Despite its best attempts, this week appears to be a wash for the McCain campaign. And despite some improvement in recent state polls, the Arizona senator played second fiddle on newscasts and newspaper headlines, while Barack Obama toured the world.

After speaking in Berlin in front of a reported 200,000 people, Obama received another warm reception in Paris today. From the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire:

French supporters lined the streets outside of the French president's office, the Palace Elysee, to catch a view of the American politican. Some carried placards or screamed, "Obama."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy greeted the Democratic presidential candidate at the entrance to the Elysee in front of a courtyard packed with journalists.

While European onlookers of American politics have greeted Obama as the next President of the United States, some have noticed the media's apparant eagerness to play along. McCain even noted it at a town hall meeting last night in Columbus, Ohio. Per Politico's Jonathan Martin:

You have billed this event as a Presidential Town Hall, and I sincerely hope that the next president is here this evening. My opponent, of course, is traveling in Europe, and tomorrow his tour takes him to France. In a scene Lance would recognize, a throng of adoring fans awaits Senator Obama in Paris -- and that's just the American press.

Carl Cannon writes that "having a candidate travel abroad as the presumptive President-elect before he's been formally nominated is a strange new wrinkle" in presidential campaigns. He compares Obama's trip, and the media's coverage of it, to a moment in the 1980 presidential campaign:

It brings to mind a little incident that happened days before Election Day in 1980. Reagan was doing a rally at a high school in Charlottesville, Va. when the band inexplicably broke into Hail to the Chief. A CBS network correspondent in the White House pool, speaking loudly to be heard over the blaring music, intoned, "Pretty frigging presumptuous, if you ask me!" He spoke just as the band stopped and his words echoed over the football field on that crisp October night. Nancy Reagan glared at him, and his media colleagues laughed at him. In 2008, they aren't laughing, they are humming along with the tune.