Snubbing Wounded Troops?

We can't read minds and so are in no position to know Obama's motives, or McCain's for that matter. It's unlikely, however, that the absence of press coverage would have been a factor in Obama's decision, as the ad implies. Obama says he never planned to take reporters on the Landstuhl visit, and Department of Defense rules prohibited him from taking reporters on previous visits he made with wounded troops.
 
Reporters were not allowed to accompany him when he visited wounded troops at Walter Reed Medical Center on June 28. The small "protective pool" of reporters that routinely accompanies him was told by Obama's staff to remain outside, in the van, according to a reporter covering the campaign. Similarly, Obama visited wounded troops in Baghdad earlier in his overseas trip, but he did so without reporters and "without a lot of fanfare, just to say 'Thanks'," according to Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who accompanied Obama.

It's true Obama made time for at least one workout while he was in Germany. And he has been known to dedicate more than a few minutes to his exercise regimen. Two reporters who cover Obama, and who were on this trip, tell us that the candidate works out every day, and sometimes twice a day. However, the video of Obama playing basketball featured in McCain's ad is from his time in Kuwait, not Germany.

What Happened and When?
The military's stated policy is to avoid "[a]ny activity that may be reasonably viewed as directly or indirectly associating the [Department of Defense] with a partisan political activity." Members of Congress are allowed to be photographed with the troops and appear with them while serving as public officials, but not as political candidates. When Obama was in Kuwait and Iraq, he was traveling without reporters or campaign staff and visited military installations as part of a congressional delegation that included Sen. Reed and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Hagel said afterward, on CBS' "Face the Nation" July 27: "We saw troops everywhere we went on the congressional delegation. We went out of our way to see those troops."

But Hagel and Reed dropped off after the delegation visited the Middle East, and the European leg of Obama's trip was a campaign trip, not an official one. Even so, Obama planned to leave reporters behind for a visit to Landstuhl, according to a press briefing by campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs. Gibbs said reporters would have been left behind, though there "may have been" a pool report afterward. Since reporters would not be allowed inside the hospital, any pool reports would have noted only the fact of Obama's coming and going, with no photographs, as was the case with Obama's June 28 visit to Walter Reed. Here's part of the transcript of Gibbs' briefing:

    Q: Did it not occur to anybody that this might be viewed as a political stop?

    Gibbs: We had taken some of that into consideration, but we believed that it could be done in a way that would not create, it would not be created or seen as a campaign stop.

    Q: The schedule was for this plane, with us in it, to fly to Ramstein. By the way we were expected to pay for the flight, what were you suppose to do with the entourage then?

    Gibbs: You would have stayed on the plane.