Obama's Vacation Assignment: Prepping to Make the Case that McCain Isn't "Ready to Lead" on National Security

I know there's plenty to do in Hawaii, but while Barack Obama is on vacation in his home state, allow me to suggest some beach reading for him. It's quite dark, occasionally hilarious, consistently frightening, and may or may not have a happy ending. I'm talking about John McCain's record on national security.

In fact, what I'm really hoping is that Obama will use this downtime to regroup, recharge, and come back ready to relentlessly make the case to the American people that McCain isn't "ready to lead" on national security. Voters trust McCain on the war on terror; Obama needs to show them every day why they shouldn't.

After a primary campaign in which the Obama camp skillfully went right at Hillary Clinton's strength -- her experience -- and used it to paint her as an entrenched, part-of-the-problem D.C. insider, it's been shocking to watch Team Obama cede to McCain national security and the war on terror -- his supposed strengths.

Making matters worse, they've taken this approach while McCain's Rove-trained message mavens have succeeded in turning one of Obama's real strengths into a negative - continuously reframing the fact that Obama is popular as just empty celebrity.

It's absurd, but it's worked. At least for the moment. Meanwhile, the public's perception of McCain as "ready to lead" on national security issues sits there, untouched.

Sure, we can read too much into polling swings, but when poll after poll has McCain with a sizable double-digit edge on security issues and Iraq it shows that the job of undermining this perception has not even begun. Rasmussen has McCain with a 51 percent to 39 percent lead on Iraq, and a 52 to 40 lead on national security. Time shows McCain leading on Iraq 51 percent to 36 percent, and on the war on terror 56 to 29.

Yes, voters continue to say the economy is their top concern but, come November, national security will once again trump every issue -- as it has since 9/11. Something will happen - even if it's nothing more than yet another Osama tape -- to remind the American people that the ability to keep us safe in these dangerous times is job one for the new president. So allowing the GOP to claim it has the advantage on this is nothing less than disastrous for Democrats. Just ask President Kerry.

I'm not saying Obama shouldn't have fought back against McCain's pathetic attacks of the last month. But the problem is that McCain has carved out a small playing field on the electoral landscape and lured Obama into it. McCain would love it if the rest of the race is a tit for tat about celebrity and Britney and Paris. He realizes that if his hold on national security were to be aggressively challenged, his lead on that issue would evaporate. So I'm sure he's thrilled to keep the fighting far away from the one thing that could put him in the White House: the idea that he's somehow better at dealing with national security.

McCain has shown time and time again over the last seven years that, far from being an expert when it comes to foreign policy, he is frequently --- and dangerously -- clueless.

As much as it troubles me, I understand why the media -- many of them card-carrying members of the John McCain Protection Society -- continue to paper over each new crack in the McCain-as-foreign-policy-authority myth: they love McCain, or at least the McCain they've created in their minds, and they're uncomfortable and embarrassed when the real McCain shows that he no longer has much to do with the character they've created.

But I don't understand why Obama is letting them get away with it. He should be taking a chisel to McCain's competent commander-in-chief edifice every chance he gets. And he should be making sure that he gets at least one chance each and every day. He needs to be as unrelenting on this critical issue for the American people as the GOP has been on their fabricated celebrity issue.

So every day between now and November 4th voters should be reminded that:

McCain has been among the most ardent supporters of the war in Iraq -- the most disastrous foreign policy decision in American history.

McCain falsely claims that, from the beginning of the war, he called on former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to resign. He should have, but he didn't.

McCain thinks it's "not too important" when American forces come home from Iraq.

McCain has repeatedly claimed that Iran was training members of al-Qaeda in Iraq, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of the key players in the war. He doesn't understand the difference between Shiites and Sunnis, and even after being corrected he still doesn't get it.

McCain falsely claimed that the surge was what led to the Anbar Awakening, even though the Sunni revolt against al-Qaeda in the province began months before Bush even announced his plan to send more troops to Iraq.

McCain falsely claimed at the end of May that American troops in Iraq were down to "pre-surge levels" (brandished as proof that the surge was "succeeding") -- even though two-thirds of the additional surge troops were still in Iraq. And, when called on his mistake, he refused to acknowledge that he was wrong.

McCain falsely claimed that the war in Iraq was "the first major conflict since 9/11" -- either forgetting about the war in Afghanistan or deeming it not major enough. This is not all that surprising, since McCain's policies on Afghanistan -- the real central front in the war on terror -- have been all over the map. Indeed, McCain first attacked Obama's policy on Afghanistan, then adopted it for himself.

McCain has a long history of paying lip service to supporting America's troops but voting against their interests. His handling of the new GI bill was the latest example of his hypocrisy: he consistently and vocally worked to defeat it, then, once it passed, tried to take credit for it.

Need more proof of why McCain is not "ready to lead"? Do you want a president who thinks there is an "Iraq/Pakistan border"? Who believes Darfur is in Somalia? And that Czechoslovakia is still a country?

McCain and his handlers believe that national security and terror will be their secret weapon come the fall -- and any day when their ability to deploy it is not undermined by the Obama campaign is a good day indeed. (Hence the celebrity distraction.)

This is why Obama needs to come out firing after his vacation. Over and over and over again. The myth of John McCain's competence on foreign policy has been allowed to take root over many years -- so it will take more than a few polite swipes destroy it.

And this is not just strategic thinking and acting on the Bush-proven tactic of going after your opponent's primary strength. It is also the essential truth of this campaign. The world cannot afford McCain in the White House. George Bush has brought us to the brink of disaster; John McCain's will undoubtedly take us over the edge.

Obama needs to make it clear to the nation that that's what this election is all about.

Comments

[bbgc]

Can any of you get Arianna's comments to the Obama campaign? We can hope all we want that they are reading these 'fresh strategic voices', but can any of you who have the inside track PLEASE make sure Obama's key people are reading these powerful perspecitives?? Please. It may be critical to him winning.

[serena1313]

Thankfully Arrianna brought McCain's troubling remarks front and centre.

Aside from his gaffes, McCain reacts immediately without forethought, care or concern and fails to anticipate the consequences thereof. For example: bellicose rhetoric and threats against Russia were counterproductive.

One vital piece missed by the media is Randy Scheunemann, lobbyist for Georgia, is the top foreign policy advisor to McCain. Therein it is reasonable to ask if McCain was influenced by him and whether that escalated tensions. What guarantees did McCain and/or Scheunemann give if any to Saakashvili? After all Scheunemann has received over $900,000 from the Georgian government. Whose best interests does he have in mind the US or Georgia?

McCain vows victory in Iraq without defining what that means. He believes leaving means defeat, but why that is defeat is not clear either. He claims to have a plan to catch bin-Ladin, but how, he's not telling. He says he knows how to win wars, but has never commanded any troops. Moreover failing to differentiate events McCain believes applying the same strategy works in all cases; It doesn't. To do so will exponentially exacerbate tensions and conflict.

McCain sees everything thru a military prism. Yet he has never articulated an overarching meaningful foreign policy, however, he's promised a more unilateral approach to world affairs than Bush.

We need partners to solve the problems the world community faces. So because he is unwilling to do that combined with the aforementioned makes McCain unfit to lead the country.

[chekhov]

Mr. McCain has threatened to follow bin Laden to the gates of hell. In his recent Saddleback appearance, he said again: "One, if I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that. And I know how to do that." The press needs to ask him specifically what his plan is for getting bin Laden. And, if he says, a la Nixon, that it is a "secret plan," then he needs to be asked the name of the specific person in the Administration he has communicated his plan to. If he knows how to get bin Laden and hasn't shared this information with the Executive branch, then this is not exactly an act of patriotism. In short, McCain needs to be called out on his applause line BS.

[Annette]

I agree, if he supposedly knows how to get Bin Laden, why isn't he doing it, why isn't he telling the White House so it can be done. Sounds like he is replaying Nixon's " I have a secret plan to...."

This isn't patriotic, it is a cynical election ploy. A lie. I am amazed that people can't see through it.

[CactusTom]

The real question of this election, outside of the issues of energy and the economy, is why are we really in Iraq and how does our continued presence in Iraq play into the hands of the terrorist? For some reason both Republicans and Democrats, and even this web site, seem to want to avoid the issue (the post deleting most of my comments that touch on this subject).

Strategically Al Qaeda wants us in Iraq where they can both drain our financial resources and, via Al Qaeda imitators, get easy access to inflict bodily damage on our troops in a place where our forces are not in a position to retaliate against their core organization in Afghanistan. Militarily this is a colossal blunder. The goal should always be to fight the enemy at a time and place that is to our advantage, not the enemy"s. When McCain says that the place to confront Al Qaeda is in Iraq, he is carrying water for the Neocon (they wanting to return Iraq to the status of an American client state) while at once doing the enemy"s bidding. He is being an all around dupe for sure.

[elleng]

AND 'we' don't know McCain!

"So why isn"t Obama romping? The obvious answer " and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it " is that the public doesn"t know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they"re "hearing too much" about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It"s past time for that pressing educational need to be met.

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president"s response to Katrina; he fought the "agents of intolerance" of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain"s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/opinion/17rich.html?adxnnl=1&ref=opinion&adxnnlx=1218946280-hUpxbUA4FnGAyz/4ec7z0Q

[elleng]

Thanks for saying what I'd hoped the Democrats would adopt as a major theme against McCain and the repubs, that is, the analysis Wes Clark did as to McCain's 'relevant' experience.

I'm discouraged about this now, as General Clark seems to be excluded from the Obama playbill.

[UnknownSoldier]

Its not National Security we need, but RATIONAL Security, which the Republicans do not have.

[Dialogue]

"For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them....." (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

"Let the peace of God rule in your hearts......" (Colossians 3:15) = "Rational Security"

[riverhippie]

Well... I'd have to agree with McCain that Iraq was the first major conflict after 9-11. The Taliban was pretty much defeated by the Northern Alliance and U.S. airpower. The reason we had to use Afghan soldiers (or tribesmen or whatever they were) at Tora Bora was that we didn't have many troops there yet. The Taliban fell much quicker than we expected. I don't consider the ouster on the Taliban a "major conflict" either.

Obama should keep his mouth shut about national security and focus on domestic issues only; he doesn't stand a chance against McCain on the issue.

[astheworldturns]

So wrong, McCain is so wrong on the national security issue. He makes mistake after mistake. He can't see the forest for the trees. He has no vision.

[gsuescum]

Just yesterday McCain was stating that the situtaion in Georgia was the biggest crisis this country has faced since Vietnam. What's that about?
Katrina?
9/11?
Iraq?
Afghanistan?
etc
etc

[Annette]

Turns out that the Taliban didn't fall, they made a stragic retreat and are coming back. Both you and McCain made the mistake of believing that being in the capital is winning. Both you and McCain have no understanding of Afganistan. This is what the Afghanis have dont throughout history. They did it with the Indians, they did it with the Russians, they did it with the Britsh, They did it with the USSR and they did it with the US.

[SeeDaddy]

Obama needs an ad with clips of McCain unable to remember names, such as Shias and Sunnis, and issues, like insurance coverage for birth control. Or his commitment to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years, no time table for troop withdrawal. Bush and Iraq gov't will soon finalize a time table with no permanent US bases in Iraq. McCain came out with bluster and threats against Russia in the Georgia skirmish. Bush, Rice and Obama took a thoughtful and measured approach that quickly defused the crisis and led to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. McCain's reacted before he knew who started the shooting and what really was going on. Obama took time to get the facts first, before making a statement. Play up McCain's reckless knee-jerk behavior.

[peter777]

Letting the Republican get away with the claim they are best at National Security in the last two presidential elections was not only a disaster for the Democratic Party, it was a disaster for the country. Look at the disaster in the wake of their conduct of foreign policy- the thousand of dead and permanently disabled, the widows, the orphans left behind, the terrible cost in dollars, and the low esteems of the U.S. internationally. The only entity that has profited are the enriched defense contractors. Obama and the Democrats owe it to the country to come out with all guns smoking to show that McCain is not qualified. He has a poor sense of history, is a war monger, thinks he understands military strategy, and is over-confident, and does not know what power diplomacy is. He is not smart and has a terrible memory. This is a sure formula for more of the same as we have been served by Bush, compliments of advisors such as Cheney, Rove, and a bunch of other Republicans who need to be retired from the Washington scene.

[Puma45]

The Dems are playing good defense, but this country really downplays defense in favor of offense. Time to blast McSame, and blast hard: on his flip flopping, his lack of family values vis a vis his affair when married to his ill wife, his lack of leadership positions in the Navy, his Bush-like stance on Social Security--not hard to find ammunition for frontal attacks. Come on, Dems, this is life or death for this country and this world. Hit McSame and his Republican neocons hard. You want change, put them on the defense for a change!

[nkclark]

We need to confront yet another Republican lie head-on.

This election is a stunning choice between endless war and a reasoned approach to the issues that have legitimate implications for national security.

Perpetual sabre-rattling is not national security. It is more of the same criminal -- and criminally stupid -- policy of George Bush. Bush has the blood of more than 4,000 U.S. personnel and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians on his hands. Each one of them died -- many of them with great heroism and honor -- for a lie. How many more deaths will make us secure?

A vote for John McCain's "national security" is a vote for more lies, more deaths, and more wasting of our national resources and moral authority in the world. Obama does not have any flippant sound-bite answers, because the alternative to endless war is a continuous twilight struggle to address the issues that make our country and the world less secure. Armed conflict must sometimes be part of that struggle, but it must be the last resort, never the first desire.

As Americans, we need to make that harder choice for a mature, rational national security policy. America has an interesting history. No matter how lazy or complacent we think that we have become, whenever we stand up for the harder choice, we achieve greatness.

[reverendadam]

And yet when Wes Clark - one of the few surrogates who actually has the credibility to help Obama make the "lack of readiness" case about McCain - speaks out (and lucidly) about these very issues, the Obama camp flinches, distances, repudiates, and tucks its tail between its legs. It's actually one of the very few major missteps I feel the campaign has made. They absolutely need to continue to hammer away at the fact that being at the bottom of your class at the Naval Academy (and bragging about it), then getting shot down and held captive does not automatically confer upon you the skills and judgment to be a good military leader. I hope it's not too late for Obama to embrace this line of argument, because they need a Clark or two out there undermining McCain's supposed national security bonafides at every turn.

[elleng]

Thanks, reverend; I certainly agree that they 'need a Clark or two out there.!'

[saltysea]

my cynicism has reached new levels. i wonder if cnn didn't start drilling "issue #1" into us all to lull obama & the nation into this very frame--obama good on economy, mccain on security. i have been muttering or yelling at the tv since this all started. you KNOW they are already starting the little things that will build up to some kind of (bigger) crisis relating to security.

if obama hasn't convinced America that he is BETTER on security than mccain is, he will likely lose. and i will work my heart out for and send my measly monthly contributions to Obama and pray like heaven that he wins.

[UnknownSoldier]

Its very easy to see the media circling around the McCain/ Republican machine ready to prop up their failing policies for more years.

The Media is biased against DEMS

[WritusMaximus]

Sorry, but from the start of the Georgia-Russia war, McSame holds news conference to talk about Georgia-Russia war, while Obama is still in Hawaii enjoying the weather. Expect the Repubs to show pictures of Obama in Hawaii having a great time while a major international crisis is at hand. Obama's team is sure slow to catch on. Thank Heavens that this is August, not October!

[Annette]

Being in Hawaii is not any more out of the US than McCain in Arizoona is outside the US. McCain came out with a bellicose statement fueled by his chief strategist's employment for the Georgian government. Obama cane out with a reasoned statement designed to cool the situations down. McCain came out with a hot headed, pick a side and rachet up the tensions. We need a chief executive with brains not one who comes out swinging without evaluating the situation. McCain came off looking like an elderly boxer swinging at the air.