Musings Over Morning Coffee

by DemFromCT [courtesy of Daily Kos]

Reflecting on the last 24 hours' worth of media coverage of the Obama World Tour, what seems clear is that there are two clashing world views that are competing for attention.

On the one hand, there are the McCain supporters, including many reporters like David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell, who accept as gospel that the Surge Is Working®, that questioning of either the surge or General Petraeus is heresy, and that Obama's biggest sin is that he, as Commander in Chief, has the audacity to think he should be telling the Generals what to do and not the other way around. They are stunned that Obama doesn't agree, and offended at some core level whenever this narrative is challenged. A sputtering John McCain in NH:

He was wrong then, he's wrong now, and he still fails to acknowledge--he still fails to acknowledge that the surge succeeded. Remarkable.  Remarkable," McCain said.  "He's just received his first briefing ever from Gen. Petraeus.  And he declared his policy towards Iraq before he left, before he left."

On the other hand, there are the Obama supporters, including some reporters, who look at the drop in violence as being a combination of the surge, ethnic cleansing, the Sadr truce, bribes and enticements (aka Anbar awakening, which preceded the surge) and other complex interactions rather than a simplistic military result. They also recall that the surge's purpose was to stabilize Iraq to prepare for political reconciliation, not a military maneuver to reduce violence and 'win the war' whatever that's supposed to mean. They also have no trouble with the concept that the civilians tell the Generals "what", and the Generals advise the civilians on "how". Clearly to them, the 'what' is getting out of Iraq and the 'how' is to be negotiated. And the result? This trip is turning out to be far more than an elaborate photo-op for Obama, good as the images are.

McCain argues that the United States is succeeding in Iraq -- although the war is still not over -- because of last year's "surge" of U.S. troops, which Obama opposed. McCain's aides and surrogates continued that theme yesterday, accusing Obama of what Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.) called "a complete inability to acknowledge that the surge worked."

But the Iraqi government's newly stated position on troop withdrawals has put the McCain campaign -- and many congressional Republicans who have been on record opposing timelines -- in a difficult position.

The difference between the black and white simplicity of McCain's position and the nuance in Obama's position is picked up by Harold Myerson, who has no trouble picking a winner here.

Military experience isn't an infallible guide to who might make the better commander. Jefferson Davis, after all, graduated from West Point, served with distinction (and with the rank of colonel) in the Mexican War and was secretary of war in the Franklin Pierce administration. Abraham Lincoln served roughly three months in a volunteer militia during the Black Hawk War and never saw action, and he was a vocal congressional opponent of the Mexican War. But Davis had no aptitude for national strategy during the Civil War, while Lincoln emerged as the North's master strategist. That's not to say that Obama is a budding Lincoln and McCain a second Jeff Davis. But by the Frederick the Great standard, Obama already looks to be the smarter commander.

But the reporters who prefer McCain seem to have a problem. Since they don't concede that the drop in violence isn't purely due to the surge, and since they don't acknowledge the primacy of the CinC over the Generals, they can't see Obama's behavior as anything other than disgraceful. And they have to work overtime to cover for error-prone McCain.

This is the same thinking that suggests that Obama is unready, undeserving and simply lucky. They don't see where a skilled politician actually creates his own luck by simply being more correct than they are about the strategy, while they get bogged down in the tactics.

And they don't see where Obama is eating McCain's lunch on foreign policy and readiness to lead, the supposed bread-and-butter of the outmatched Republican trying to figure out when the rules changed on him (foreign policy is supposed to be his strength, but it's the other guy who is looking Presidential.)

The game isn't even close (and if there were ever a time to suggest the image of the one guy playing checkers and the other guy playing chess, this is it.) And the sad thing is that it's not just the McCain people that haven't quite figured it out, it's his enablers in the press fighting for the status quo. Even for them, overlooking his frequent gaffes is becoming more and more difficult to do (more on some major gaffes later.)

Then again, so is envisioning McCain winning in November. Who'd want to vote for a President that doesn't even understand the rules of the game?