UPDATE: Al Rodgers has lots of video and photos of the reception Obama got from American soldiers in Baghdad. Think these people want to be home with their families?
A staple of John McCain’s stump speech has been to play up his military experience and to claim that he, unlike Barack Obama, will be able to win the war in Iraq.
It wasn’t the strongest hand to begin with, because polls show that a clear majority of Americans would rather bring our troops home from Iraq than keep them there indefinitely. Nevertheless, it made sense for McCain, an outspoken supporter of this unpopular war, to try to depict Obama’s plan for Iraq as irresponsible.
Trouble is, earlier this month Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. Obama quickly published this New York Times editorial laying out his plan:
Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition – despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.
But this is not a strategy for success – it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.
As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.
As Obama pointed out, President Bush and McCain have repeatedly said they would respect the wishes of the sovereign Iraqi government. Well, Al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel last week that he supports the timetable laid out by Obama.
An unnamed Republican strategist summed it up for Marc Ambinder: “We’re f*cked.”
Couldn’t Al-Maliki have been mistranslated? It doesn’t look that way. NBC’s First Read had this to say on Monday about John McCain’s “rough weekend”:
You know you had a problematic weekend when: 1) one of your top economic advisers/surrogates finally steps down from the campaign after his “nation of whiners” remark; 2) you get panned for breaking CODEL protocol/etiquette by announcing (incorrectly) at a fundraiser that your opponent is headed to Iraq on Friday or Saturday; 3) the prime minister of Iraq tells a German magazine that he backs your opponent’s plan for withdrawing troops from that country; and 4) when the Iraqi government tries to walk back that support, it does so unconvincingly. On the bright side for McCain, his campaign seized on remarks from Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen that withdrawing US troops over the next two years would be “dangerous.”
[…]Per NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Obama has arrived in Baghdad and he spoke with Maliki. The headline after their photo-op: Maliki’s spokesman said afterwards (in English) that the Iraqi vision is for all US troops to be out of Iraq by 2010. And with this news — as well as the Der Spiegel interview, in which Maliki seemed to back Obama’s withdrawal plan — the trip seems like it has already been a PR success for the Illinois senator.
Memo to political journalists: this trip is a lot more than a PR success. McCain simply doesn’t have anything left supporting his determination to keep us in Iraq long-term. Why should Americans hire him as our commander-in-chief?
Now Republicans are trying to change the subject. Talking heads claim recent events in Iraq prove that McCain was right to support the “surge” in U.S. troops (which Obama opposed but voted to fund).
McCain tried to submit his own op-ed about Iraq to the New York Times, but the newspaper’s editors rejected it because it didn’t contain anything new of substance. (You can read the rejected piece here.)
It doesn’t look like McCain believes he can win the election on the Iraq issue, though. I say that because his paid advertising is not using his own campaign’s talking points on Iraq, such as how Obama never talks about winning the war, only about ending the war.
Instead, the McCain campaign has focused on energy policy in some early commercials. On Monday, as Obama visited Iraq, McCain started running a new television ad contrasting himself and Obama on new oil drilling:
Open Left has the script:
ANNCR: Gas prices – $4, $5, no end in sight, because some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America.
No to independence from foreign oil.
Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?
CHANT: Obama, Obama
ANNCR: One man knows we must now drill more in America and rescue our family budgets.
Don’t hope for more energy, vote for it. McCain.
JOHN MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approve this message.
On substance, this ad is absurd. Drilling for more oil in the U.S. wouldn’t come close to replacing the oil we purchase from foreign countries. Oil companies aren’t even leasing all the currently available fields for offshore drilling. Opening up new drilling sites wouldn’t bring any new oil onto U.S. markets for years.
And anyway, who’s been running the country for the last seven and a half years? Obama’s just one senator out of 100, and he’s only been in Washington since 2005. But suddenly he’s to blame for rising gas prices?
At the same time, this commercial may be effective spin for McCain. To the average person, drilling for more oil here in America may sound like a good way to bring down prices and help us be independent from foreign oil. I also think the crowd chanting Obama’s name will be a turnoff for many viewers. If you don’t already support Obama, that probably sounds creepy.
An earlier McCain ad sought to tie Obama’s “hope and change” message to 1960s hippie culture, but I suspect this new approach has more potential for McCain. It suggests Obama only offers empty hope for more energy, while McCain has a plan. (Never mind that Obama has a much better plan for producing clean energy in the U.S.)
When Obama returns from his trip to the Middle East and Europe, he better have a good response ready on offshore drilling and energy independence.
In other McCain diversion news, the sometimes well-informed columnist Robert Novak says McCain may have something else in mind to steal Obama’s thunder this week:
Sources close to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign are suggesting he will reveal the name of his vice presidential selection this week while Sen. Barack Obama is getting the headlines on his foreign trip.
If McCain does name his running mate early, I doubt he will choose a dark horse. My money would be on Mitt Romney.
Final note: I don’t have satellite radio, but Keith Nichols mentioned that The Bill Press Show on Sirius 146 is doing a countdown of 101 reasons to vote against John McCain. They give a new reason every morning at 7:25 am (central time). The list of reasons 63 through 101 can be found here. The page is updated daily.