McCain Eclipsed As Tv Anchors Follow Obama's Foreign Trip

Barack Obama's stock as a superstar candidate rose even further yesterday amid reports that the anchors of all three US television networks were planning to catch up with him on his first overseas trip as a presidential candidate.

The Obama camp has been besieged with requests from reporters to get aboard his plane for his swing through five countries in the Middle East and Europe and yesterday it was reported that the evening news anchors from ABC, NBC and CBS were planning to interview Obama during his trip.

The media spotlight on Obama led to grousing from his Republican rival, John McCain, whose own visit to Europe and the Middle East in March received much more low key media coverage. No anchors accompanied McCain on his tour.

McCain told a town hall meeting in Missouri yesterday that his opponent should wait until after his visit to Afghanistan and Iraq before pronouncing on his war policies.

His aides made a similar point even more sharply. "Let's drop the pretense that this is a fact-finding trip and call it what it is: the first of its kind campaign rally overseas," Jill Hazelbaker told reporters yesterday.

The sniping came as the New York Times cited research by the Tyndall Report, which monitors newscasts, which found that America's networks devoted 114 minutes to covering Obama in the last month and just 48 minutes to McCain.

Obama demonstrated his ability to dominate news coverage during the Democratic primary campaign when Hillary Clinton complained that her opponent was given kid-glove treatment by the media while she was subjected to tough questions.

The charge became the basis for a sketch on Saturday Night Live in which debate moderators fussed over Obama, offering him an extra cushion.

Obama is also dominating the paid media - or television advertising. Thanks to a superior fundraising operation, he has more ads in more states than McCain.

Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, announced in an email yesterday that the Democratic candidate who broke all fundraising records in his primary campaign registered one of his best such months ever in June, taking $52m (£26m). That is more than double the $22m raised by McCain in June.

However, it follows a month in which Obama devoted more time than ever before to attending high dollar fundraisers. If he can manage to sustain that rate of fundraising, Obama will hold a significant financial advantage over McCain in the election.

McCain will have a maximum $84m to spend on the election following his party's convention in early September under the campaign finance rules.

Obama, who reneged on an earlier promise to opt out of the public finance system, will have no such ceilings on fundraising or spending.

Last month's fundraising haul defies accounts from Hillary Clinton's disappointed supporters that they would not exert themselves to raise funds for her former opponent.

There had also been suggestions that Obama's shift towards the political center would alienate individual donors on the left. But the average size of donation last month was $68, the email said.

However, Plouffe cautioned in his email that the Republican National Committee was helping McCain make up the shortfall. Together, the McCain campaign and the RNC have $93m on hand to spend on the elections.

That puts him on a virtually even footing with Obama, who has $72m in cash, while the DNC has $20m. The Obama campaign needs the money to keep rolling in to sustain its aggressive push into states previously seen as Republican strongholds.

His campaign announced that it was opening 20 offices across Virginia, a state that has not voted for a Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

It has also made an unprecedented push into Montana, hiring 70 full time staffers and opening six offices in a state once thought among the most reliably Republican in the country.