Soccer Dad

The road to (electoral) victory?

In McCain May Be Headed for a Shellacking,Rick Moran outlines the many barriers Sen. McCain faces on the way to election. True, Sen. McCain is favored by a majority of those who favor the war in Iraq. However:

The problem for McCain is that twice as many people think the economy is the most important issue as opposed to national security. And voters who named health care as the number one issue favored Obama 57%-35%. In short, 55% of the public believes that the economy or health care are the most important issues and they support Obama by a two to one margin. Only 24% believe Iraq-national security is the top issue.

So Charles Krauthammer has an interesting idea,Make the Election About Iraq. After outlining many of the improvements in Iraq in the past two years, Krauthammer charges:

The disconnect between what Democrats are saying about Iraq and what is actually happening there has reached grotesque proportions. Democrats won an exhilarating electoral victory in 2006 pledging withdrawal at a time when conditions in Iraq were dire and we were indeed losing the war. Two years later, when everything is changed, they continue to reflexively repeat their "narrative of defeat and retreat" (as Joe Lieberman so memorably called it) as if nothing has changed.

It is a position so utterly untenable that John McCain must seize the opportunity and, contrary to conventional wisdom, make the Iraq war the central winning plank of his campaign. Yes, Americans are war-weary. Yes, most think we should not have engaged in the first place. Yes, Obama will keep pulling out his 2002 speech opposing the war.

But McCain's case is simple. Is not Obama's central mantra that this election is about the future, not the past? It is about 2009, not 2002. Obama promises that upon his inauguration, he will order the Joint Chiefs to bring him a plan for withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months. McCain says that upon his inauguration, he'll ask the Joint Chiefs for a plan for continued and ultimate success.

Obviously Iraq has to be part of McCain's campaign. However if people aren't paying attention, making the case won't be as easy as Krauthammer makes it seem. Sen. McCain will be working against a media that has been fully complicit in creating a negative pictureof the situation in Iraq and then ignoring the success there.

And, I also think that he has a winning strategy by pursuing more domestic oil production, which is a way of addressing the economy. Posted by SoccerDad at June 13, 2008 4:37 AM