Perhaps McCain may have run the war on the ground differently, I don't doubt that he would have done a far better job than Bush/Cheney at listening to the commanders rather than try to run it himself. Which is exactly what Obama will do.

I'm far more worried about the large scale world politics decisions, and in that regard, McCain is very much in line with Bush, and very much a "war first" mentality. He has demonstrated time and again that, with all the time we've been there, with all the knowledge he supposedly has by visiting Iraq, he has a very poor grasp of who the people we are fighting are. "How well do we have to know a people before we can bomb them?" John Stewart asked, facetiously, recently.

It's the job of generals to run wars. Obama can listen to generals as well as anyone. It's the job of the President to shape global policy and to understand the consequences of our country's actions beyond simply "me shoot enemy, me bigger country". McCain has not demonstrated that capacity, Obama has.

I was curious to read what everyone's reaction was to Obama's "Keating Economics" documentary. McCain and the Keating Five.

Is this a smart move by the Obama camp? Will this affect McCain votes?

Link to video.



***I wasn't sure whether to post it in the McCain thread or the Obama thread. So I posted it here since the subject of the doco was McCain.***

My reaction is that it's as much of a red herring/distortion as McCain's coming attempts to link Obama to various nefarious characters. Which makes it a very smart move. It keeps the conversation on the economy, something McCain desperately wants to change, and it serves as a perfect counterpoint to the bogus swift-boat attempts Obama's already been subject to. I don't like that he has to do it, but I think he's doing it well.

Did you read the Doonesbury from yesterday (Sunday)? You see some soldiers in Iraq, chatting about McCain. One of them says, "Mac sees Iraq as a chance to re-fight Viet Nam, to show that we really CAN win an open-ended war regardless of cost."

That hit me like a ton of bricks, because I never really quite thought of it that way.

The path of the Iraq war for McCain is, in my opinion, highly personal for him. As someone who was held captive as a POW in Viet Nam, which was a very unpopular war that we didn't win, I can really how "winning in Iraq" could be so important for him. People used to joke about George W. Bush wanting to go and "finish the job daddy didn't finish" in Iraq and I think it's something akin to that.

With that in mind, do any of us REALLY want McCain in charge? Do we REALLY want to spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives just so he could deal with his personal feeling of inferiority or incompetence due to whatever residual issues he has from Viet Nam? Hell no!

One thing I think was both really smart on the part of as well as extraordinarily fortuitous for the Obama campaign, is that this the scandal happens to be about the financial industry. I mean, had McCain's scandal been that an affair two decades ago, then Obama airing a video about it would be kind of silly. But this is directly related to what's relevant NOW. So in that way I think they have the upper hand.

Exactly.

Camp McCain: Rezko!!! Ayers!!! Wright!!! = Old news, mud-slinging

Camp Obama: Keating 5. Savings and loan debacle. Fraud. Taxpayer dollars. Economy = Relevant, timely.

Obama wins either way.

Such pwnage makes me happy.

Exactly my reaction!

There goes that maverick, Palin, shootin' off her mouth again.

Real class act, that one.

Palin is akin to a smarmy high school girl.

Gidget Goes to Washington

I don't know about smarmy, but a number of people have referred to her as "the mean girl."

While we're at it, let's bring up Palin's minister and witchcraft...