WASHINGTON, July 24 (UPI) -- Sen. Barack Obama's progress through Israel and Jordan, like his visits to Afghanistan and Iraq earlier this week, was a smoothly constructed triumph. Yet he isn't getting the bounce out of it in the polls he ought to. Whatever is going on?

Obama, D-Ill., arrived in Germany Thursday to launch the European half of his trip with the strong expectation that Obamania would be far stronger in Germany, France and Britain than it was even in the Middle East or, for that matter, at home in the United States. Meanwhile, most U.S. polls still give him a sturdy though not overwhelming lead over Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the GOP's 70-something presumptive nominee. However, a lead of 47 percent to 41 percent, which the NBC/Wall Street Journal reported in its latest survey published Wednesday, is still far from overwhelming.

How, then, to reconcile the striking and apparently even blessed success of Obama's progress through the war-torn nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories with his failure to generate any significant "bounce" from this in domestic U.S. popular support, where it really matters?

The answer appears to be rooted in America's old politics of confrontation and divisiveness between two nations separated by geography, culture and emotion far more than by education and class.

Obama really hasn't transcended, eliminated or even narrowed that great chasm at all. The political and cultural Grand Canyon in the minds of the American people is as strong as it has ever been over the past 40 years.