Today’s Washington Post has a front page article on the inner torments of John McCain over the disastrous path the Iraq War has taken and how his position on the war could very well cost him the Presidency.
There is no mistaking the anguish of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Sitting in his Senate office, he is uncharacteristically subdued, his voice at times almost inaudible.
Although the Bush administration this week finally embraced his long-standing call to send more troops to Iraq, McCain believes the way it has handled the war “will go down as one of the worst” mistakes in the history of the American military.
“One of the most frustrating things that’s ever happened in my political life,” he said, “is watching this train wreck.”
McCain, an all but announced presidential candidate, offered those assessments toward the end of a lengthy interview Thursday night. No politician in the United States is more clearly identified with President Bush’s new policy, and no politician has more to lose if it fails. Democratic opponents have already coined a name for the troop “surge”: the McCain Doctrine.
McCain made it clear that he supports Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq as the only way to prevent that country from slipping further into chaos. “I cannot guarantee success, but I can guarantee failure if we don’t adopt this new strategy,” he said.
But he also voiced deep frustration over what the war has done, both to this country and to Iraq. “I think many things that have happened in the world that are unfavorable to the United States are the result of our weakness in the Iraqi conflict,” he said.
Asked how the war may affect his candidacy, McCain shrugged off the question. “I can’t think about it or worry about it,” he said. “I have to do what I think is right.”
On the night of Bush’s speech, he told CNN’s Larry King: “I would much rather lose an election than lose a war.”
McCain is echoing a lot of things that I’ve been saying over the past several weeks. The tragic irony is that McCain’s position on the surge is the only one he could take and it may cost him the one thing he’s wanted most in the world. His campaign tries to appear optimistic:
“At the core of the issue is who he is, and that’s what generates his popularity,” said Rick Davis, one of McCain’s top political advisers. “It’s that he puts principle ahead of politics, that he tells it like he sees it regardless of the political ramifications.”
The country has turned against the war and it desperately wants out. I think this is one “maverick” position that won’t work for McCain. He’s already taken a big hit in his poll numbers among independents over the past year for his moves to shore up his GOP base. Between March and December of 2006, McCain dropped 15 points among independents. It really appears that the only thing that could save him is for the war (or at least major American involvement in it) to end by the time the primaries roll around. My R4’08 colleague DaveG and I have been discussing just how that might happen in the comments here. It’ll be interesting to see if there is any noticeable drop or increase in McCain’s support among independents and Republicans when the next polls are released.
January 13th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I remain one of the few who thinks that McCain’s position will actually HELP him should he make it to the general election. To sum up from the previous threads on the subject, I think that all the energy in Washington right now is towards finding a way out of Iraq. I think that 95% of Dems on the Hill and about 25% of Republicans are basically committed to ending the war ASAP. I think this includes the current Secretary of Defense. I think that this is representative of the mood out in the country, where Americans don’t think Iraq can be fixed, at least not by this administration, and are ready to pull the plug. All the polls indicate as much. I think the nat’l GOP is terrified that they’ll get slaughtered in 2008 if we’re still in Iraq, leading to an unfettered Democratic government and the long-awaited collectivization of our society. I think the surge is intended to give us cover to get out of Iraq by using blunt force to make Iraq seem stable for a few months, and then leaving the green zone in helicopters. I think that the minute we leave, Iraq begins down the road towards a civil war resulting in a Shia dictatorship, led by Sadr and his associates.
If Sadr is dictator of Iraq by November of 2008, and McCain were the GOP nominee, this would actually allow McCain to argue that he was right about the need to win the war, and that we should have committed to a long-term reconstruction in Iraq with Kagan troop levels. Americans will see the slaughter of the Sunnis and the Iran-friendly Moqtada taking the throne and they will both a) blame the Bush Administration for the whole mess and b) feel a bit guilty that they weren’t willing to stick it out. In that sense, McCain becomes the “I told you so” candidate, and the Democrat becomes the candidate who supported the pull-out and thus abetted the rise of Sadr.
Note that Giuliani, Newt, Romney, etc, could also be the “I told you so” candidate, but I’m focusing on McCain here as he is the subject of the post. In this regard, we are very lucky Bush has no sitting vice president for the GOP to nominate, as he or she would be tied to Bush’s Iraq policies in a way that the eventual GOP nominee will not.
January 13th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I agree completely with this. But it’s admittedly contingent on a few things:
First, the surge has to actually be successful. Gates himself said yesterday:
If the surge doesn’t work and the violence remains horrifically high, we’re then stuck with withdrawing our forces under the worst possible conditions. Remember we were able to withdrawal from Saigon in April on 1975 because by that time, we had less than 200 military and diplomatic personnel left in the country. But in Iraq, we’d have around 160,000 in the country and most military experts think that under the best conditions, it would take 4-6 months to get everyone out.
Second, I’m incredibly worried about Iran. Bush directly threatened them in his speech on Wednesday and approved raids against Iranians in Iraq. Bush also moved in another carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf and Patriot anti-missile batteries into the region (for the first time since the Gulf War). This is clearly meant to provoke Iran and what if they try to counter the surge?
If we do manage to get a large portion of the military out of Iraq by 2008 and Sadr takes over the country, that’s our best hope right now. In which McCain could claim to be the “I told you so” candidate. But if for some awful reason our troops are still in the country come 2008, it would be almost impossible for the GOP to win.
(As a historical aside, remember just before the 1968 election LBJ announced a halt in the bombing of North Vietnam and the opening of peace talks in order to help Humphrey in the polls, which it did. Humphrey was around 20 points down a month before the election and with a week to go, he cut that to come within 3 points of Nixon. The only reason Nixon won was because he cut a disgusting deal with the South Vietnamese President and was able to scuttle the peace talks. As it was, Nixon only won by less than 1% of the vote, around 500,000 votes.)
January 13th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
How is responding to Iran’s belligerent actions against US interests in Iraq provocation? Iran has been financing, inciting, and training insurgents in Iraq for quite some time now. We are a paper tiger if we allow them to do that with no consequences.
January 13th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
When will the next polls be released?
I bet Romney’s numbers go up significantly, as both Giuliani and McCain have been very vocally supportive of the surge.
January 13th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
David,
I agree, but there’s a measure on how much we respond. Do we attack Iran itself, bomb their nuclear facilities and start a much larger war? Remember, if we push Iran too hard, the Mahdi Army in Iraq could make life a living hell for us. Everyone knows that we can’t conduct a war with Iran, we couldn’t even get 20,000 for the surge without pulling troops from Iraq. It really seems like we will talk tough and conduct a few raids here and there, but that will be it. We will try to stabilize the country, declare victory and get out with the Shittes in Iraq and Iran strengthened infinitely.
Nusrat,
I have been wondering when the next GOP rankings will be released. It seems to be taking a while longer than usual. If I can offer a prediction, Romney will still be below 10% and both McCain and Giuliani will stay at or above 25%.
January 13th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
I thought an interesting polling change has been reflected in the preliminary numbers for the January GOP Bloggers poll. Romney has substantially shot up, taking the lead (though at who’s expense, it is not immediately clear). What this indicates about the broader Republican shift I haven’t the faintest idea.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
I agree that McCain’s hawkishness on the war helps, not hurts him. The most hawkish candidate will win the GO nomination. I am an evangelical Southern Baptist Christian Conservative, and I can tell you that the war trumps all issues.
The problem with McCain is (well, there are many) that even on the war he is duplicitous and on some war issues, outright outrageously to the left. I speak of lawyers and civil trials for all detainees. This is a proposal that really brings into question the effect of the POW experience has on his judgment. I speak not of a mental illness, but rather, judgment and an inability to distinguish his experience and the facts behind it.
He also went on MSM everyday and bought into the abu graib and gitmo memes so they would invite him back.
McCain’s problems in getting the GOP nomination are legion. The MSM will blame it on the war if they can. But the MSM are stupid liars.