Barack Obama’s motorcade raced across the tarmac at Amman’s airport, bringing the candidate, his staffers and his “protective press pool” to Obama’s chartered 757. A sleek gray Mercedes 600 led the way, confidently coming to a stop just feet from the steps leading up to Obama’s first class cabin.

The presumptive Democratic nominee is typically driven by the Secret Service, but his driver tonight was none other than King Abdullah. Obama rode shotgun and the duo were the car’s only passengers.

The two emerged and chatted amicably for a couple minutes on the tarmac as cameras rolled, shook hands, and then the candidate turned and waved before he strode up the stairs into his plane. King Abdullah stood and watched his pal until he was out of sight.

done

While the press did get a chance to see the two chat plane side, it’s unclear what they discussed over their dinner. The King and hopeful president, along with Queen Rania, several Jordanian officials, Senators Reed and Hagel, and an Obama advisor spent the evening discussing issues at a dinner hosted by Abdullah at the King’s palace.

As the campaign plane began its descent into Tel Aviv after a quick 25-minute flight, two Obama advisors ventured back to the cramped press section of the plane to brief the press on the dinner. When the campaign informed reporters it would be a session “on background,” meaning it cannot be for attribution, the press revolted.

Television, newspaper, and wire reporters all refused the briefing unless it was “on the record,” but the campaign would not acquiesce. One of the advisors, a former high-ranking official in the Clinton White House, said the briefing had to be on background because “in all my years with the White House I never read-out a meeting on the record.”

Press reminded the advisor that Obama was not the President, nor was this a White House trip. The pair left without divulging details on the dinner.

But, rewarding “bad” behavior, the campaign agreed to hold an on the record briefing tomorrow morning, with senior advisor Susan Rice. Stay tuned.

Read the Jordanian Embassy’s take of their meeting below the jump.

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Senators Obama, Hagel, and Reed have landed in Jordan following their Congressional Delegation trip to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait. All three will hold a media avail on the top of the Amman Citadel in front of a sweeping vista overlooking West Amman, a part of town where homes are built on top of each other into the sides of great hills.

Read the pool report of the candidate’s arrival:
Security was tight at the Marka airport, a military base in Amman where the party arrived; uniformed soldiers lined the runway at regular intervals. Four V-22s, painted desert grey with Marine insignia,  began taxiing in at 2:15. The first two disgorged about two dozen armed Marines and a couple of civilians. Obama and Sen. Jack Reed emerged from the third at 2:22. Sen. Chuck Hagel was aboard the fourth.

Obama was wearing khakis, heavy duty brown hiking boots, a slightly wrinkled blue oxford shirt. He carried a black helmet and what appeared to be body armor. His orange ear plugs remained in place as he walked across the tarmac, enabling him to ignore the plaintive cries of “Senator, senator!” from your sunbaked pool.

Braving it out on the hot tarmac in black dress suits to greet Obama: Dan Rubinstein, the deputy chief of mission from the U.S. embassy in Amman, and  Scott Gration, a retired 4-star Army general who is advising the senator’s campaign. The senator and the general exchanged bear hugs.

Obama and Reed entered the airport terminal building briefly, followed by Hagel, who seemed to be greeting some acquaintances on the runway. Your pool made extreme efforts to entice the Nebraskan our way and he looked briefly tempted but kept the encounter to a wave and a “We’ll see you later.”

Big smiles all around. The senators looked very happy to be here.

A few minutes later, all three emerged from the  terminal and boarded the motorcade. Obama got into one Suburban; Hagel and Reed jumped in another.

It may have been an indication of the handoff that was taking place. Up until his arrival in Amman, Obama was travelling on an official congressional delegation. Your pool went first to the U.S. embassy to pick up our escort to Marka — standard procedure, we were told, for an arriving lawmakers.

For Obama, it now becomes an, um, non-campaign trip: Waiting for him in the shade of the terminal were Denis McDonough, one of his campaign foreign policy advisers, and communications czar Robert Gibbs.

A little pre-arrival color:

While waiting to depart the hotel this morning, your pool met Jacqueline Taylor Basker, an American who was waiting to get information about Obama’s Amman appearance from his staff.

Taylor Basker, who was wearing an Obama button, said she created a group called “American Ex-Pats in Jordan for Obama.” She said the group has about 30 members and meets monthly “at an internet café where Americans hang out.” Members are working to register Americans living here to vote. According to Taylor Basker, there are about 100,000 eligible voters in Jordan.

Amman is an Obama stronghold, according to Taylor Basker. Other than one student at the computer graphics class she teaches, she expects most of the ex-pat community to vote for him.  “Everyone here is for Obama,” says Taylor Basker. But she added: “All of us were upset about his speech at AIPAC.”  Taylor Basker said some of her concerns were eased by Obama’s clarifying remarks afterwards. “The need for a two-state Palestinian solution is urgent and he needs to be more balanced in his views,” Taylor Basker said.

Today the Obama campaign held a briefing for reporters traveling on Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe. In a conference room at the Four Seasons hotel in Amman, senior advisors spoke on background for a little less than an hour, discussing Obama’s motives and itinerary while abroad.

The presumptive Democratic nominee and Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE), who accompanied Obama on a Congressional Delegation trip to Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq, are scheduled to arrive in Jordan by V22 aircraft at 2:30pm, local time. After getting briefed and resting up, the senators will hold a 45-minute media avail on their CODEL at the historic Amman Citadel.

While he isn’t exactly a stranger to magazine covers, television news, and newspapers, go ahead and call it Obama week in the U.S. press. There are 40 journalists whose news outlets are paying thousands of dollars to cover Obama’s first foreign trip as candidate for president - and he will sit down with anchors from the five television networks who will make the overseas journey to conduct the interviews in person.

The purpose of this trip isn’t political, Obama’s advisors say, but the candidate stands to gain from the expected constant press coverage, which will come by way of numerous photo-ops with world leaders, press conferences, and one rally-like event in Berlin, where some tens of thousands are expected.

But the campaign denies the Germany event is a big political rally. One advisor explained, “It will not be a speech about campaign issues, he’s not going to address campaign issues in terms of other candidates, it is not a speech about American politics, and so it’s not a campaign event. We’re not trying to recruit support from the crowds that are coming.”

Rather, “The point of the outdoor rally is that the Senator wants to speak directly to our allies and to the people of Europe and the people of the world and it would be inconsistent to do that and try to limit the attendance for that event. There’s a great deal of interest in his visit. We want to accommodate that interest.”

The campaign told reporters today that Obama will not hold any fundraisers while he is abroad - despite the fact that the Democrat is wildly popular in Europe.

Read Obama’s itinerary after the jump.

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