Questioning whether McCain’s military experience is the right kind of experience

March 3, 2008

In general, there are two ways to challenge John McCain’s credibility on military and national security issues. The first is to concede that McCain has a fairly lengthy background in these issues, but that experience is ultimately of little value because he’s fundamentally wrong about the major challenges the U.S. faces in today’s world. We can honor McCain’s service, the argument goes, but as president, he would use his experience to give us more of what we’ve seen from Bush/Cheney, and that would be a mistake.

The second is to argue that McCain doesn’t really have the background he needs in the first place. On a Clinton campaign conference call yesterday, Wesley Clark, Byron York reported, said McCain’s military experience is of little strategic value several decades later. Clark, a retired four-star general and former commander of NATO, said:

“In the national security business, the question is, do you have — when you have served in uniform, do you really have the relevant experience for making the decisions at the top that have to be made? Everybody admires John McCain’s service as a fighter pilot, his courage as a prisoner of war. There’s no issue there. He’s a great man and an honorable man. But having served as a fighter pilot — and I know my experience as a company commander in Vietnam — that doesn’t prepare you to be commander-in-chief in terms of dealing with the national strategic issues that are involved. It may give you a feeling for what the troops are going through in the process, but it doesn’t give you the experience first hand of the national strategic issues.

“If you look at what Hillary Clinton has done during her time as the First Lady of the United States, her travel to 80 countries, her representing the U.S. abroad, plus her years in the Senate, I think she’s the most experienced and capable person in the race, not only for representing [America] abroad, but for dealing with the tough issues of national security.”

According to York, after Clark’s comments, retired Admiral William Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, added, “I would just say that I agree with Wes on that.”

As one might imagine, this isn’t going over well among some conservatives. My question isn’t so much over whether Clark was right in his analysis of McCain’s experience, but rather, whether it’s the most politically salient way to go on the offensive against him.

James Joyner, who is conservative, took on Clark’s analysis.

This is a spectacularly dumb line of attack. It’s true, I think, that being a fighter pilot and prisoner of war is not, in and of itself, experience which necessarily qualifies an individual to make decisions on matters of grand strategy. But McCain’s experience isn’t limited to that Clark had as a mere company commander in Vietnam; he rose to the rank of captain (equivalent to an Army/Air Force/Marine colonel) and did a tour as the Navy’s liaison to the United States Senate. He followed that with four years in the United States House of Representatives and another 22 as a United States Senator. He’s a former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and is now the committee’s Ranking Member.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, tagged along on some trips overseas with her hubby, the president.

Now, I’d argue that Joyner is probably selling Hillary Clinton’s background short, but his broader point is nevertheless fairly compelling.

McCain’s military heroics came 40 years ago. How relevant is that experience now in offering a foreign policy vision for the 21st century? Not much. That, I suspect, is the point Clark was trying to hammer home. And on the facts, Clark certainly isn’t wrong.

The problem, though, is that it’s unhelpful for Democrats in general to make this debate about who has the longest and most impressive background in military matters, in large part because our candidates, looking at a tale of the tape, are going to come up short, for the very reasons Joyner mentioned. It’s far preferable, it seems to me, to go back to Point #1 — McCain, for all his experience, is still wrong. He showed courage and strength in uniform decades ago, and he’s been a Washington insider and Sunday-morning-show favorite for a quarter-century now, but none of that changes the fact that on the world’s biggest challenges, McCain’s ideas, vision, and solutions are the opposite of what America needs right now.

Clark’s point is well taken, but the message doesn’t seem to fit the dynamic.

That’s been the problem with the Clinton campaign from the start. Their messages have not provided a compelling reason for many Democratic voters to support their candidate. The underlying problem is that these people are out of touch, and have no idea as to why both Obama and McCain receive the support from independents which Clinton is unable to receive. They have messages which appeal to partisan Democrats, but which do not work with most other voters.

  • Wes Clark is absolutely right.

    But it’s CB that nails it with this phrase, “experience is ultimately of little value because he’s fundamentally wrong about the major challenges the U.S. faces in today’s world.” You can have all the experience in the world, but if after all your experience you consistently do the wrong thing then it proves you don’t learn from your experience. Experience is only valuable if it teaches you how to be right the next time. McCain is obviously a poor student of his experiences … and with George Bush we’ve learned poor students don’t make good leaders, haven’t we?

  • The question here is not so much about experience, but leadership. Being on a Senate committee, even as chairman, is not evidence of ability to make executive decisions. It’s certainly true that Obama and Clinton lack the same credentials, but McCain had leadership experience when he was in the Navy. Whether it was successful or complete failure is an issue that deserves further review.

  • It’s far preferable, it seems to me, to go back to Point #1 — McCain, for all his experience, is still wrong. He showed courage and strength in uniform decades ago, and he’s been a Washington insider and Sunday-morning-show favorite for a quarter-century now, but none of that changes the fact that on the world’s biggest challenges, McCain’s ideas, vision, and solutions are the opposite of what America needs right now.

    I agree completely. Clark’s analysis completely ignores the fact that McCain not only has military experience, he also has far more years of experience in the Senate than Clinton has. If the race comes down to who has the more impressive CV, McCain wins hands down. But the fact remains that all of the candidates have backgrounds that qualify them for the presidency, and the essential question becomes one of ideology. I respect McCain a great deal (probably more than most around here), but I would never vote for him simply because I disagree with most of the positions he stands for. Clinton is putting herself in an awkward position with her “experience” line of attack against Obama, which, aside from being not particularly compelling on the basis of the facts, leaves her vulnerable to a similar attack from McCain.

  • As Hon. Sen. McCain said himself, much of these issues are in the past. Wither now? Sen. McCain faults the Dems for wanting to withdraw, but he cannot claim that these aren’t plans for future action. He might claim that they are based on an oversimplification of the situation, but if he’s saying that he cannot lay out his own strategic vision because things are complicated, this seems manifestly inadequate.

    So what are his forward looking plans? ‘The Surge ™ is working (repeat).’ Even if we grant that a surge can last for an indefinitely long period of time, are we supposed to be satisfied by this? mind, it is essentially what he’s been saying for four years’ worth of three month time periods.

  • Let’s make the comparison of Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas McArthur, perhaps equivalently experienced men, as president. McArthur would have been a disaster, not because of his experience, but because of his views. McCain can be praised as much as they want, but regardless of his background he will be a disaster. This is especially true since McCain has experience only in conventional security issues (jets and subs) not the new sorts of security issues. Clark has experience in (ahem) nation building and much more experience in asymmetric warfare. He knows what he is talking about. You hire a janitor because he knows how to mop floors, but you do not elect presidents because they know how to fly an airplane.

    McCain will be a bomb them into the stone age kinda guy. Perfect for the warmongers in the Republican Party. I would love to hear his answer to the question, “How are the Sunnis and Shia different”..even at this late date I doubt his answer would be comforting.

  • it is possible to walk and chew gum at the same time. if james joyner’s “defense” to the “spectacularly dumb” line of attack is to say, no, mccain wasn’t just an air force captain 40 years ago, he was also briefly the navy’s liason to the US Senate, then he doesn’t have much of a “defense.” all that does is reinforce the argument: that a guy was a flyboy 40 years ago and served with distinction is not a national security credential in the slightest.

    so why not attack mccain’s reputation as overblown and simultaneously attack his judgement as pathetic?

  • I’m going to have to go the other route, and argue that it’s perfectly acceptable strategy to go after McCain’s experience as “the wrong kind of experience.”

    If you look at this from a “learning curve” tack—which is what I think Wes was doing—it will always be fundamentally—and strategically—easier to “learn something from scratch,” than it will be to “unlearn and relearn.” Unlearning those 40 years of experience will be literally impossible for McCain to do; his recent actions suggest a penchant—possibly to the point of a cognitive addiction—to argue his side of an issue to the point of becoming a physical threat to anyone disagreeing with him. This is not what America needs in a C-in-C.

    Obama, on the other hand, will not be crippled by the “unlearning” part of his learning curve….

  • RonChusid is right, that this is a long-standing trait of the Clinton campaign but I’d describe it a bit differently. Clark attacks but his argument has no convincing closer. It’s like HRC criticizing Obama for making speeches — in the middle of giving a speech herself. It’s like HRC claiming 35 years’ experience; by that measure, several other candidates would have been more qualified than her (not to mention that 35 years is a stretch at best).

    In contrast, Obama closes the argument when, for the sake of argument, he cedes McCain’s experience and Clinton’s experience, and says despite that, they still got it wrong. Or when he cedes Clinton’s point and agrees to denounce and reject.

    People wonder why the Clinton campaign can’t get anything to stick to Obama. To me, making the kind of claims Clark makes is the answer.

  • The 4th Gen Warfare requires someone who understands boots on the ground. Means infantry, combined arms, intelligence gathering, policing and counter terrorism experience not just with ships 20 miles out or from planes at 12000 feet.

  • McCain’s military heroics came 40 years ago.

    Homer: That Timmy is a real hero!
    Lisa: How do you mean, Dad?
    Homer: Well, he fell down a well, and… he can’t get out.
    Lisa: How does that make him a hero?
    Homer: Well, that’s more than you did!

  • Wes is wrong and Joyner is right, that purely comparing experience is a loser for Dems.

    That’s Obama’s whole point – comparing years of service is irrelevant if your decision-making, if your policy is about deploying our men and women at the drop of a hat instead of only as a last resort.

  • The Clinton campaign is walking a very thin line here. They can’t attack McCain on the basis that his experience hasn’t led to the wisdom to lead because it leaves exposes her back to the same attack from Obama, and in case she has forgotten, he’s currently her opponent.

    It seems like they want to be perceived again as the inevitable frontrunner, and attacking the Republican frontrunner nominee seems like a good way to do so, but this particular tack is not helpful.

  • Can we start putting his trip to the Iraq market front and center as proof of his inability to recognize the obvious in Iraq ?? There are tons of quotes in which McCain declared this or that about the Iraq safety issue and the run the direct rebuttals from commanders on the ground. Quotes that people not deep in politics understand, like the one about the general driving around Iraq without an escort. Nail him as the senile old man he truly is.

    This being the proof that McCain doesn’t have the common sense to run a boy scout division much less the entire US military.

    The more I see this clown the more I realize he is way more dangerous then Bush. The says whatever pops in his head, and that by itself isn’t bad, the real problem is the shit that pops in his head. It’s borderline psychotic. Who says they believe in this and a week later denounces it, with almost everything, who covers a lie with a lie that is public record, who holds a position differing from the position on their website, who calls a everyone he ever speaks to, friends ??. It’s not pandering, it’s fricken senility and it scares the hell out of me.

  • But McCain’s experience isn’t limited to that Clark had as a mere company commander in Vietnam; he rose to the rank of captain (equivalent to an Army/Air Force/Marine colonel) and did a tour as the Navy’s liaison to the United States Senate.

    This means even less than nothing. On active service, unbroken by time in a POW camp, John McCain was a failure as an officer. He had risen to Lieutenant Commander, but the Navy had effectively decided by passing him over twice and – at the time of his being shot down – was in the process of passing him over a third time, for promotion to Commander (Lt. Colonel). This effectively meant the end of his career, and this son and grandson of fighting admirals was due to leave the Navy after the completion of that tour in Southeast Asia.

    His career changed for the better, once he was shot down – an event that was the result of STUPIDITYwhen he went back over the target after bombing it, and got himself low and slow over several hundred AAA guns. He was a nice juicy target, doing exactly what all his training told him not to do (there’s a “character tell” that fits his rebelliousness at Annapolis that resulted in his graduating 5 from the bottom of his class). Once a POW, McCain’s promotion prospects improved vastly, since the Navy policy was to prmote a POW at the f irst time he became eligible for a promotion. McCain made CDR and then Captain (Colonel), not for any actual accomplishments, any demonstrations of leadership, any actual effort as an officer. Once he was back home, the Navy gave him the command of the Attack Squadrons Atlantic Replacement Air Group – essentially the “finishing school” for pilots heading to the fleet – and he was “less than successful” at that. By this time, however, he was a piece of public relations for the Navy, so they took the Brave POW and sent him to Washington, to b.s. and softsoap Congressmen into voting for new toys for the boys in dark blue.

    This is NOT the career path of a Major Commander, as McCain is trying to position himself (and neither is Hillary’s tourist work around the world). Yes, JFK and Richard Nixon had thinner military resumes (other than actual heroism in Kennedy’s case and a demonstrated ability to win at poker for Nixon, who bought his house after the war with his winnings from his tour in the rear at Guadalcanal – long after the fighting was over there).

    There is another “tell” about McCain that most people won’t get: he has never ever received the public support of his fellow Naval Aviators. To the ones he served with, he’s still “Rampstrike” McCain, who demonstrated his lack of The Right Stuff in getting shot down. They’re a picky bunch in that fraternity. They won’t go “swfitboat” him, but their silent avoidance speaks volumes.

    The truth is, McCain’s real military career demonstrates that he is exactly the guy everything else about him says he is.

  • Funny. These conservatives, wheren’t they the one’s who drooled over Commander Codpiece’s stroll across the flight deck on the way to making his Victory speech on the naval carrier, what now seems so long ago? Weren’t they the ones who didn’t think it mattered that Chimpy ducked into the national guard to protect the Texas skies from invasion while a hell of a lot of young men were getting their feet wet and asses shot off in rice paddies trying to prevent the domino from falling? Weren’t these the same guys who didn’t want to hear that their own Commander Codpiece ducked out of completing his military service? Wasn’t this the party that sported those band-aids along with smirky smiles at their convention attacking Kerry’s patriotism by mocking his service in a war zone?

    I don’t think anyone would or should deny McCain his due for his service and sacrifice 40 at the Hilton years ago. This issue should be focued on the policy now, the policy moving ahead, and sound judgement. In my own view, McCain is quite vunerable in these areas. Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, anyone? More wars, anyone? Stay 100 years, anyone? Manifest Destiny,anyone?

  • Thanks for the link, Steve.

    I do note, in the subsequent paragraph and later in the post, that “One can make the argument with some credibility that seven years in the Senate as a backbencher and eight years as the partner of a Commander-in-Chief provides enough experience to make strategic decisions” and that “I believe Hillary Clinton has sufficient seasoning to do the job of president,” so I’m not selling her that short. I just think trying to pretend her experience somehow trumps McCain’s — an argument that can only be made on basis of her tenure as First Lady — is silly.

    Tom: I’m not interested in debating McCain’s skills as a pilot or his success as a naval officer, in that I don’t have any great insights as to either given that my brief military career came when McCain was already in the Senate. My sense, though, is that McCain’s Vietnam POW heroism is being used to argue for his character and courage while his time in the Senate is being used to make a case for his strategic thinking. Certainly, even your average superstar 0-6 doesn’t have to make calls on grand strategy.

  • I don’t think Clark’s line of attack is at all necessary. People aren’t dumb. They might not pay attention as much as we’d like, but they’re not dumb. And the only reason people repeat dumb arguments in support of their side is that those are the only arguments they have. As they say, if you have the facts, argue the facts. But if all you’ve got is BS, you’ve got to BS. But that doesn’t mean it convinces anyone.

    Nobody is going to vote for McCain because they imagine that his war record shows he knows how to deal with the problems of the day. If someone’s going to vote for McCain because of national security, it’s going to be because they agree with him on Iraq, terrorism, etc; not because he got shot down forty years ago. So the best argument against him is to agree with him that his half century of service to our country is admirable, but the man is just wrong about the key national security issues of the day. And that’s been Obama’s take it on the whole time, showing that he knows how it’s done.

    That’s not to say that we can’t have the Tom Cleavers point out the truth about McCain’s war record, but that can’t come through official channels. And frankly, while I think that kind of stuff can be quite helpful arguing against wingnuts, I don’t think it helps us at all with undecideds. It’s too negative and sounds like we’re smearing a former POW Swiftboat style. In politics, truth isn’t as important as the appearance of truth. Rather than trying to confront him with his record head-on, I think a little judo is better. We agree with him that he’s a good man, but that he just doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. And the more he tries to pimp the Iraq War and other GOP talking points, the more he makes that case for us. Let’s make this about his policies, not him.

  • If I were Wes, I’d leave that line of inquiry alone. There are many three- and four- star generals without the type of experience that would help end a sectarian conflict like Iraq. (And Wesley Clark is one of them) McCain has steadfastly supported the one general with a clear and convincing plan to reduce the violence in Iraq. If the surge continues to be moderately successful, all McCain will have to do is point to the results on the ground to demonstrate his experience.

    Obama needs to take this debate to another level. Avoid unnecessary debates about experience and focus on strategic vision. Demonstrate that war-mongering is not a long-term strategy for success against Islamic extremism. Emphasize the long-term consequences of pursuing the surge strategy–military will slowly degrade, ignores Afghanistan, squanders precious cash building schools for Iraqis when our own are crumbling. McCain will take Obama to the cleaners if he is dumb enough to adopt Clark’s strategy.

  • “Brave” POW & or “POW Heroism” my butt. It’s bad enough that he did what he did & I can’t say for 100% that I wouldn’t have “cracked” too while a POW, HOWEVER, I find it disgusting that he continually ACCEPTS the “titles” of “hero” & such . And I was livid when the torture debate was going on when he claimed to GVS on Fox News that torture did NOT work on him when he was a POW. This family has more than one VN vet (officers & NCO’s) & it’s disgusting to us how his actions in the POW camps is virtually ignored OTHER THAN to say he was tortured. No, none of us are former POWs BUT we know for sure that if we were AND did what he did we most certainly WOULD not allow others to call us “heroes” (IOW, we would dispute the “hero” “title”).

    And EVEN IF it weren’t for that…this family considers him a traitor for pushing for amnesty for those that have INVADED the USA & that alone excludes him from being a capable CIC in these times.

    He was unfaithful to the USA in VN & during his amnesty attempt, as well as, the fact the he was unfaithful to his 1st wife WHO WAITED for him WHILE he was a POW & STOOD BY HIM during his physical recovery & through many yrs after that BUT when it came time for him to do so for her after her horrific car accident HE FAILED HER & “kicked her to the curb”. I(our)HO, if he can & was unfaithful to the military, unfaithful to his 1st wife & the vows he took w/ her AND unfaithful to USA citizens BORN & NATURALIZED & those that are here LEGALLY/LEGITIMATELY then why would we expect him to all of a sudden decided to honor/be capable of honoring the oath of office for POTUS.

  • “We can honor McCain’s service….”

    Why? As Gloria Steinem noted yesterday, “Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years?” Steinem asked, suggesting the media would ask “‘What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?”

    Beyond that he personally lost 4 military jets through poor judgment and what amounted to fraternity pranks. He also finished fifth from the bottom of his academny calls of nearly 900. He also flaunted naval regs regarding adultery and fraternization. He was given enormous latitude because he was the son of a four-star admiral and grandson of another 4-star admiral. Though he wanted to be an admiral himself, he failed.

    Why don’t the Democrats point stuff like this out? Why are they so willing to honor his dishonorable record?

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