Although some conservatives have been fretting that Lebanese rocket fire and Israeli warplanes are making President Bush look helpless, administration officials revealed to TIME today that they have plans to harness the chaos as a "leadership moment" for Bush that could wind up helping his flagging goal of transforming the Middle East.

These officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will leave Sunday night for a week of diplomacy in the region and will go with the modest goal of forming an "umbrella of Arab allies" in opposition to the militant group Hizballah that incited the conflagration by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers.

"She's not going to come home with a ceasefire, but stronger ties to the Arab world," an administration official said. "It's going to allow us to say that America isn't going to put up with this and we have Arab friends that are against you terrorists. What we want is our Arab allies standing against Hizballah and against Iran, since there is no one who doesn't think Iran is behind this. We're going to say to Hizballah and the terrorist groups, 'This will not stand.' That is the way to bring real change to the Middle East. If you just have a ceasefire, then soon or later, they go back to fighting."

Rice was to announce her plans at a briefing this afternoon, officials said. Officials were using the word "umbrella" instead of "coalition" to avoid reminders of the struggling coalition the U.S. led into Iraq. Administration officials said the plans Rice will discuss include security, humanitarian relief and reconstruction in Lebanon. "We do not want Hizballah to get the opportunity to rearm and rebuild," a Bush aide said.

Another administration official told TIME this morning that the diplomacy "is going remarkably well," pointing to phone calls the President has had with Middle Eastern leaders, the journey by two envoys to the region, and frequent conversations between National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and his counterparts.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow appeared on network morning shows to urge patience with the administration approach and to point out how active the Bush team has been. "The president never said this would be easy," Snow said on NBC's "Today" show, speaking of the wider war on terror. "Everybody who wants this kind of egg timer diplomacy, who thinks, okay, these things ought to happen quickly -- you don't understand human nature. Terrorists are not going to say, 'You know what? That's right. I'm going to pick another career.' Many times, they're going to fight to the death. We hope that is not the case in Lebanon."

"Obama to give major speech in Iowa," The Associated Press reports this morning. "Sen. Barack Obama [of Illinois], whose name has come up in speculation about the 2008 presidential race, will be the headline speaker at the Iowa Democratic Party's highest profile event this year in a state that traditionally holds the first delegate-selection caucuses. Obama will be the featured speaker at Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin's annual steak fry in September, an event which annually draws thousands of activists. 'I think his standing has risen rapidly,' Harkin said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press."

Now, flash back to June 22 and The Mason City (Iowa) Globe Gazette, as digested by The Frontrunner: " 'Some Iowa Democrats who are already sizing up 2008 presidential prospects say they're eager to catch a glimpse of one of their party's rapidly rising stars -- U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. But they shouldn't hold their breath. Aides insist the Democrat from Illinois hasn't planned any trips to Iowa. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama 'currently has no plans to visit Iowa, and tried to downplay speculation and media accounts that hint he's considering a 2008 run for president.' Gibbs said, 'There's no doubt a lot of people ask him about his future, and every day people ask. But his answer hasn't changed, and he very much enjoys his job as a senator from Illinois.' "

Hey, as dudes have been trying to convince their girlfriends for eons, it doesn't hurt to look!

The cover of the August issue of Esquire is a commanding photo of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and the article consists mostly of an entrancingly intimate account of the grueling pace of appearances and fundraisers he's pursuing. It has the flattering title "One of Us," with the subhead, "John McCain may be the last man in America who most Americans listen to. But has he run out of time to become President?" The 11-page article doesn't really address that question, let alone answer it. But it does capture this arresting moment, from a fundraiser McCain, recipient of the Silver Star and other medals for heroism as a Naval aviator and prisoner of war in Vietnam, is doing for Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), who is in a tough reelection race: "In a backroom, there is a long line of people who have paid $500 to have McCain shake their hands and pose for pictures. One of those in line who has not paid for the privilege is  Scott Richards, a forty-year-old Army sergeant from Pleasant Valley dressed in military fatigues, with his wife and four children around him. His truck was blown up when he was delivering a load of fuel in Karsch, Iraq, a blast he very nearly didn't survive, and this morning he received the Purple Heart. Sweeney wanted to present it to Richards along with McCain in front of the cameras, but McCain politely declined: 'No [blanking] way,' he said the night before, his gentle way of letting Sweeney know that he will sell out only so much of himself for the cause. … [W]hen McCain congratulates Sergeant Richards on his Purple Heart this morning, he does so out of sight and in whispers."

As Texas Governor and would-be President in July of 2000, George W. Bush reaped a PR bonanza by going before the NAACP national convention in Baltimore, promising a new commitment to equality and upward mobility for all citizens. "Before we go to the future, we must acknowledge our past," he said. "For my party, there is no escaping the reality that the party of Lincoln has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln. Recognizing and confronting our history is important. Transcending our history is essential."

An editorial in the Austin American-Statement proclaimed, "Bush takes a risk and wins." The Baltimore Sun column of Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover declared, "Softer Bush spooks Democrats." On ABC's "Good Morning America," political analyst George Stephanopoulos said Bush had sent "a clear signal to the moderate majority he's targeting."

When the President returns Thursday for the group's 97th annual convention, called "Voting Our Values, Valuing Our Votes," undiluted accolades won't exactly be in the cards. Republicans say the President, with his "ownership society"  agenda, has made an unprecedented effort to reach a community where the return is always going to be low.

Back in 2002, he appeared in the East Room with Coretta Scott King and her family for the unveiling of a portrait of her late husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and promised that America "will honor his name forever." The elaborate event -- also attended by the First Lady, Laura Bush, who had flown in from Atlanta with Mrs. King -- looked like a milestone in the White House's effort to build long-term support among African Americans. Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman travels frequently to receptive black audiences, and took the extraordinary step of telling the NAACP convention in Milwaukee last year that it was "wrong" for the party, beginning with Richard M. Nixon in 1968, to employ a Southern strategy that relied on desegregation and busing as wedge issues.

But in 2004, the President's share of the black vote rose from an embarrassing 9 percent to a disappointing 11 percent. Bush's political advisers say he did better than that in places where they ran urban radio ads, increasing his share from 7 percent to 16 percent in Ohio and Pennsylvania and from 7 to 13 percent in Florida. Mehlman has said that he knew it would take a few election cycles to see the true impact of the party's outreach efforts, including recruitment of more black Republicans for local and statewide ballots. These advisers are especially optimistic about Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, running for Senator in Mehlman's native Maryland. "The storm Steele would need to achieve victory is brewing," said one Republican official.

Modern top-of-the-ticket African-American Republican success stories used to be limited to Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts, who in 1966 became the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. Now, besides Steele, the party also has Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a meatpacker's son running for Governor, and Lynn Swann, the Pittsburgh Steelers veteran and ABC sportscaster running against Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

Even so, the gains have been nothing like these advisers had dreamed back in Baltimore. Critics say administration rhetoric was never matched with action. "We knew he was in the oil business - we just didn't know it was snake oil," the NAACP's chairman, Julian Bond, said at the 2002 convention, in Houston. Bush agreed to speak this week to the NAACP, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, after rejecting invitations five years in a row. That had allowed the group to call him the first President since Herbert Hoover not to show up. In 2004, aides at first said Bush had a scheduling conflict, but later acknowledged that the real reason was inflammatory criticism by the group's leaders. Bond said at Auburn University in 2003 that the Republican Party's idea of equal rights "is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side."

So how can Bush at least break even, and maybe even score some points, with a skeptical to hostile audience and a press pack gearing up to write about his failure to connect with minorities?  Here's what to listen for:

--Republican officials say one of his central points will be the President's support for renewing expiring sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which eliminated such impediments to voting as literacy tests, and tried to make sure more eligible Southern voters were able to go to the polls. The House approved the extensions last week and the Senate is now considering them. The President first called for the renewal in December, when he signed a bill calling for the placement of a statue of Rosa Parks in the Capitol's National Statuary Hall, and in April he called it "a very important part of the civil rights legislation."

--In New Orleans' Jackson Square two weeks after Hurricane Katrina's cruel landfall, the President acknowledged that the region's persistent poverty "has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America." He has said little since then about what he wants to do to change that, and the NAACP speech would be a chance to offer something specific and meaty that would walk the talk. People close to Bush said the New Orleans aftermath has been frustrating, showing the limits of the office, but maintain that Democrats did not exactly appear eager for a bipartisan dialogue on race and poverty, either.

White House officials say this won't come up during the NAACP speech, but it would bring the house down. In May, the House Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), voted a surprisingly strong 29 to 4 in favor of his plan to give the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives. The bill is cleverly designed: Utah, which supported Bush's reelection more strongly than any other state (72 percent), would get a fourth member of Congress, making the likely partisan impact a wash. It's not statehood, which the President has adamantly opposed, but instead is styled by supporters as "voting rights" for a city that is 60 percent black and went 89 percent for John Kerry and 85 percent for Al Gore. D.C. now has an elected but non-voting representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat.

Here's the most surprising paragraph in this dispatch: A Republican official familiar with White House views on the matter said Bush's aides have indicated they have "an open mind" about the Davis bill and "understand that it makes sense to do it, politically -- it's something tangible and doable that would be popular with the African American community." A second knowledgeable official said the White House "understands the political upside" and might support it if went to the President's desk but that the White House "isn't going to be a mover on this bill, ever," in part because aides do not want it to look like Bush has changed from past statements about representation for D.C.
The bill now needs to go through the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner III, who promised Davis in a March 24 letter that his committee would mark up the bill, a key step toward a vote, "within a reasonable time" after it passed the government Reform Committee. The bill, the District of Columbia Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act, would treat D.C. like a House district and would also permanently increase the size of the House by two, to 437. Utah is the state next in line for an additional representative, based on the 2000 census. The changes would not affect the Senate.

Bush has said he wants to be a good neighbor in the District. In 2004 at the National Urban League convention, where he has appeared in lieu of the NAACP, he saluted D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams as "my Mayor" and "a good man" who is a very good mayor. "I work with Tony," the President said, noting he had signed a bill creating taxpayer-sponsored scholarships for D.C. students. Williams has returned the love, saluting the First Lady at Christmas event in 2001 for showing "her friendship for our nation's capital in so many different ways."

White House officials say they haven't taken a position on the D.C. bill yet, since it's still working its way through the legislative stages. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow declined to preview the NAACP speech, saying at his televised briefing on Tuesday, "You'll have to wait and see. I'll let the President give his speech."

Snow had been asked about the D.C. bill during his first formal briefing, on May 16, and did not rule out support for it. "Why don't we wait and see what happens first?" he said. "If Representative Davis has success, we will be able to formulate a position."

A memorable lead:
Watching bombs from the bar -- a holiday in Beirut
By Paul Hughes
BEIRUT, July 18 (Reuters) - You know your holiday has taken a turn for the worse when the hotel slips a note under your door with directions to the bomb shelter.

Administration officials may have had a similar feeling when they saw that The Associated Press had busted out THIS rubric:

BC-Iraq-Out of Control,1059 Sectarian killings surge despite national unity government

"There are other advantages to Gore's new job that may keep him interested for a while. For starters, it has no term limit. Even after 'An Inconvenient Truth' leaves theaters, he'll continue showing his slides and spreading his message. He's even working on a plan to franchise the slide show by training a thousand volunteers to give copies of his lecture." -- Benjamin Svetkey, "How Al Gore Tamed Hollywood," Entertainment Weekly, July 21, page 32

Ralph Reed Jr., appearing with his wife and four children at 9:48 p.m. Tuesday as he conceded defeat in the Republican primary for Georgia lieutenant governor, a 56 percent to 44 percent loss that surprised and spooked Republicans in Washington: "Today, Jo Anne and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. It puts politics into perspective. The most important thing in our lives is our faith in God. It's our marriages, our families, our loved ones. Stay in the fight, don't retreat, and our values will win in November, I assure you."

Nicholas D. Kristof, the New York Times columnist, gets lots of well-deserved credit for his early and frequent attention -- going back to March 24, 2004 -- to what President Bush now calls the "genocide" in the Darfur region of Sudan. Less heralded, Jonathan Karl of ABC News has shepherded a stream of relatively long stories about the brutalization onto network television and was recognized for his work Tuesday. "The Witness" -- his "Nightline" segment of May 2, 2005, about "one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time" -- was announced as a nominee for the 27th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, to be presented in September.

"All right, this is hectoring now." -- White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, on Tuesday after a series of 17 questions, statements and exclamations from the legendary Helen Thomas, who argued that the United States "could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon."

Dan Snyder's new network of three Redskins radio stations, complete with a "listen live" link and a sign-up for a Redskins Radio Newsletter.