DAY 70 - Off to Europe Again with Obama

FIRST THOUGHTS.*** So where do we begin on this busy Wednesday?

With President Obama in London?
That NY-20 race?
The fact that Sarah Palin will no longer be the featured speaker at that big GOP fundraiser in June?
That Kathleen Sebelius had to pay about $7,000 in back taxes?
That Ted Stevens' conviction has been dropped?
Or what about the latest development in the never-ending recount in Minnesota?

Whew... We'll start with last night's special election in upstate New York. After building this race as a battle over the economic stimulus, as a test case of the GOP's health in the post-Bush era, and as a measure of Obama's coattails, what we got was . a tie. That's right, with 100% of precincts reporting, Democrat Scott Murphy leads Republican Jim Tedisco by 59 votes (77,344 vs. 77,285), with thousands of absentee ballots remaining to be counted. So no one lost and everybody won -- at least for now. As for those absentee ballots, the AP reports that 10,000 were requested and about 6,000 have been returned. What's more, mailed ballots from overseas aren't due until April 13. A top White House official tells us that the model shows they'll win the absentees. The delay in results keeps both parties from losing. And more importantly for the eventual loser, the eventual victor won't be seen as some sort of canary in the coal mine.

*** America's Challenge: We're not going to pretend we've suddenly become global political experts, but it doesn't take a Ph.D. in international affairs to figure out that America's place in the world is being challenged on a number of fronts. There's the fact that every member of the G-20 (even Britain) is trying to blame America first for the economic crisis. There's Russia and China flirting with the idea of a new global currency. There's even Israel threatening that if the U.S. doesn't act on Iran, they will. The president dismissed this criticism early this morning, saying you can find examples 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and 30 years ago where similar predictions of America's decline were made. Still, the issue of American Exceptionalism is front and center, and it's one of those intangible challenges that this president won't know if he succeeded in dealing with until years or even decades after he leaves office.

*** Obama And Brown: Speaking of this morning, the most striking aspect of Obama's joint presser with British PM Brown was how quickly the British press put the president on the defensive. He had to answer the question of whether America's to blame -- a question he answered very carefully, to the point where he seemed to speak even more deliberately than normal. Then the president had to answer the question of America's place in the world, not exactly a chance to be pro-active. As for Brown, it's always easy to tell when a politician is worried about his poll ratings; it doesn't matter the country. Brown's enthusiasm for Obama was palpable, and in the end, he practically tried to claim he had a campaign endorsement from the more popular Obama. It was amusing for us politically sensitive journalists to watch.

Also on Obama's agenda today: He has already met with Russia President Medvedev (a very carefully worded statement about a slew of issues the two countries will work on together; most interesting to us, the notable absence of the word "Taliban" in the Afghanistan paragraph of the joint statement), UK conservative leader David Cameron, and Chinese leaders; he and the first lady will meet the Queen of England at 12:35 pm ET; he'll host a reception for G-20 leaders at 12:50 ET; there's the G-20 "class photo" at 2:15 pm ET; and Obama participates in a G-20 working dinner at 3:30 pm ET.

First Read with NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, every weekday on MSNBC-TV at 9 a.m. ET.
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