War and Politics

Daily Kos' Michael Clark sure draws interesting analogies. Mostly citing his support for the surge in Iraq and his deference towards President Bush at a recent press conference, John McCain is apparently Hubert Humphrey to Bush's LBJ and will thus experience the same sort of political failure in '08 that Humphrey did in '68.

Meanwhile, New York Times' Stanley Fish makes an equally interesting but opposite argument--McCain's positioning on Iraq would help him win a general against Barack Obama:

On the one hand, [McCain] voted to authorize the invasion. On the other, he consistently disagreed with the administration’s prosecution of the war in general and with the judgment of defense Secretary Rumsfeld in particular. And on the third hand, he advocated for a course of action that was at last implemented in the so-called “surge,” and with some success.

So, at any moment, he would be able to present himself as a strong patriot, and at another moment as a critic of the hard-line hawks, and at still another as a hard-line hawk with more experience and military knowledge than the others...

[Obama's stance is] inflexible and without nuance. McCain can ask, 'Don’t you see that the situation has changed in recent months, and shouldn't a responsible leader adjust his or her stance according to the facts on the ground?' And he can add, 'I too had my doubts about the conduct of the war, but now a policy I long advocated has been put in place with good results.'

I think neither Clark nor Fish are completely right. I think Iraq will definitely be a liability for McCain. Sure, he could argue that the surge has helped reduce violence in Iraq, but the main purpose of the surge was political reconciliation. The greatest achievement the Iraqi Parliament has to show for itself is adopting a new flag...that the Sunnis refuse to fly. Obama would argue that the only thing that would allow reconciliation in Iraq is the realization that American troops will not be there forever, despite McCain's rhetoric of a 10,000-year occupation.

I also believe McCain would try to paint himself as "patriot/critic/hawk," and not be yoked by Bush. But Fish overlooks one thing: I was alive in 2004; does he really expect me to believe that the American electorate would choose the flip-flopper over the resolute?