WurfWhile

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple weeks myself and, without all the documentation, believed John McCain’s call for more troops wasn’t “straight talk” at all. The only thing I’d add to Greg’s well-documented piece is that even if Bush temporarily raises troop numbers in Iraq, John McCain can still win. McCain just needs to say we didn’t keep the troops in long enough - or deploy them in the right way. It’s all win for McCain in the GOP primaries, where he says what the dominant Republican base appears to want to hear (’we can win with more’). McCain’s early advocacy of what on the surface seems an unpopular position means he will likely get even more credit for it.

It’s really a pretty old political ploy - declare a politically popular (’fight for victory in Iraq’), but untenable (’increase our troops - even though we don’t have enough’) position as a challenger without the power to do it yourself, and then attack those who argue responsible reality. Of course, given our political times, one must be prepared for the implementation of the “untenable” (perhaps we could recruit more people from other countries to fight for America) - but if the results are bad John McCain can just say it wasn’t done right using 20:20 hindsight (no need to get into policy up front).

So, to Howard Kurtz’s comment that John’s McCain’s call for more troops “certainly doesn’t appear to be safe,” I ask, what could be safer (and still newsworthy)? Is anyone, anywhere, going to defend President George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq War? Are most people going to look hard at criticism of President George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq War? If not, how can John McCain go wrong? Besides, John McCain is telling us he wants to win. Give the McCain political team credit for this one - it may not help the country or improve the war, but it certainly should help John McCain’s political prospects.