McCain, Experience, the Campaign, Iraq

Briefly, McCain, I don't like him. He's got his plusses at times but I consider him mostly a fraud. I think singing "Bomb, Bomb Iran" virtually by itself shows him unfit for the presidency. I don't understand why he's considered a hero.

However, I think it's intellectually dishonest to attack him for wanting to stay in Iraq 100 years. I think his point was fair. It's not how long you stay, it's how long you stay at alert, with a bullseye painted on you, knocking down doors and getting shot at. If you could stay but successfully pacify the country, the American public would not care. I think it's ridiculous to think Iraq will quickly become a safe place, but he's right that most Americans would not care if it were not for the US casualties produced by the stay.

No one will say it but McCain has more experience because he is a white boy from a notable family. He's been in the Senate 20 years. When he got there, there were two women serving (one the daughter of Alf Landon) and zero African Americans (only one African American had ever been elected to the Senate by that point). So his experience is largely of a sort simply unavailable to women and blacks.

I continue to be amazed at all the talk about candidates allegedly positioning themselves with respect to the all-important issue of their own status as frontrunner or insurgent or whether they have "momentum" which is all malarkey. I remember G.H.W.B.'s "big mo" got him about as far as Joe got on "Joementum." Apparently, the response to, cover the issues and the candidates and not the horserace, is that the horserace is the important issue. However, I seem to note that most polls show Americans are more concerned about the economy and the war than momentum or frontrunneriness.

I have to say, I am really impressed by all the Obama media out there. I've heard that he's got campaign ring-tones going out there, all sorts of merchandising, and viral media. There was the "Obama Girl" video and now the will.i.am "Yes, We Can" video with something around five million hits on youtube, and Slate has that wonderful "Hillary's Inner Tracy Flick" video, and the john.he.is video mocking McCain (although a little unfairly) is just great. He hasn't always impressed me much with his policy positions, but to the extent that running a campaign successfully is any indication of how one would run a country, the man is surely uber-capable. And that's very appealing after 8 years of rank incompetence. And being the opposite of Bush's ideological stridency is, although not for me, apparently a hugely appealing contrast for the rest of the nation. Short summary of the Obama strategy: look for a president with a 25% approval rating and do the opposite.

A positive word for Ron Paul. The Nation put in a good word for Chris Dodd a while back, saying he was good on civil liberties and foreign policy, which is after all where the president's power is least checked by Congress and must be the best for a candidate. By that measure, Ron Paul is not bad. As a libertarian wacko, he will respect civil liberties, and he's got that good old isolationist streak that makes him a stronger anti-war candidate than either of the democrats. Now if only we could get him to appoint some liberal justices. Hmm, maybe a crossover veep? Obama-Paul?

And the disaster that is Iraq. It really is staggering whenever you look at the statistics afresh. A million dead, millions displaced, millions wounded, millions in dire poverty, constant violence, sectarian division, no electricity, an illegitimate and ineffective government, sub-prewar oil production, women subjugated, emerging drug production, no drinkable water, hospitals destroyed, professionals driven off, the people under biometric lockdown, other countries invading at will, the historical, archeological and cultural heritage of the cradle of civiliazation continuing to be blown to bits. Please remember that the surge was intended to create a temporary increase in security to allow the resumption of all the sorts of normal life necessary to come back and make the increased security permanent without the surge. What happened was that there was very little surge: other countries decreased their commitments as the US filtered in troops who were worn out or used up, brain-injured, demoralized and suicidal, scraped the bottom of the barrel to bring in troops that would normally have been rejected as unfit. Petraeus created an illusory surge mostly by systematic surrender, giving up Anbar and leaving Basra abandoned, reallocating forces, and making heavier reliance on air-power which kills indiscrimately and creates generations of new enemies. Along with the burning out of the ethnic cleansing in Baghdad, this led to a salable domestic PR victory, but led to none of the strategic objectives of the surge. The place is still hell. There's nothing you couldn't do before that you can do now. Everyone is still doing what they were doing before: positioning themselves for the inevitable US departure.

Finally, checks and balances. Who says they have to be internal? We here a lot of talk about rebuilding America's image in the world, shoring up its economic strength, repairing its burned out military, and restoring America to international strength and presige. Of course, as your future president, I agree wholeheartedly. But as a current citizen who cares about the rest of the world and about limiting the power of the executive, especially in the face of a supine Congress and accommodating courts, I see the glass as more than half full. So the rest of the world is finally wise to our bullshit? Good for them! If Congress won't stop the President from making unconstitutional foreign policy, maybe the united nations of the world will step in and do their job for them. We don't have the forces free and up to strength to augment covert operations in South America? Well then, they will be better able to impose the check that Congress won't. Hooray for the sovereignty of our South American brothers, truly the successors to Congressman Abe Lincoln!