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(AP) -- Calculated political ploy. Timely foreign outreach. A dash of each? Ask voters across the country about Barack Obama's image-packed week of foreign travel and you'll get a mix of admiration, suspicion, even a couple of bored shrugs.

"I didn't know they could vote in our elections," Phil Wadlind, 62, deadpanned as he worked the children's train at The Mall of New Hampshire in Manchester, N.H.

Interviewed this week in bus stops and coffee shops, bookstores and shopping malls in six battleground states, these voters ranged from wide-eyed enthusiasts to gimlet-eyed skeptics and many viewed the trip through their own ideological lens.

Ronald Loring, a Miami Beach eye doctor, spoke for many when he observed that Obama had no choice, politically, to make a trip to counter Republican rival John McCain's perceived strength on foreign policy and national security.

"I'm impressed with his ability to communicate," he said. "I don't think that (the trip) will particularly make him a better president." Will he vote for Obama? "I'm sort of torn."

As a media event, Obama's trip has been a political coup. He's been photographed with troops in Afghanistan, flying virtual shotgun in the sky over Baghdad with Gen. David Petraeus, bowing his head in prayer at Jerusalem's Western Wall, and addressing a throng in the streets of Berlin.

No doubt, Obama's trip is politically motivated. His main challenge in his campaign for the presidency is to assure U.S. voters that he can be a commander in chief who can manage two armed conflicts and build alliances overseas.

What's more, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have elevated the status of international affairs in American politics.

"By him going overseas and talking with the Israeli government and the people who mean the most to the United States ... I think what he's doing is great," said 50-year-old Robert Lindenbusch, pausing as he rode his bicycle down a Miami Beach sidewalk. "What he's showing now is that he has the experience to go out and reach out to these people and to say to them 'Hey, this is Barack Obama. I'm here. Let's work together.' "

"It's important for us to see him interact and to see how people respond," added Meghan Gilliss, 25-year-old bookstore owner in the college town of Columbia, Mo.

Dale Whitesell, a teacher and registered Democrat in Washington's northern Virginia suburbs, was delighted to see Obama spend time with U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I like the fact that he was around people in the military," Whitesell, 54, said as she finished running errands at a local strip mall. "I think he made an effort, as much as possible, to see what was really going on."

That Obama needs to fortify his credentials is not lost even on his supporters.

"He didn't serve in the military, so it's still important for him to touch base with the military and let them know his views on it," said James Hough, a 51-year-old nursing home dishwasher, as he waited at a downtown Pittsburgh bus stop on his way to work Thursday.

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