Boston Globe: McCain's campaign, lagging far behind Obama among young voters, is trying to catch up. It will soon roll out new MySpace-style social networking features on its website - which at the moment has special sections for women, veterans, and even lawyers, but not young people. It is also increasing its youth grass-roots organizing across the country and honing a new message aimed at young voters - "service to a cause greater than your own self-interest" - designed to dovetail with the 71-year-old's biography.
Still, McCain is late to the game.
Obama has built his website and his campaign's ground organization around young people. Crowds at Obama rallies are filled with bright-eyed supporters in their teens and 20s, drawn by the presumptive Democratic nominee's youthful vibe and message of generational change. A poll last month showed Obama leading McCain among young voters by at least 22 percentage points in the critical swing states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Ronald Reagan proved that a conservative with the right message and outreach strategy can win over the vast majority of younger voters - even if he is old enough to be their grandfather. Exit polls showed that voters 24 and under chose Reagan over his Democratic rival, Walter Mondale, by 20 percentage points in the 1984 landslide. Many in the vanguard of the Reagan Revolution went on to become the party's next generation of leaders - and some fill the ranks of McCain's campaign.
Political specialists say that McCain cannot afford to ignore the Millennial Generation, generally those born during the 1980s and 1990s and, depending on how they are defined, the largest ever born in America. They are increasingly politically active; in the 2004 presidential election, voters under 30 slightly outnumbered those over 65.
Washington Post: McCain referred to the "Iraq-Pakistan border" in a "Good Morning America" interview; since there is no such border, he must have meant Afghanistan-Pakistan. He has twice referred to Czechoslovakia, a country that ceased to exist in 1993; mixed up Sunnis and Shiites; and identified Vladimir Putin as president of Germany.
Aides to the Arizona senator dismiss the missteps as meaningless, noting that their man is far more accessible to journalists than Obama. "When you engage with reporters from 8:30 a.m. till 8 at night, you're bound to make a gaffe," says McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker. "People are yearning for the kind of president who takes tough questions, and that's who John McCain is."
Washington Post: Moving quickly to capitalize on their massive financial advantage, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has reserved television time in nearly two dozen more House districts, bringing their total investment in competitive contests to $53 million.
NYTimes: Hillary Rodham Clinton put the first in First Lady: A modern career woman who weighed in on policy in the White House, took on political enemies, and then became a senator and presidential candidate herself.
Laura Bush put tradition ahead of modernity: Low key and low profile, even though friends say she is a woman of strongly held opinions.
While Cindy McCain is embracing the Bush model — one that seems familiar and safe to most Americans — Michelle Obama has yet to signal exactly what sort of First Lady she might be. As Mr. Obama travels to Iraq, Israel and Europe this week, Ms. Obama is spending some of the time in Chicago with their two daughters, taking them to camp and soccer. Yet she is not, to use a phrase, only staying home and baking cookies.
Ms. Obama and the Obama campaign are trying to strike a balance when it comes to her image: A woman who is happy at home with the kids, her top priority, but who also finds time to hit the road a couple of days a week on behalf of her husband.
