Good Monday morning. The field of 65 teams is set, and we're betting the team from Maryland makes it through Tuesday's play-in game. And by the way, try not to have a three-Guinness lunch on St. Patrick's Day. We'll have some good stories this afternoon. This morning, here's what Washington is watching:

-- What Congress calls the Spring District Work Period, college students everywhere call spring break. Congress won't return for two weeks. President Bush meets Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams for a St. Patty's Day reception at the White House before heading to a luncheon at the Capitol. Later, he meets with advisers on the markets, which are likely in for a rough day.

-- On the campaign trail, when advisers aren't saying something dumb and degrading about the rival, or when some secret of a candidate's past isn't making news, real events intrude, and they do so in a way that can have a greater impact on the landscape than any of those other distractions. As Congress leaves town for two weeks, and in the lull before the race for Pennsylvania and the remaining Democratic nominating contests, the real world is allowed to intrude, and it has. The economy, foreign affairs and Iraq are all going to play big roles this year, and today news is coming out of all three.

-- Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was down 5.2% today, while European markets are down between 2-4% as trading continues. As we post, nervous Wall Streeters are gathering for what looks like their own bad day. That comes just hours after the Federal Reserve helped bail out Bear Stearns, one of the largest investment banking firms in the country. (JP Morgan Chase will buy the beleaguered bank for $2 a share. That's quite a deal: The stock opened Friday at $57 a share.) The housing crisis shows no signs of slowing, while the word "recession" is uttered by officials at increasingly senior levels in government. A tanking economy, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy told Politics Nation, is bad for all incumbents. "When the economy gets tighter, people get more frustrated. When you're frustrated, you want to fire somebody," he said.

-- Foreign affairs have long played an important role in the election. It virtually handed John McCain the GOP nomination, and lately Hillary Clinton has used the notion of the importance of experience in foreign policy -- over the weekend, she held an event to broadcast her work on behalf of peace in Northern Ireland -- to some effect. Foreign affairs will intrude more prominently on the race, especially in terms of China, where clashes over the weekend killed at least 13 people, the Associated Press reports, though that number may be much higher. The riots, in Lhasa, Tibet, began as protests by monks before escalating and making the Chinese government send tanks to the territory they have occupied since 1950. The spotlight will be on China and it's relationship with the rest of the world in August, when Olympians head to Beijing to compete, and the candidates will have plenty to say on the subject as well.

-- But Iraq will remain at the front of voters' minds, if not always in the most important position. With John McCain making a surprise, but hardly unexpected, visit over the weekend, and with renewed press attention revolving around the five-year anniversary of the war, Iraq is going to stalk the campaign as Republicans try their best to focus on what they will call McCain's successful surge strategy and Democrats point to the overall failures of the Bush Administration and, by extension, a would-be McCain Administration. Answer this question and solve the presidential contest: Which is more important to voters, the fact that the country is in a war to begin with or where the U.S. goes from here? If Democrats are successful in arguing the first point, they will win in November. If McCain makes the second case better, he'll be sworn into the White House. (By the way, how irritated is McCain's team that Vice President Cheney also chose this moment to visit Iraq?)

-- Back to politics for a moment. As candidates near $250 million in spending on ads and pause in their ad broadcasts for the first time in six months, at least, according to Evan Tracey, there seems to be a collective gathering of breath. But as has happened repeatedly on the Democratic side, a pause and time gives Obama the opening he needs to close gaps with Clinton. It happened before Iowa, it happened before Nevada and the February 12 states. The only places Obama didn't make up ground when he had time were Ohio, where he got thumped, and Texas, where he actually won more delegates despite losing the primary. As further evidence that he does well when nothing's going on, he won an additional ten delegates this weekend, thanks to Iowa's county conventions, more, as NBC's Chuck Todd points out, than Clinton netted from the Buckeye State.

-- Clinton is determined not to let nothing happen. As she paraded the streets of Scranton and Pittsburgh over the weekend, celebrating St. Patrick's Day, her camp unleashed a full-frontal assault on Obama's relationship with Tony Rezko and hitting back on Obama's suggestion that she release her tax records, calling in turn on him to release records from every year he's been in public office, Athena Jones writes. Obama shot back, sitting down with reporters at two hometown papers to answer questions about Rezko, which impressed the Chicago Tribune, and his release last week of earmark requests may open another avenue of attack on Clinton's forthrightness.

-- Unlike previous Obama crises, the candidate is answering questions not because he's defending himself, but because he's about to parry. Obama's professorial nature has hurt the candidate at times; when attacked, he feels the need to respond to every charge, which, of course, just guarantees those charges another airing. This time, he's getting questions about his past out of the way in advance of a full-out attack on Clinton, the Trib's John McCormick writes. If we think we've seen the worst of the Democratic infighting, there may be a whole new level just ahead.

-- Pseudo-Endorsement Of The Day: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested in an interview aired yesterday that super delegates ought to back the candidate with the most pledged delegates at the end of the primaries, The Swamp's Silva writes. With Obama leading by 170 pledged delegates in the latest RCP Democratic Delegate Count, that's as good as an endorsement, right? Asked about the comments on a conference call yesterday, Obama strategist David Axelrod said he wouldn't presume to know Pelosi's motives, but he couldn't agree with her point fast enough.

-- Today On The Trail: John McCain is in Iraq, part of a week-long trip overseas that will include stops in the Middle East and Europe. Clinton delivers what her campaign is billing as a major foreign policy speech this morning at The George Washington University in D.C., and Obama holds a town hall meeting in Monaca, Pennsylvania. Later, he will have dinner with the Society of Irish Women, an organization celebrating the holiday in Scranton.