CINCINNATI, OH — While Sen. McCain intended to defend his record before the NAACP Wednesday, he began by treading very lightly and lavished some praise on Sen. Obama to start his address.

“Don’t tell him I said this, but he is an impressive fellow in many ways. He has inspired a great many Americans, some of whom had wrongly believed that a political campaign could hold no purpose or meaning for them. His success should make Americans, all Americans, proud,” McCain said, adding that as the first-ever African-American presidential nominee, Obama has made history and “achieved a great thing for himself and for his country.”

But McCain was quick to joke that, “of course, I would prefer his success not continue quite as long as he hopes,” getting some laughs.

With that the presumptive GOP nominee began his full-throated case for school voucher programs and greater accountability, also returning fire at Obama for accusing him so using “tired rhetoric.”

“Senator Obama dismissed public support for private school vouchers for low-income Americans as, ‘tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice.’ All of that went over well with the teachers union, but where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools?,” McCain asked. “When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children. Some parents, some parents may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private school. Many will choose a charter school. No entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity.”

McCain also attacked Obama for opposing the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, a federal voucher program, and committed to expanding similar programs if he wins the White House.

“If I am elected president, school choice for all who want it, an expansion of Opportunity Scholarships, and alternative certification for teachers will be part of a serious agenda of education reform,” he said to scattered applause.

McCain faces very long odds in gaining any percentage of the black vote this year and asked for members’ support despite receiving a 7 percent on the NAACP’s most recent legislative scorecard for the 109th Congress. The group gave the Arizona Senator a Grade of F for opposing 26 of their 28 legislative priorities during the term.

Recent polling also does not bode well with the CBS-NY Times poll out today showing McCain with a five percent favorability rating (57 percent not favorable) with the community.

Additionally, he will likely struggle matching Bush’s totals in 2004, who pulled in 11 percent of the African-American vote. The NY Times poll currently has McCain at 2 percent.

Though he may have gone one step in the right direction today as McCain received a standing ovation at the conclusion of his remarks.

Riding the line between energizing conservatives and attracting moderates and independents this election year continues to prove difficult for John McCain.

In its latest email to supporters a leading social conservative group, the Family Research Council, is taking issue with recent, contradictory statements out of the McCain campaign on gay adoption and calling on the GOPer to stand by the “traditional family unit.”

In an interview late last week with the New York Times, McCain said he opposed gay adoption, adding that “I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family, so, no, I don’t believe in gay adoption.” While the stance may be controversial to gay voters and some liberals, he curries some favor with a larger group social conservatives he needs to energize for November.

But wait.

The campaign then issued a clarifying statement to blogger Andrew Sullivan, stating that McCain believes gay adoption is a state issue but added that “as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative.”

The FRC, led by Tony Perkins, is now alleging the statement “muddies the waters,” and warns in an email sent to supporters Tuesday night that the McCain camp “should not fall into this ‘lady or the tiger’ trap and should emphasize the need to rebuild the natural family.”

Email after jump…

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ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Seeking to counter Sen. Obama’s major foreign policy address today, Sen. McCain pounced on his Democratic rival for announcing his strategy for Iraq and Afghanistan before he is set to travel to the two war zones.

“I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time,” McCain told about 200 voters at a town hall meeting in Albuquerque, in remarks originally set to be delivered Thursday but moved up to coincide with Obama’s speech. “In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around. First you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy. So this is certainly a departure to what I have usually done.”

The presumptive GOP nominee also criticized Obama’s recent statements about the surge as taking flip-flopping to a “new level”–pointing to Obama’s remarks that he had “no doubt” the military surge would succeed despite other statements to the contrary.

“My friends, flip-floppers all over the world are enraged..it give new meaning (to the term),” McCain told the town hall, later adding aboard his bus that Obama’s evolving position on Iraq “exceeds every (flip flop) that I have ever observed and I have seen some egregious ones.”

His criticism came during a speech where he called the current situation in Afghanistan “not acceptable” and laid out his “comprehensive strategy for victory,” which includes sending up to 15,000 additional troops to that battlefront in order to turnaround recent Taliban advances.

“Our commanders on the ground in Afghanistan say that they need at least three additional brigades. Thanks to the success of the surge, these forces are becoming available, and our commanders in Afghanistan must get them. But sending more forces, by itself, that by itself is not enough,” McCain said, later clarifying that the brigades would not just be American but be made up of a combination of U.S. and NATO forces. But the GOPer added today that more troops is not the only solution to bringing down the violence.

“What we need in Afghanistan is exactly what General Petraeus brought to Iraq: a nationwide civil-military campaign that is focused on providing security for the population. Today no such integrated plan exists. When I am commander-in-chief, it will,” he added.

Speaking to reporters aboard his bus, McCain also had some uncharacteristically tough words for Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, stating that he has not met U.S. expectations.

“Karzai has not been effective. Karzai has not been the strong leader that we hoped he would be,” McCain said. “He’s a very fine man–just not has (exercised the) strong leadership that we would (have) hoped.”

ALBUQUERQUE, NM — As Sen. McCain prepares to question his Democratic rival’s foreign policy credibility in a speech this morning, he got an assist today from a colleague on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) sent a letter to Sen. Obama Tuesday pointing out that the Illinois Democrat has yet to hold a hearing on Afghanistan even though he chairs a European Affairs subcommittee with oversight of NATO and asking for one after Obama returns to the states.

“With oversight of NATO relations and its role in Afghanistan, I believe it is time for us to focus closely on these issues. As Ranking Member of your Subcommittee on European Affairs, I would welcome a chance to hold a hearing on NATO’s mission in Afghanistan upon your return,” writes DeMint. The argument is one of the cases the McCain camp has adopted from the Clinton campaign, which repeatedly brought up the fact that Obama never exercised his subcommittee’s oversight power in regards to Afghanistan.

Full letter after jump…

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Barack Obama was warmly received at the 99th annual NAACP convention in Cincinnati, where the candidate paid homage to African American leaders who walked before him, including Julian Bond who introduced the candidate, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Lewis. “It is because of them; and all those whose names never made it into the history books – those men and women, young and old, black, brown and white, clear-eyed and straight-backed, who refused to settle for the world as it is; who had the courage to remake the world as it should be – that I stand before you tonight as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America,” he said.

But, he observed, “Just electing me does not mean our work is over. We’ve got more work to do.”

Part of that work, he said, will have to be done by individuals. Obama, who was recently crudely chastised by Reverend Jesse Jackson for his tough love message to the African American community, made it clear he will not back down from his beliefs that those in the community have to take on more responsibilities to better their lives and those of their families.

“Now, I know there’s some who’ve been saying I’ve been too tough talking about responsibility. NAACP, I’m here to report, I’m not gonna stop talking about it,” he said to a rousing applause. “Because as much as I’m out there fighting to make sure government’s doing it’s job and the market place is doing it’s job and we’re passing laws to bring more investment and more education and more infrastructure into our communities and putting our young people back to work. No matter how much money we invest in our communities, how many 10-point plans we propose, how many government programs we launch – none of it will make a difference, at least not enough of a difference, if we also at the same time don’t seize more responsibility in our own lives.”

Jackson implied Obama’s comments were condescending, but Obama stood tall before the African American group and continued, “We need societal responsibility and we need individual responsibility. We need politicians doing what they’re supposed to do and CEO’s doing what they’re supposed to do, and we need parents doing what they’re supposed to do….if we’re serious about reclaiming that dream, we have to do more in our own lives, there’s nothing wrong with saying that.” Based on the crowd’s response, they agreed.

Obama concluded his remarks with a promise to return on the NAACP’s 100th anniversary next year. “I will come back to you next year on that anniversary and I will stand before you as the President of the United States of America. And at that moment, you and I will truly know that a new day has come in this country we love. Thank you NAACP. God bless you. God bless the United States of America.”

SAN DIEGO - Sen. McCain took the fight to a new opponent Monday, the “cable monster.”

“Americans have expressed their frustration with the sound bites, the charges back and forth, the cable monster that has to have a news story every hour, the sound bites and the surrogates and all that,” McCain said, taking a slight detour from his prepared speech before the National Council of La Raza–which focused mostly on the economy and immigration.

The presumptive GOP nominee rebuked what some analysts have termed the “A.D.D. election” during his speech, renewing his pitch for Sen. Obama to join him at town hall meetings and allow voters to see a debate on the key issues instead of relying on the sound bite picked out by the press.

“I think Americans deserve better. I think Americans deserve a side-by-side appearance of both of us,” he added, even though McCain has also recently acknowledged that the prospect of joint town halls is essentially zero after what he sees as a lackluster response from the Obama campaign.

In attacking the 24-7 media environment, McCain is also partly pushing back on recent criticism he has faced for being “off message.” A number of media outlets ran stories at the end of last week arguing that his intended message on the economy was overshadowed by misstatements made by the candidate and his surrogates on birth control, social security and Iran, among others.

Though most of those gaffes were short snacks for the hungry ‘cable monster’ and are likely to have little long-term impact, former Sen. Phil Gramm, a leading McCain economic adviser, served up a three-course meal when he referred to the economic woes as a “mental recession” and called Americans “whiners.” The campaign had to schedule an impromptu press conference on Thursday where McCain forcefully rebuked Gramm as out of touch with voters and his message.

The Arizona Senator made a veiled reference to the incident today when he added that voters don’t pay attention to “surrogate” gaffes that are played repeatedly on the 24-hour networks.

“Times are tough…and Americans don’t want to hear the sound bite, they don’t want to hear the misstatement, they don’t want to hear the surrogate who may have made a mistake. They want to know about us,” McCain added.

Barack Obama had no response to the cover of the July 21st issue of The New Yorker Magazine, seen below, except to shrug incredulously and tell reporters, “I have no response to that.”

The cartoon features Barack and Michelle Obama celebrating with a fist bump in the Oval Office in front of a portrait of Osama bin Laden and an American flag burning in the fireplace. Mrs. Obama is portrayed as a militant radical, while Obama appears foreign. The image reflects, some might say mocks, the rumors that have plagued the couple over the last 18 months.

While the candidate declined comment, his campaign did not. “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree,” spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.

The magazine features a lengthy article on “how Chicago shaped Obama.”

When rumors swirled that Barack Obama would speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, during his European trip next week, it was reported that someone in the Bush Administration approached a German official at the G8 Summit in Japan to question the appropriateness of the location of the Democrat’s remarks.

The German press soon reported that German Chancellor Andrea Merkel deemed the location, one of the last remaining points connecting East and West Germany, off limits for an Obama stop – not because of Bush’s concerns, but as a matter of fairness. If Obama spoke there, then any candidate running for any office, in any country around the world may want to speak there.

Today the candidate told reporters aboard his campaign plane that his campaign has been “trying to coordinate with folks on the ground in terms of finding an appropriate site, but we didn’t have a particular site in mind.”

Obama said getting his message out is more important than the location of the speech. “Our goal is just for me to lay out how I think about the next administration’s role and rebuilding our transatlantic alliance and so I don’t want to the negative to be a distraction. What I want to do is just work with folks on the ground to find some place that’s appropriate,” Obama said.

Earlier this week at a town hall in Virginia, Obama gave a sneak preview of that message. “Although our military power is unmatched, the real challenges, the real threats, that face not just our security but world security today can’t be solved just by one country because they span the globe…We’ve got to worry about and spend time thinking about building alliances and restoring relationships with countries all around the world in order to deal with our national security,” he said, prefacing that he didn’t want to “spill” too much about the top secret trip.

The campaign has not made announcements on the specifics of Obama’s visit to Germany.

Jesse Jackson since the Reverend was overheard saying crude remarks about Senator Obama on an open mic, the presumptive Democratic nominee told reporters on a four hour flight from Chicago to San Diego late Saturday night. The two did speak just prior to the incident, however. “We had actually discussed some of the concerns he had raised about my fatherhood speech,” Obama shared.

Last month, Obama bluntly said that many African Americans had shirked their family responsibilities during his “Fatherhood Speech” at a Chicago church. The candidate often urges African American parents to “parent” – to turn off the TV, put down the video games, and enforce curfews for their children.

During an interview with FOX News, Reverend Jackson, irritated that Obama was talking down to the community, made the controversial comments during an interview with FOX News. While Jackson quickly apologized and Obama immediately accepted that apology, there has been much ado about the interchange.

Focusing on what the two do agree on, Obama told reporters he and Jackson share positions on fixing “structural inequalities” in our society, including health care, early childhood education, creating jobs, and closing the achievement gap.

But the senator stands by his tough love message. “We also have to recognize that there is a particular problem when more than a half of African American children are growing up without a father in the house and often times not even knowing their father. That is a problem and I won’t back up one bit in asserting that that’s a problem that we have to be honest about,” he said.

When asked how he responded to Jackson expressing concern to his “Fatherhood Speech,” remarks that were particularly blunt he delivered on Father’s Day at a Chicago church, Obama said, “I think it would be hard for him to disagree with that since many of the things I have said are the things that he has said in the past.”

While Obama may not be able to change society when it comes to personal responsibility by passing laws, he said, “Obviously I’ve sparked a conversation as a consequence of my speech and I do think part of the role of president is to offer his or her opinions about critical issues, not all of which can be solved by government, but make a big difference in the quality of our society.”

At a town hall meeting in Dayton, Ohio, Barack Obama focused his remarks on energy - something the two candidates have been sparring over for weeks. Obama has called McCain’s gas tax holiday a gimmick and says off shore drilling won’t have an impact for years. Neither fix, Obama has said, addresses the larger need to ween the country off of our dependence on oil - which McCain hasn’t addressed in his 26 years in office.

On the other side, the McCain camp has said that Obama doesn’t mind record high gas prices. Just today their campaign sent a statement to reporters reading, “Today, Barack Obama criticized wind, hydropower, domestic oil drilling, gas tax relief and nuclear power but did not offer a single proposal to bring down gas prices. The difference is Obama’s ‘Dr. No’ approach believes that every energy source has a problem and John McCain believes that every energy source can be part of the solution Americans need right now.”

In fact Obama did point out flaws with wind, hydropower, and nuclear power today at his town hall today when a voter expressed concerns on storing nuclear waste. Obama told the crowd that we have to utilize experts to figure out a way to store the waste safely because nuclear power has “a very big advantage” in that it doesn’t cause global warming and concluded that “nuclear power is gonna have to be a part of the mix. I know some people don’t like to hear that, but there is no perfect energy source.”

So what did “Dr. No” take issue with? Read part of his answer below:

“Every energy source has a problem, even energy sources that sound really clean, like for example hydropower. I was in Oregon, it turns out it’s messing up the salmon runs and the fish are being affected. You know wind is a great energy source except sometimes it’s not windy…I don’t think we can eliminate any single energy source….Solar, wind, biofuels - all these different approaches we should try and make different investments and figure out what works.”

While it may be a stretch for the McCain campaign to characterize the presumptive Democratic nominee as “Dr. No” when it comes to alternative energy, Obama also got in on the action. “[McCain's] voted against alternative sources of energy.  Against clean biofuels.  Against solar power.  Against wind power.  Against an energy bill that represented the largest investment in renewable sources of energy in the history of this country. So when John McCain talks about the failure of politicians in Washington to do anything about our energy crisis, understand that John McCain should look in the mirror because he has been a part of that failure,” Obama said of his Republican rival.