is getting physical.

回首19和20世纪，美国总统候选人与外国的往来并不多。因为外国人不参加选举投票，他们住在遥远的大洋对岸，他们中大多数人言谈滑稽。甚至当美国后来成为一支全球性力量，总统候选人的海外访问也被认为只需要去政客们所谓的“3I联盟”——爱尔兰、意大利和以色列。美国大城市中来自这些国家的少数族裔长期存在种族认同的问题，在去这些国家也是为了解决这个问题，而不是去搞什么外交政策之类的无谓之事。（让我们用时下流行的玩笑式解释来作说明，这好比棒球比赛中所说的，由伊利诺斯、印第安那和爱荷达三个州际队组成的早就有名无实的B级联赛）现任总统在他人生的前45年中也没有去过多少国家。在最高法院宣布布什当选合法几天后，美联社报道称，“布什的海外旅行仅是去了三次墨西哥，两次以色列，1998年感恩节期间和其女儿在罗马的三天逗留，以及1975年与其父母在中国为期6周的访问”。以色列，去了，意大利，去了，但他连“3I联盟”中第三个国家爱尔兰都没有去过。

当我们进入后9·11时代、后美国单极时代，以及即将到来的后布什时代，呆在家里已经不是一种明智的选择，尤其是当你“资历浅薄”，而民调则显示你崇尚战争的竞争对手在处理外交政策和国家安全方面更强。不管怎么说，约翰·麦克莱恩最近几个月一直抨击巴拉克·奥巴马不出访第四个“I”字头国家——伊拉克。为此，奥巴马去了伊拉克，他已于上周离开。在伊访问期间，他一再增加访问行程，将阿富汗、约旦、以色列、约旦河西岸（巴勒斯坦）、德国、法国和英国都列入他的行程。

就在奥巴马起程前，一家有国际影响力的通迅社总结了人们对此行普遍的看法：

华盛顿消息（路透社）——美国民主党总统候选人巴拉克·奥巴马此行海外之行将是其一次冒险的国际亮相，潜在的风险不会少于可能的收获。

民主党资深人士泰德·戴文在接受美国广播电视新闻采访时说，“这样的一次出行，在这样一个舞台上，是绝不允许有任何失误的。他得确保每句话、每个行为都正确、恰当，他绝不能犯任何错误。”《新闻周刊》的里查德·沃尔夫声称，这次出访将是“一次对候选总统处理国际事务能力的严峻、公开的考验。”

不管是否真如沃尔夫所言，这次行程肯定是对他政治展现能力、稳定度和应对风险意志的考验。奥巴马中东之行的首站选择在美军在中东重要的军事基地——科威特，他现身在当地的一个军事体育馆，看台上挤满了身穿军装的美国大兵。手拿篮球，他说：“我也许不是首次投中的，但我迟早都会投中”。不难想像，在场的那些唯恐遗漏任何精彩时刻的媒体都拭目以待。只见他双脚一跳，将球投向空中，球嗖地一声飞出。

这就是后来广为人知的三步上篮表演。对于奥巴马的竞选团队而言，在那之后，整个局面才开始打开。正当这位总统候选人在阿富汗和伊克拉斡旋时（与军队交谈，与将军磋商，与首脑们会晤），局势突然出乎意料地开始向他倾斜。阿富汗驻军司令官宣称当地需要更多北约驻军，这正是奥巴马一直呼吁的。布什政府也派出副国务卿赴日纳瓦与伊朗核事务代表进行会晤，从而在与伊朗展开直接外交谈判做准备。而这也恰恰是奥巴马一直以来的主张。白宫也宣布布什总统与伊拉克总统努里· 马利基就美军撤出伊拉军的“时间表”方面已达成共识。这似乎与奥巴马一直提倡的方针趋于吻合（而他的竞选对巴则恰好坚决反对从伊拉克撤军）。努里·马利基在接受德国《明镜》杂志采访时，就有关美军主体何时撤出伊拉克的问题，他回答说：“据我们所知，美国总统候选人巴拉克·奥巴马说有可能是16个月之内，所以我们认为美军可能会尽快撤出。16个月对于平稳撤军是妥当的。”

此消息在美国和伊拉克（受美国影响）引发热烈讨论，四天后，关于这次采访的电视片断被播出，证实了此消息。而且，努里·马利基接受采访的文字内容也被事先提供给到马利基的办公室。马利基的发言人阿里·阿杜马最终表示：“虽然我们无法提供任何时间表或日程，但伊拉克政府相信2010年底是撤军的恰当时机。”当奥巴马的飞机抵达德国后，出乎意料的是，国际社会似乎已形成一致看法：奥巴马不但正确地指出伊拉克战争本不应该发生，他还在更广泛的意义上，正确地指出了结束伊拉克战争的途径。

很多人开始讨论这是否有利于奥巴马在德国的演说，他将在夕阳的余辉中面对由两万高兴的柏林人组成的一英里长的人群。柏林人是德国人，德国人则是外国人。自此很久这前约翰·克里（上次大选中美国民主党总统候选人）因为会说法语而被妖魔化，就说明激情的美国人不喜欢外国人对我们的总统大选指手画脚，尽管理性的美国人对此并不赞同。奥巴马此次完美无暇、大获全胜的外交之行并没有为他的选情加分。情形和七年前一样，即便在我们亲密的盟友国家中，对于布什的厌恶都会激化为对那个推选他出任总统的国家的厌恶。当看到外国人手摇而不是焚烧美国旗，他们对一个美国政客是欢呼拥戴而不是示威抗议时，某人也许会满腹牢骚、深感不满。

当奥巴马回国后，这个满腹牢骚的人就更有理由进行抱怨。麦肯恩上周幸运之差如同奥巴马运气之好一般。麦肯恩与小布什同乘一台高尔夫球车；奥巴马则与大卫·佩特斯将军共搭一架直升机。奥巴马受到德国群众热烈欢迎；麦肯恩原本计划在一个海上油井与媒体见面，但由于发生石油泄漏和飓风多莉给而落空。他只好在俄亥俄州首府哥伦布XXX（Schmidt's Fudge Haus）前接受媒体（CNN）采访。奥巴马赢得那位既传统又另类的、拥有独特姓名的法国新任总统的祝福，麦肯恩则站在超市奶酪货架对面抱怨着。这位民主党总统候选人正如他所抱怨的那样有权利生气，因为他对伊拉克撤军的反对使得奥巴军所主张的从伊撤军变得不那么棘手，而奥巴马对此并不情愿承认。但麦肯恩没有权利在上周一而再、再而三地指责奥巴马为了让自己赢得竞选，而不惜让美国输掉一场战争。这番言论让人震惊，对麦肯恩而言也是得不偿失的。奥巴马取得了三步上篮的胜利，麦肯恩则犯下了三步下篮的错误。这场对决变得越来越激烈。