Brilliant Politics

Even Republicans are starting to think that John McCain is showing his true reckless self. Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from Nebraska, on Face the Nation this morning, said:

“I think John is treading on some very thin ground here when he impugns motives and when we start to get into, ‘You’re less patriotic than me. I’m more patriotic.”

John McCain said on Friday that a 16-month timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, first proposed by Barack Obama, and recently supported by Iraq’s Prime Minister, “was a pretty good timetable.” Sounds like a major flip-flop to me, with McCain now following Obama’s lead on the issue. Listen to McCain say “pretty good timetable” in the first video. Then in the second video below, in an interview with George Stephanopolous two days later (today), McCain denies that he said it. McCain goes on to sound increasingly incoherent, saying he would be for being out of Iraq “yesterday.”

From Frank Rich, the best political commentator in the country:

It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”

And Rich on McCain’s Elderly Inexperience:

While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.

Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.

Barack Obama spoke to an audience of over 200, 000 people in Berlin, Germany this past Thursday. This was the prelude to improving America’s image around the world. See the speech here.

(Photo/Obama for America)

(Photo/Obama for America)

The Obama campaign released the following in a memo to reporters on July 19th:

Just this week, Senator McCain has been forced by events to switch to Barack Obama’s position on two fundamental issues: more troops in Afghanistan, and more diplomacy with Iran. On both issues, Obama took stands that weren’t politically popular at the time – opposing the war in Iraq as a diversion from the critical mission in Afghanistan, and standing up for direct diplomacy with Iran – while John McCain lined up with George Bush. Time has proven Obama’s judgment right and McCain wrong.

The next shift appears to be Iraq. For months, Senator McCain has called any plan to redeploy our troops from Iraq “surrender” – even though we’d be leaving Iraq to a sovereign Iraqi government. Now, the Bush Administration is embracing the negotiation of troop withdrawals with the Iraqi government – a position that Senator Obama called for last September, and reiterated on Monday in the New York Times. And now, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports Barack Obama’s timeline, telling Der Speigel that, “Barack Obama is right when he talks about 16 months.”