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?

More Irony

Frank Rich's Sunday editorial, "The Audacity of Hopelessness," is amazing and worth reading in its entirety. Here are some excerpts:

It’s not just that [Hillary Clinton's] candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco [Iraq]. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency.

The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup....

The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating....

In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline.

Sidenote #1: From Time magazine's Swampland blog:

"While [the Clinton campaign advisers] were busy 'discovering' the rules, however, the Obama campaign had people on the ground in Texas explaining the system, organizing precincts, and making Powerpoints. I know because I went to one of these meetings a week ago. I should have invited [Clinton's chief strategist] Mark Penn I suppose."

Rich continues:

This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid....

As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.

Sidenote #2: Mark Penn's tendency to marginalize states where Obama won was labelled the "insult 40 states strategy" by Daily Kos, but I prefer "Is Your State Insignificant According to Hillary?":

#1. States that have a lot of black people are insignificant and are not quality. (sorry Alabama, DC, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and South Carolina).

#2. Small states are insignificant and are not quality. (sorry Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, North Dakota and Utah).

#3. States in the middle of the country are insignificant and are not quality. (sorry Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and North Dakota).

#4. States that have a lot of Mormons are insignificant and are not quality. (sorry Utah)

#5. States that run caucuses are insignificant and are not quality. (sorry Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota and Washington)