The View From the Sinister Side of Life
June 30th, 2008
Commenter John Spragge, at Obsidian Wings:
Frontier settlers needed guns to protect them from Indians the way people making unauthorized bank withdrawals today need guns to protect themselves from guards, tellers, and police officers.
Heh!
Categories: Weekend Flame Bait | 70 Comments
June 30th, 2008
The right wng is going to go after General Clark very hard because of this:
SCHIEFFER: Can I just interrupt you? I have to say, Barack Obama hasn’t had any of these experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.
CLARK: I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.
The reason that they wil go after Clark on this for two reasons: it is absolutely correct and it destroys the rationale for McCain’s candidacy. Military service on the front lines — while generally admirable — really says very little about whether a person would make a good commander in chief. Being President is about laying out sound policy, planning ahead, being able to decide between many options, choosing advice and advisers well, managing the various bureaucracies, and knowing how to rally the country to a position you think is correct. Some military men learn those traits, some do not. The mere fact of appearing in combat does not mean that a person has learned or been born with all of those skills.
And that simple fact is a huge problem for the McCain campaign. Because McCain has been trying to imply otherwise since the beginning of the campaign. He habitually talks about his time in the service and what he suffered for his country. When he was on the wrong side of the new GI Bill, he explicitly used his service as a means to attack Senator Webb. McCain does this in an attempt to make criticism of his military or foreign policy stances off limits and to hope that the constant drumbeat of his military resume will serve to hide his actual record on foreign policy.
See, recently McCain had a chance to prove that his life and military service had helped him grow and learn and become worthy of the Presidency. McCain failed that test. When it came time to decided whether to get caught up in the sideshow of the neo-cons’ Iraq delusions or to re-concentrate on the real threat to American security he backed the neo-cons. If there is another terrorist attack on this country, as the McCain camp seems to think is both inevitable and good for them, it will be becasue, in part, John McCain helped Bush divert the full attention of the US form Al Qaeda and then created a recruiting and training ground in the middle of the Middle East for them. McCain failed the Presidency test when it came; he doesn’t have any other option but hope his past service can be used to hide that from current voters.
Categories: General | 24 Comments
