Good Tuesday morning. If your Bastille Day plans were wild, we hope you're feeling better after some sleep. Here's what Washington is watching this morning:

-- The Senate meets this morning to continue consideration of an anti-AIDS bill named for two late House members who made humanitarian foreign policy their goal, Democrat Tom Lantos and Republican Henry Hyde. The House is in session as well, working on minor bills. President Bush holds a photo opportunity today with winners of a math competition, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with the president of Cameroon. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke will give his semi-annual report on monetary policy to the Senate Banking Committee, alongside Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

-- We spent yesterday talking about the importance of Iraq to both Barack Obama and John McCain and their respective chances at making it to the White House, and we'll do much the same today, thanks to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll that shows the country divided over an approach to Iraq. 47% of respondents said they trust McCain to better handle the situation in Iraq, while 45% said they thought Obama would do the better job. Considering McCain's strength on the war issue -- other polls show him trailing miserably when it comes to domestic issues -- Obama's team is either wise to try to use McCain's best issue against him or foolish to not choose some more fertile battleground.

-- One political observer Politics Nation spoke with yesterday brought up an old quote from a journalist in the 1960s. To paraphrase, elections are about three things: War and peace, kitchen tables and black and white. One of those things has to be predominant. McCain is working on making sure the war and peace aspect is what most people are paying attention to this year. Asked whether each candidate would be a good commander in chief of the military, 48% said yes for Obama, while an equal number said no. A whopping 72% said McCain would be a good head of the military, with just 25% saying no. If November becomes a battle over battle, if you will, McCain can score the upset.

-- Obama isn't done making his case on Iraq. The presumptive Democratic nominee will give what his campaign is calling a major address on the issue in Washington today (Ironically at the Ronald Reagan building downtown) following yesterday's op-ed in the New York Times. Obama will lay blame at the hands of current policy towards Iraq: "Our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe," Obama plans to say, per speech excerpts. Too, Obama will keep trying to shift the focus to Afghanistan: "The central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was," he'll say, citing al Qaeda presence in Afghanistand and Pakistan.

-- Meanwhile, McCain will give his own big speech this week centered on Afghanistan, Politico's Avi Zenilman reports. McCain confidante Lindsey Graham let slip word of the impending address during a conference call in which he and other McCain advisers hit Obama for paying too much attention to Afghanistan at the expense of attention for Iraq. The constant back-and-forth is certainly heating up in advance of Obama's trip to the Middle East, which will presumably include a stop in one or both countries.

-- Perhaps the reason both candidates are focusing so much on Iraq when the economy seems to be a more pressing issue in American minds is that they're staying in their comfort zone. Obama's entire rationale for running for president was a 2002 speech in which he cautioned against going to war in Iraq; in a primary campaign in which he and rival Hillary Clinton differed on almost nothing, it was the largest distinction he could draw. McCain, on the other hand, rested his candidacy on the premise that he would do better for the country than anyone else, backing it up by vocally supporting the surge which has reduced violence in the last eighteen months. The two candidates, in short, are talking up Iraq because that's their most comfortable subject.

-- Earlier, we mentioned that McCain, by focusing on Iraq, has the chance to "score the upset." That's how the race feels, like Obama is ahead by a wide margin and McCain is desperate for media oxygen. But, as The Fix wrote yesterday, the race is surprisingly close. Take a look at different measures and come up with different explanations: The latest RCP National Average shows Obama leading by just four points; the latest RCP Electoral Count has Obama leading by a wider 255-163, just fifteen votes short of a majority. The truth lies in the long run: It doesn't matter who's ahead now (Al Gore and John Kerry both led at approximately this point, while Bill Clinton, in 1992, trailed both the incumbent President Bush and Ross Perot). It only matters that it's a close race.

-- Viper's Nest Of The Day: "It's my top priority today and it will be my top priority tomorrow," McCain told an audience member yesterday. Iraq? No, he was talking about immigration reform during a question and answer period at the National Council of La Raza, the Washington Post's Juliet Eliperin writes. Taking a renewed public stand on immigration reform offers McCain benefits and drawbacks. Benefit: Attract some Latino voters who might otherwise back Obama. Drawback: Offend the conservative base with whom he is barely on speaking terms already, who might otherwise sit on their hands.

-- Today On The Trail: Obama offers his address on Iraq and national security to an invited group of guests in downtown Washington before filming interviews on the subject with Gwen Ifill, of PBS, that will air tonight on The NewsHour, and with Larry King of CNN. McCain has a town hall meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico today, returning to the first state in which his campaign ran advertising for the general election. Later, he heads to St. Louis for a fundraising event.