Phrase du Jour: "Total confusion"
In a press call yesterday -- posted for all to hear at OffTheBus's Listening Post -- McCain foreign policy guru Randy Scheunemann spoke out against Obama counterpart Claire McCaskill's egregious assertion that any responsible commander in chief would be flexible in determining a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.
Apparently, the concept that the "situation on the ground" in Iraq could maybe change between now and next year's inauguration was too nuanced for Scheunemann to grasp. Worse than his own state of "total confusion," however, were his attempts to attribute the same degree of befuddlement to "the American people."
"What's puzzling is Sen. Obama's position [on Iraq]. I think the American people are puzzled about where he is. There's nothing less than total confusion about where Sen. Obama is on the issue of Iraq, and about where he has been over the course of the past several years. In 2002 he spoke out against the war, yet in July 2004 he said he had the same position as President Bush. In august 2004, he said clearly he was against an artificial timetable. In 2005, he voted for funding the war in Iraq, he said it would be wrong to cut off troops in the field..."
Scheunemann draws a portrait of an electorate incapable of understanding the very basic fact that the process of ending a disastrous five-year-long deeply unpopular military occupation will be complex -- full of twists and turns and unexpected setbacks and reassessments. Scheunemann picks through six years of Obama's words and cites a handful of supposedly contradictory positions, entirely out of context. He dumbs down the dialogue about the issues. He dumbs down the dialogue about voters. Either he thinks "the American people" are already stupid or he thinks that he can make them so by talking to and about them as if they are.
But it isn't inconsistency or flip-flopping to acknowledge that a previously held view no longer appropriately addresses the present reality, or that a presently held view might not appropriately address a future one. It's also not naivete. It's not even that confusing. On the contrary, it showcases the sort of measured thinking and speaking we need to acknowledge as the path to more fruitful political engagement -- both domestic and abroad.