The McCain Roller Coaster

You must be at least 54" tall to ride the Straight Talk Express.

The McCain campaign has been going through some ups and downs lately, while Barack Obama is flying high on his world trip.

Last Friday, McCain submitted an op-ed about Iraq to the New York Times after Obama's was published four days before. On Monday, the Drudge Report, erm, reported that the Times asked McCain to rewrite it, as it largely criticized Obama's plan and presented no strategic vision of his own. Once this story broke, conservatives were immediately up in arms about media bias.

Two things: (1) There isn't really any bias here: The Times will gladly publish what McCain has to say, as soon as he has something substantive to say. True, Obama's op-ed criticized Bush and McCain, but it largely laid out (and made the case for) his own plan. McCain's simply tore Obama down. (2) Why didn't the Times simply avoid conservatives' grumbling about media bias, publish the editorial in the first place, and watch as others criticized McCain's criticism and lack of a coherent strategy?

The Times may have caused conservatives to rally around McCain, but now, with Obama largely succeeding abroad, Maliki supporting Obama's 16-month withdrawal timetable, and Bush negotiating with the Iranians, McCain seems to have lost his foreign-policy cred...and his temper. His comment that "Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign," is a sign of unpresidential frustration.

But McCain's foreign policy ideas have largely been ridiculous from the start: Permanent bases in Iraq? Militancy with Iran? Removing Russia from the G-8 (which is impossible, considering that the other member nations would have to agree) and establishing a "League of Democracies" that would only ostracize the Russians and freeze Russo-American relations to nearly Cold War levels?

In short: "He has appeared brittle and inflexible, slow to adapt to changes on the ground, slow to grasp the full implications not only of the improving situation in Iraq but also of the worsening situation in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan."

And that's why for all of his experience, John McCain's foreign-policy views are worse than Barack Obama's.