John McCain (directly in a town hall setting and through surrogates) today is trying to make the point about Barack Obama’s willingness to lose a war in order to win an election. In the media call earlier today foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann argued:
What is Senator Obama’s judgment based on? He predicted the surge would increase violence. He was wrong. He voted to cut off funds for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was wrong. Now he wants to supplant his judgment for successful military commanders. . . Senator Obama will not credit generals; he will not credit the strategy that works. And he consistently demonstrates his core judgment and his inflexibility in the face of clear facts on the ground.
Can this salient point penetrate the media love fest? Well, at least he got Katie Couric’s attention. (It is an out-of-body experience to hear MSM reporters say things like the surge has been “extremely effective.”) And David Gergen is a bit queasy about negotiating at cross purposes with the current president.
Still, there is something missing from the McCain response. Perhaps he’s waiting for Obama to return from overseas, but there hasn’t yet been a full-throated and complete explanation from McCain as to what’s so bad about Obama’s position(s) on Iraq and the surge. Yes, he was “wrong,” but why is that so important? And why is it worse that Obama won’t even now say that the surge in retrospect was a good idea? What’s wrong with Obama’s jumping at every sentence uttered by a foreign power to support your political stances? Other than overly-broad phrases ( “lacks judgment” or “inexperienced”) it seems McCain’s team is missing a clear and coherent indictment of Obama’s approach to foreign policy and a contrast as to how McCain approaches the world.
And if McCain thinks the criticisms go deeper than even national security expertise and judgment — to fundamental character, intellectual honesty and even a dangerously inflated ego — he needs to spell it out. I don’t think people, even ones amenable to McCain’s message, are necessarily going to figure it out on their own. If this election is about whether Obama can clear the bar with swing voters, then McCain needs to explain why this trip reveals that Obama doesn’t meet the minimal test of presidential leadership.
Favoring a course of action in retrospect which would have resulted in a humiliating defeat for the U.S. and an unprecedented victory for Al Qaeda seems like it should be a self-evident disqualifier for the presidency. But that is not the case. Many voters who have heard enough about Iraq for a lifetime aren’t going to connect the dots if McCain and his team don’t do it for them.
