BALTIMORE (Reuters) - Would it be a good week to announce a vice presidential pick? John McCain won't say, but he doesn't mind if you keep asking.

The Republican presidential candidate is fighting this week to stay in the public eye while his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, takes a high-profile trip abroad.

Obama has dominated headlines with his visit to Iraq and Afghanistan, which, ironically, the Arizona senator goaded him to make.

So McCain has used other means to grab the spotlight, including fanning speculation about a running mate, chiding the media for biased coverage of his rival, and pounding the presumptive Democratic nominee for his policy on Iraq.

First, the question of a potential partner:

"We have the same answer as we always had," McCain laughingly told reporters during a stop in Epping, New Hampshire, after columnist Robert Novak sparked a frenzy late on Monday with a report that a pick was imminent. "We'll let you know when ... we have an announcement."

Traveling reporters stormed to the front of the candidate's plane after Novak's report first came out.

Aides responded coyly. There would be no announcement that day, they said.

Score one for drumming up attention.

That came after a dust-up with the New York Times, which rejected an opinion piece penned by McCain in response to a similar one on Iraq written by Obama.

The rejection drew headlines on its own and was seen by McCain's campaign as further evidence of a positive bias toward the Illinois senator, though a senior adviser conceded the flap drew more attention to the Republican candidate than publication of the piece would have accomplished.

Continuing the theme, the campaign released a video titled "Obama Love" on Tuesday to show more examples of what it considers media infatuation with the Democrat.

Obama's trip has also been an opening for McCain to highlight policy differences, however.

The former Vietnam prisoner of war, who has visited Iraq and Afghanistan on numerous occasions, rebuked Obama for his opposition to an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq -- known as the "surge" -- which has been credited for helping stabilize the country.

"When we adopted the surge, we were losing the war in Iraq, and I stood up and said I would rather lose a campaign than lose a war," McCain said on Tuesday.

"Apparently Sen. Obama, who does not understand what's happening in Iraq or fails to acknowledge the success in Iraq, would rather lose a war than lose a campaign."

(Editing by Eric Beech)

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