John McCain Has Repeatedly Failed the Commander-in-Chief Test
There is no doubt that the next President of the United States will be tested by an international crisis, as Sen. Joe Biden said this weekend. In times of crisis it is essential that a leader have the temperament and judgment to guide America with a steady hand. Obama's temeperament and judgment have been clear political winners for him. So the fact that the McCain campaign would "pounce" on Biden's comment is really really bizarre considering how erratic and reckless McCain has been when responding to past and present crises.
Yesterday the McCain campaign held a conference call with Rudy Giuliani and Randy Scheunemann, which argued that Obama was not ready for a crisis and they even compared him to John F. Kennedy (hmm... not sure that's a political winner). McCain also said that "Sen. Obama won't have the right response, and we know that because we've seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign."
In reality, it is Sen. McCain's response in times of crises that has been erratic and reckless. During this campaign, McCain's reaction to the global financial crisis and the outbreak of war between Russia and Georgia led many conservatives like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Colin Powell, and even the Wall Street Journal to question his judgment and his temperament.
Additionally, McCain's reaction to past international crises, such as the attacks of 9-11, the run-up to the Iraq war, and the war in Afghanistan have been characterized by reckless and flawed judgment. Following 9-11 McCain advocated attacking four different countries and said Saddam Hussein was behind the Anthrax attacks. He was the biggest cheerleader for the Iraq war, saying Iraq was rushing to develop WMD and that Iraq had close links to Al Qaeda. Just as the war in Afghanistan started, McCain had declared victory and was looking to move on to other countries. He later said we could simply muddle through. McCain's erratic and reckless responses to past and present international crises raise real doubts about his temperament and his ability to lead America through a crisis with a steady hand.
McCain's reaction to the financial crisis was erratic and reckless. As the economy went into free fall, McCain on September 15th declared that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." After being vigorously attacked for his out of touch comment, McCain later in the week suddenly called for the Chairman of the SEC, Christopher Cox to be fired. McCain was unaware that the President does not have the authority to fire the chairman of the SEC. George Will described this as: "Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated." The Wall Street Journal said that this was an example of McCain "untethered." The following week McCain suddenly decided to "suspend" his campaign and threatened to pull out of the first debate so that he could go back to Washington and deal with the financial crisis. Only McCain did not return to Washington immediately, instead he conducted an interview with Katie Couric on CBS News, stayed the night in New York, and delivered a speech to the Clinton Global Initiative in New York the following day. When McCain finally returned to Washington, his arrival was seen as politicizing the crisis, and he failed to rally his party to support the rescue bill as more than two-thirds of House Republicans voted against it. This Sunday, General Colin Powell said: "I found that he was a little unsure as to how to deal with the economic problems that we were having and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me, sensing that he didn't have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had." Even Ken Adelman, a fixture in the Republican foreign policy establishment for decades, said: "When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird." [Washington Post, 9/15/08. George Will, 9/23/08. Wall Street Journal, 9/19/08. MSNBC, 10/19/08. Washington Post, 10/20/08]
As crisis erupted in the Caucuses in August, McCain - without waiting for the facts - blamed Russia and made extensive commitments to Georgia. "McCain took a remarkably -- and uniquely -- more aggressive stance, siding clearly with Georgia's pro-Western leaders and placing the blame for the conflict entirely on Russia." The Politico assessed that "while virtually every other world leader called for calm in Georgia last Thursday morning, John McCain did something he's done many times over his career in public life: He condemned Russia." Henry Kissinger also noted that McCain got it wrong, "We have to face the fact that the first shot in Georgia was fired on the Georgian side." Conservative foreign policy experts, including former Secretaries of State Kissinger, Shultz, Baker and Powell, also dismissed McCain's knee-jerk response and called for a business-like response to Russia. A recent op-ed, penned by Shultz and Kissinger (McCain's own advisor) warned that the "drift toward confrontation must be ended," and admonished that "[i]t is neither feasible nor desirable to isolate" Russia. [Politico, 8/10/08. Politico, 8/13/08. CBS, 8/12/08. CNN/CNAS, 9/15/08. Washington Post, 10/08/08]
After 9-11, John McCain reacted recklessly, suggested striking at Iraq, Iran and Syria and with no evidence even accused Saddam Hussein of being behind the anthrax attacks. "I have very little doubt in my mind -- after bin Laden is either taken prisoner or killed and his network is destroyed, then what's next? Obviously, Iraq is still bent on -- Saddam Hussein is still bent on developing weapons of mass destruction. Obviously, the Iranians are still supporting terrorist organizations, as are the Syrians." McCain with no evidence even falsely accused Iraq of being behind the anthrax letter attacks, saying "Some of this anthrax may -- and I emphasize may -- have come from Iraq." [MSNBC, Hardball, 10/3/01. NY Times, 8/16/08]
During the run-up to the Iraq War, John McCain hyped the threat, was a cheerleader for the Bush administration, and falsely claimed Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda. Before the Iraq invasion, the Bush administration and John McCain justified their plans by pointing to false claims that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9-11 and that Iraq was hell-bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction. In 2002, McCain mimicked the Administration's claims: "We are confronting Saddam Hussein today because we cannot kick the can down the road... waiting until he possesses nuclear weapons, as North Korea now does, thereby constraining our ability to respond to a developing danger. We cannot allow Iraq to become the North Korea of the Middle East." He went further in 2003, drawing up false connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda: "Sept. 11, 2001 showed that al-Qaeda is a grave threat. Saddam Hussein has the ability to make a far worse day of infamy by turning Iraq into a weapons assembly line for al-Qaeda's network." McCain even recently insisted that Iraq was connected with the 9-11 attacks, even though in 2004, the 9-11 commission found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and the 9-11 planners. [Washington Post, 10/24/02. USA Today 2/13/03. Huffington Post, 10/13/08. Washington Post, 6/17/08]
In a sign of his poor judgment, McCain pushed for the U.S. to turn from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2001 and has consistently ignored and misjudged the situation in Afghanistan. McCain has put Afghanistan on the back-burner for 6 years, with disastrous results. Immediately following September 11th, McCain's attention was fixed not on the Taliban or al-Qaeda, but Iraq, when he asked "What's next?" In 2003, McCain claimed that "nobody in Afghanistan threatens the United States of America and nobody is running terrorist training camps to orchestrate attacks on the United States of America." His complacency worsened later that year, when he said before the Council on Foreign Relations that "in the long term, we may muddle through in Afghanistan." In the three major foreign policy speeches of his presidential campaign, he mentioned Afghanistan only seven times, and before July 15 his website contained no plan for Afghanistan. Today, he continues to view Afghanistan through the lens of Iraq, with no plan beyond indiscriminately applying Iraq tactics onto the Afghanistan theater. His lack of leadership and judgment has had severe consequences for the U.S. Attacks have risen in Afghanistan 30% in 2008, and yesterday AP reported that "at least 546 members of the U.S. military" have died since 2001. [John McCain, 10/3/01. John McCain, 4/10/03. John McCain, 11/5/03. John McCain, 3/26/08. John McCain, 4/15/08. John McCain, 6/02/08. John McCain.com, 7/15/08. AP. 10/20/08]
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Max, you said “Additionally, McCain's reaction to past international crises, such as the attacks of 9-11, the run-up to the Iraq war, and the war in Afghanistan have been characterized by reckless and flawed judgment.”
Apparently, al-Qaeda agrees.
A current Newsweek article http://www
“The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanista
Throwing “Al-Qaeda endorses McCain” in his face for spinning some Hamas spokesman’s earlier statement into an endorsement of Obama by terrorists is tempting, but there’s a more ominous side to Newsweek’s story. Might an AQ attack planned to derail Obama’s campaign be the October surprise after all?
If AQ pulled off something at this stage to derail Obama, we may yet end up with a McCain presidency.
I don’t like the implications of Newsweek’s article one bit.
As Putin said, at a minimum a head of state should have a head, McCains head aint up to the job!
He has never been a leader, his only experience is following orders but doing that badly!
John McSame has always been a "Maverick-
His true colors, character and conscious are on full display in this election cycle and it is not pretty picture. His fellow Senators have to be completely stunned at his shallowness, viciousness, carelessness and instability. His blind ambition, scandalous arrogance and relentless temper have demonstrated that he is a DANGER not only to himself, but to the entire Free World.
Classic projection. Love mc-same's lie that he passed the CIC test in 1962 over the Cuban Missle Crisis. Whaaaat? Did JFK let him be prez for a while???
http://www
Could you imagine the heat Senator Obama would have taken if he'd made 10% of the blunders ,gaffs and/or irresponsible statements on foreign policy that McCain has ?
Hell, McCain's biggest gaffs were committed when all eyes were on the Democratic primary and he had already won the Republican primary. Some of those were real doozies!!
Senator McCain has never had CIC credentials. What he has enjoyed is the support of an uncritical media that equates being a POW with knowing anything or having judgement. While respecting his war service, I believe he has been 100% wrong on every significant national security challenge of his career (especially on Iraq and terrorism) and incredibly if not dangerously out of touch with reality. His world view is rooted in an imaginary or "wingnut" past i.e. an intentional misreading of history to make it conform to his unexamined beliefs and psychological predispositions.
The US State Department warned The Republic of Georgia not to take military action against South Ossetia because it would invite Russian counteratt
Hey, give Joe a break. Senator Biden did not put his foot in his mouth this time; the McCain-Palin campaign is using his comment out of context. Biden goes on to say that a President Obama would be tested because history shows that each of the last seven presidents has been tested. For those who miss the point, a President McCain would be tested also. Biden qualifies that Obama is brilliant, which implies he can handle this unknown test. No one calls McCain brilliant, especially since all McCain talks about is carrying a big stick. That would be the same “big stick” that has already helped destroy our economy and over-extended our troops to exhaustion.
As to Republicans who insist that the world views Obama as weak, they obviously do not read international opinions. The world is praying for an Obama presidency because they view him as an intelligent leader who understands our interconnected economy and interests, while they rightly view McCain as an extension of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy. World leaders also know and admire Joe Biden. In contrast, Sarah Palin has already managed to piss off half the Russian Dumas with her inane “Putin rears his head” comments, and her meeting with Pakistan’s new leader was a diplomatic nightmare. Governor Palin may appeal to a subset of American voters, but the rest of the world views her as potentially a nice person who is clueless about all things foreign.
Put it this way: When the red phone rang at 3 am in the morning, the news was not a terrorist attack, but an economic crisis. We saw who was ready to lead when he answered the call—not McCain, but Obama.
Please send this to CNN and MSNBC ..........
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