The McCain Factor

From David Broder

No one outside the administration has been more adamant or outspoken in arguing that there is no substitute for victory in Iraq than has McCain, the Naval Academy graduate and survivor of years in a North Vietnamese prison camp.

But there is nothing nuanced about his position on the Iraq war. In speeches on and off the Senate floor and in countless television interviews, McCain has argued that it was right to remove Saddam Hussein and that the United States and its allies must remain in Iraq until conditions are created for a stable, secure Iraqi government.

...he argued that the consequences of leaving Iraq prematurely would be a factional or religious struggle within that country that could lead to a radical Islamic regime destabilizing the Middle East and threatening more terrorist attacks.

...The misjudgments, McCain said, have continued down to the present...

My sense is John McCain captures the underlying attitudes of most baby-boomers; Vietnam haunts this generation and as we are taught, history has a way of repeating itself.

Yet, it has been McCain, and not President Bush, who has walked Boomers through their fears to the point where Democrats and Independents support Republican McCain for President.

And McCain opposes withdrawal and has consistently called for more American troops in Iraq.

Politics is a funny thing. The Democrat Party calls for immediate withdrawal and denounces the President for lying, yet their Party's voters support McCain for President. And on my side of the partisan divide, Republicans question whether McCain is conservative enough, just for having opposed George W. for the nomination in 2000.

McCain owns credibility on this issue that not even another Vietnam War vet, John Kerry, can touch. Credibility andconsistency are not traits associated with the modern Democrat Party.

I side with McCain, the Bush Administrationn made gigantic mistakes in the conduct of this War, beginning with a failed intelligence that might have prevented 9/11 (read former FBI Director Louis Freeh).

And, why even peddle the issue of WMDs in Iraq when, among the many justifiable reasons to invade Iraq, WMDs represented the weakest of all provable options?

Another warning sign has been the revolving door of generals and commanders retiring or being reassigned, rather than go public with their disagreements with Rummy on issues of troop deployment.

Democrats are too busy courting the Vietnam-generation/Boomer vote with 1960s rhetoric that Bush Lied to understandd that their Party voters are more reasonable than that.

And McCain will pick them off and regroup the Reagan Democrats into a landslide victory in 2008 -- if, if, he can win the GOP nomination first.