Good Wednesday morning. A television station in Milwaukee reports that Brett Favre contacted the Packers' general manager via text message to discuss a possible comeback. Why doesn't anyone pick up the phone anymore? Or does that make Politics Nation sound like the old guy on the porch complaining about the kids on the lawn? Here's what Washington is watching this morning:

-- The Senate will vote on amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before recessing for the weekly Republican Party luncheon (Democrats held theirs yesterday, while many Republicans made the trip to North Carolina to pay final respects to the late Senator Jesse Helms). Later today, the upper chamber will again take up housing legislation. The House, meanwhile, will vote on a bill to require preservation of some White House emails. President Bush returns home from his final G-8 summit today, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey will be in the hot seat, grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee about oversight at the Justice Department a week after a report suggesting some career professionals were hired for their political beliefs.

-- It's a reminder every political watcher needs to keep in the back of their heads: No matter what message a candidate is driving on any given day, it only takes one event for the message to begin driving the candidate. As Barack Obama returns to the Senate to vote on housing legislation, the perfect opportunity to turn the debate back to the economy, he, and John McCain, will instead spend their day talking about the threat of Iran and their support for Israel after the Revolutionary Guard tested nine medium-range missiles today in response to Israeli military exercises, as the Jerusalem Post writes. The Shahab-3 missiles can't reach the United States, but with a 2,000 kilometer range, they could reach ally Israel.

-- Too, watch for presidential politics to take a back seat to bad economic news, as triggered by the missile launches. The shots were fired in the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 40% of the world's oil flows, sending oil prices right back up after a momentary drop yesterday. Crude is still trading lower, after plummeting five dollars a barrel yesterday, but any time world events make people jittery, it's oil prices that will suffer. Gold, too, is up, spiking after settling at a two-week low. With both indicators climbing, it's not likely Wall Street will have a good day, even after the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 152 points yesterday.

-- The lesson: External factors will play a role in this presidential contest, no matter how much Obama and McCain might want to talk about something else. The nimble campaign will respond to major external events and implement the necessary talking points quickly. But the smart campaign will be the one that recognizes exactly which world events are worth deviating from the plan of the day to which to respond. Respond too much, and the campaign loses all control of its message and gets thrown from the track easily. Respond too little, and one's campaign appears deaf to the world around it.

-- Of course, with one candidate dominating on foreign policy and the other on the economy, the presence of Iranian missiles in today's and tomorrow's headlines (Depending on where in the world you pick up your newspaper) will have a political impact. McCain, who is trusted by more Americans on foreign policy than Barack Obama, could use the occasional reminder to the public that he's the experience candidate. "Iran's most recent missile tests demonstrate again the dangers it poses to its neighbors and to the wider region, especially Israel," McCain said in a statement released early this morning. "Ballistic missile testing coupled with Iran's continued refusal to cease its nuclear activities should unite the international community in efforts to counter Iran's dangerous ambitions."

-- Speaking of test fires, Obama's campaign looks like it has learned an important lesson from John Kerry's campaign. In the Spring and early Summer of 2004, Democrats spent far less on advertising than Republicans, giving the GOP the chance to define Kerry as a flip-flopping Northeastern elitist liberal. By the time Kerry got around to responding, it was too late. That's not going to happen to Obama, who launched the first response ad of the 2008 campaign yesterday, taking on an RNC spot that hit the Democrat on energy. The Detroit News reports the spot will air in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the same four battleground states in which the RNC ad is running. Like external events, it takes judgment to determine which attack ads to respond to, and Obama's campaign thinks the first Republican buy meets that threshold. (See Obama's ad here)

-- Meanwhile, Obama has another threat coming his way. Though the press has been kind, to put it mildly, to the Democratic nominee, his recent charge towards the center has done more to generate negative columns and stories than virtually any other moment in the seventeen months he's been running for president. Obama fought back against the notion that he's plunging to the middle during a town hall meeting yesterday in Powder Springs, Georgia, defending new emphases on Iraq, gun control, faith and other issues yesterday, the New York Times' Michael Powell reported. Obama didn't take a lot of heat for skipping town hall meetings with McCain -- the media forgot the story in mere moments, it seemed -- but he may need to spend a little more time repairing these bridges.

-- Erosion Of The Day: Top television networks are considering cutting back their prime time convention coverage, Politico's David Paul Kuhn reports. While the nets will cover major speeches at the Democratic National Convention, the addition of Obama's trip to Invesco Field, where he will accept the Democratic nomination in front of 76,000 adoring fans, is putting more financial pressure on executives, who now have two sites to set up shop, instead of just one. The additional costs "add to the overall question of how the networks should cover what is a non-news event," CBS News vice president Paul Friedman told Kuhn.

-- Today On The Trail: Obama starts his day in Washington with votes on the Senate floor, where he may incur the wrath of lefty bloggers for his votes on FISA legislation. Later, he heads to New York City for a joint fundraiser with Hillary Clinton, aimed at filling Obama's coffers and repaying Clinton's debt. And John McCain returns to Ohio, with a town hall meeting set for Portsmouth, south of Columbus and right on the Ohio-Kentucky border.