Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign trip has been a huge success for him, and a big headache for his rival, Sen. John McCain.

Obama got an assist from an unlikely pair: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Bush.

Maliki, in an interview with the Der Spiegel magazine, stated unambiguously that he supported Obama’s call to remove all U.S. troops within 16 months or so after the new U.S. president takes office. “That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal,” he said.

While this certainly was not a full-fledged endorsement of Obama, it was a smack in the face to McCain and Bush. Both went into panic mode and scrambled to try to explain why Maliki did not say what he said.

Bush himself made life difficult for the Republican nominee by calling for a “time horizon” for the withdrawal of U.S. ground troops from Iraq. Just as the “surge” was not an “escalation,” his “time horizon” is not a “timetable.” Call it what you want, it reflects a retreat in position.

Up to now. Bush and McCain have resisted all talk of timetables as being tantamount to surrender. With Bush signing on to a time horizon, McCain is the odd man out, still calling for some undefined final victory, not matter how many years or decades that might take.

Until this trip, McCain and his advisers kept insisting that foreign policy was his turf. But Obama’s skillful diplomatic appearances, along with his meetings with U.S. troops and commanders, have taken much of McCain’s advantage away.

What’s more, Obama’s calm and intelligent style contrasts sharply with Bush’s bellicose, inarticulate, undiplomatic and inept policies. For foreign leaders, as well as their publics, this suggests that a new and welcome shift in U.S. foreign policy is perhaps on the way.

That, too, is bad news for McCain.

He cannot escape the fact that his foreign policies differ little from those of the unpopular president he seeks to replace.

At first, Obama’s trip appeared to be a risky proposition.

But the way it is turning out, it could end up widening his lead over his Republican opponent.

Clarence Lusane is an associate professor at American University and author of many books, including, most recently, “Colin Powell-Condoleezza Rice: Foreign Policy, Race and the New American Century.” He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

Copyright Clarence Lusane