McCain can’t stop hitting the wrong note

July 26, 2008

Years ago, I was having a conversation with a jazz pianist who told me, “When I hit a wrong note, I keep hitting it — so the audience will think it’s intentional.” To move away from the wrong note would be a subtle admission of a mistake.

John McCain seems to apply the same standard to himself.

In late May, John McCain announced his belief that U.S. troops in Iraq “have drawn down to pre-surge levels.” When pressed, instead of simply acknowledging the error, the McCain campaign insisted the senator was actually right, just so long as we overlook “the tense of the verb.”

This week, in another dramatic error, McCain told Katie Couric that it’s “just a matter of history” that Bush’s “surge” policy “began the Anbar awakening.” That, of course, is backwards. But instead of simply acknowledging the error and correcting the record, McCain has decided to parse the meaning of the word “surge.”

Yesterday, McCain kept hitting the wrong note, hoping that voters would think it’s intentional.

Senator John McCain hammered away at his Democratic rival’s positions on the Iraq war again today, reiterating his assertions that an early surge strategy resulted in the Anbar “awakening” while painting Senator Barack Obama’s policies as the “audacity of hopelessness” that promoted defeat.

In sharp language before the annual convention of the American GI Forum here, Mr. McCain reminded his audience that he had supported the troop buildup even when it wasn’t popular and wasn’t “smart politics.” […]

“He didn’t just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. If Senator Obama had prevailed, American forces would have had to retreat under fire. The Iraqi Army would have collapsed. Civilian casualties would have increased dramatically. Al Qaeda would have killed the Sunni sheiks who had begun to cooperate with us, and the “Sunni Awakening” would have been strangled at birth.

It’s that “strangled at birth” phrase — an odd way of McCain hedging his bets — that stands out.

Let’s review:

* McCain said the surge started in 2007, after the Anbar Awakening that began in 2006.

* On Wednesday, McCain shifted gears and said the surge started in 2006, before the Anbar Awakening.

* On Thursday, McCain shifted gears again and said everyone except him is confused about what the surge is, and defined it as “a counterinsurgency strategy” that was launched before the troop escalation and the Anbar Awakening.

* And on Friday, McCain shifted gears again and re-embraced the original meaning of the word “surge,” which he now believes was launched shortly after the “birth” of the Anbar Awakening.

Just for fun, let’s not lose sight of the fact that McCain held all four of these competing and contradictory positions over the course of a single week.

And McCain is nevertheless basing his entire presidential campaign on his unrivaled expertise on, and support for, Bush’s Iraq policy.

It’s as if the McCain campaign is premised on the hope that voters aren’t paying any attention.

For some strange reason I want to give McCain the benefit of the doubt and believe he is just doing what he is told, that he doesn’t know or believe any of this crap. His campaign Rovians are repeating past campaigns as both tragedy and farce which may finally put a stake through the heart of the myth of the genius of Karl Rove.

Or McCain could be just your basic republican a-hole. We’ll see.

  • Rather than the “audacity of hopelessness” , it’s more like the “faithlessness of our fathers”…what a marroon…

  • Martin said:
    His campaign Rovians are repeating past campaigns as both tragedy and farce which may finally put a stake through the heart of the myth of the genius of Karl Rove.

    I say, leave out the middle man:
    … finally put a stake through the heart of the myth of the genius of Karl Rove.

  • Voters would only be paying attention to some imaginary image the press has put out there because to watch and listen to the real McCain the idea of his being president should just bring laughter…not serious consideration.

    Really, if you’re not embarrassed for McCain as you would be for a mentally handicapped person throwing an emotional fit in a grocery store in front of the cheese rack (trying to show that in spite of your millions and 8 mansions you’re just common folk trying to figure out the cost of milk) then you are not paying attention. The hypocrisy of this man is demeaning.

    Rather than admit mistake he just digs a bigger hole and continues lying as if you can’t see that he’s lying. It’s insulting and makes me angry that he assumes the voter is so stupid. McCain’s character is not pretty when he’s desperate.

  • The problem here is that we all think that McCain speaks for the McCain campaign on policy matters. He doesn’t. His economic adviser Holtz-Eakin made this clear

    Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s chief economic adviser, says the numbers he provided to the TPC aren’t secret—they’re the same ones he provides to anyone who asks. He also disputes the way the study takes suggestions McCain has made on the stump out of context. “This is parsing words out of campaign appearances to an unreasonable degree,” Holtz-Eakin said. “He has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls” that don’t jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn’t mean it’s official.

    So stop bothering John McCain. What he says has no bearing on what he’ll do.

  • McCain forgets that he enabled George Bush’s Bungling and is just as responsible for the screwups in Iraq as Bush.

    Violence is down largely to four or five reasons.

    The additional 17,500 combat troops from the Troop Surge that arrive in Iraq in 2007 no doubt helped.

    The switch to counterinsurgency tactics helped.

    The Change of Alliance of Sunni Tribes in 2006 and the 103,000 former insurgents fighting AQI instead of US troops helped.

    The Truce Declared by Shia Militias in 2006 helped. This took another ~80,000 armed fighters off the street.

    The sectarian cleansing of Baghdad also was a factor. You can’t forget that the are 4 Million refugees. Sunnis have been forced from mixed neighborhoods by shia and vice versa. Jews and Christians have fled.

    And I didn’t List McCain’s Awesome leadership as one of the reasons for reduced violence.

  • The voter is stupid.

    Given all of the very serious disadvantages Republicans have in general and McCain specifically, a smart, competently campaigning Republican should be polling 10 points behind. McCain’t, with all of his screw ups should be 20 points behind. Republicans and their ideology have driven this nation into a ditch, then insulted the tow truck driver that came to help us out. It’s popular these days to blame the MSM, but you have to be stupid not to be aware of other information sources.

    In the end, McCain will win the electoral college vote by a Diebold razor thin margin and Nancy and Harry will take any investigation of voter machine manipulation off the table.

  • The republicans are just all out embracing Doublespeak now.

    What were the three slogans of the ruling class in George Orwell’s 1984?
    -War is Peace
    -Freedom is Slavery
    -Ignorance is Strength

    It’s not hard to see if you don’t have political blinders on.

  • McCain will quickly neutralize Obama’s trip around the world when he names the Dalai Lama as his vice president.

  • “Rather than admit mistake he just digs a bigger hole and continues lying as if you can’t see that he’s lying.” – joey

    But you say it like it’s a bad thing and it has worked so well for eight years! This is part of the Bush successor training, you know.

  • Speaking of the Dalai Lama, does anyone else think that meeting is just the weirdest of all possible meetings??

    I would have loved to be a fly on the wall…or be psychic enough to read the Dalai Lama’s mind while he was face to face with Elmer Fudd, who sees wascally wabbits that need killing at every turn…

    Ugh.

  • “It’s as if the McCain campaign is premised on the hope that voters aren’t paying any attention.”

    And clearly, most people really aren’t paying attention.

    Most people aren’t watching several hours per day of cable news.

    Most people aren’t reading political blogs obsessively.

    There may be higher interest in the election this year because of the catastrophe that has become the economy but it seems to me that the relentless following of daily tracking polls and subsequent obsessive commenting and bloviating about ups and downs when it’s still 3+ months out from the election is a little silly.

    After the conventions, after Labor Day, that’s when this sort of thing might seem to be more appropriate. Which leads me back to the point of the post.

    McCain and his handlers may really believe that this is little more than dress rehearsal for the fall campaign.

    If McCain hasn’t settled on his day-to-day campaign narrative by the convention, he’s really in deep trouble. Meanwhile, he may be in deep deep trouble anyway when it comes around to debate time and after since he’s handed Barack Obama some profound gifts that could possibly come back to haunt him…if Obama will only use them.

    Whether he will or not remains to be seen. I’m holding out the hope that the relative passivity of the Obama campaign at this point is all about the earliness of the season and that the best ammunition should be used when people are really paying attention.

    And for Steve or anyone else reading comments, on a related note which may be a useful subject for a post:

    How much of the reluctance to go after Bush for impeachment and the decidedly higher tone (so far at least) on the Democratic side is about Obama wanting to actually accomplish something during his first term and not get bogged down with what he sees as distractions. Granted, impeachment and trials are something more than the normal distraction but the point remains, with all of that going on, nothing is going to get done.

    Ford always thought that, right or wrong, the pardoning of Nixon was necessary if the country wasn’t going to get bogged down in years and years of trials and his only shot at re-election was to get past it and get something done.

    It seems to me that Obama is really trying to walk a fine line by doing what it takes to get elected but to do so in a way that will allow him post-election to at least try and bring in those on the other side of the aisle who are willing to figuratively walk across it in the ‘best interest of the nation’ or whatever else you might imagine.

    Regards to all.

  • I thought I saw a headline somewhere yesterday -THE MC CAIN CAMPAIGN SAID THAT JOHN MC CAIN WILL NO LONGER BE SPEAKING FOR THE MC CAIN CAMPAIGN ON ECONOMIC ISSUES !!! I cannot remember where I saw it, or even whether it was a joke, anyway it made me smile.

  • Just for fun, let’s not lose sight of the fact that McCain held all four of these competing and contradictory positions over the course of a single week.

    You see? John McCain does have more experience than Barack Obama. In fact, he has experience in at least four distinct parallel worlds.
    Which means, in effect, that he’s really something like 288 years old!

  • Al Qaeda would have killed the Sunni sheiks who had begun to cooperate with us, […] — McCain

    They (or *someone*) seem to be doing just that, despite the surge…

  • Al Qaeda would have killed the Sunni sheiks who had begun to cooperate with us——-John McCain.

    Dear Al Quaeda,

    I have it on exceptionally good advice that John McCain is really a collaborating Sunni sheik very cleverly disguised as an American politician. this “Manchurian McCain” is in no way whatsoever similar to the John McCain that the entire world has known for decades, and for someone with so much experience in military matters, he knows too damned little about things like surges and troop deployments to be a real military expert—and he keeps going on about other collaborating Sunni sheiks that you have already killed in a way that only a collaborating Sunni sheik would go on about dead collaborating Sunni Sheiks.

  • Back in 2006, after the Iraq Study Group report, McCain and Lieberman filed a report with the AEI talking about the need for a surge of troops. At that time his recommendation was for about 80,000 troops, but the minimum he recommended is what ended up going in.

    Some of the statements he made that day are interesting in light of the statements he has made this week. For instance, he said that violence could get worse before it gets better. He said that we might fail in Iraq, even with the surge. But most important, by his definition, the surge was really an escalation. He said that for the surge to be successful it must be “large” and “sustained”.

    Here is the source:

    http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.1446/transcript.asp

    Here are some quotes:

    “There are two keys to any surge of US troops. To be of value,
    the surge must be substantial and it must be sustained. We will
    need a large number of troops.”

    “The presence of additional coalition forces would give the Iraqi
    government the ability to do what it cannot accomplish today on
    its own: Impose its rule throughout the country. In bringing
    security to Iraq, and chiefly to Baghdad, our forces would give
    the government a fighting chance to pursue reconciliation.
    Contrary to popular notions that US troops are getting “caught
    in this crossfire” between Sunni and Shia fighters and are therefore
    ineffective in ceasing this smoldering civil war, the track record
    is that when US troops in stopping sectarian violence is excellent,
    where American soldiers have deployed to areas in turmoil, including
    Baghdad neighborhoods, the violence has ceased almost immediately.”

    “The mission of these reinforcements would be to implement the thus
    far elusive hold element of the military’s clear-hold-build
    strategy, to maintain security in cleared areas, to protect the
    population and critical infrastructure, and to impose the
    government’s authority — essential elements of a traditional
    counterinsurgency strategy.”

    “I want to be clear. And I mean this with all sincerity. Strategy
    will mean more casualties and extra hardships for our brave fighting
    men and women. The violence may get worse before it gets better.
    We have to be prepared for this. Our soldiers should know that. As
    they face these real great dangers, they are working towards a
    strategy that gives us the best chance to succeed at a time when our
    national security is directly at stake.”

    “By controlling the violence, we can pave the way for a political
    settlement. Once the government wields greater authority, however,
    Iraqi leaders must take significant steps on their own. These include
    a commitment to go after the militias, a reconciliation process for
    insurgents and Baathists, a more equitable distribution of government
    resources, provincial elections that would bring Sunnis and the
    government, and a large increase in employment-generating economic
    projects.”

    “Tom Ricks: Thank you. Tom Ricks from the Washington Post. I have
    a question for Senator McCain. If a surge is such a good idea, why
    do you think that we keep hearing from the joint chiefs, especially
    from the Army and the Marine Corps, that their [indiscernible] dislike
    the idea?

    McCain: I can only say in response to that — and there is, as you
    pointed out, been significant resistance to this on a part of some,
    particularly those that reside in the Pentagon when we talked to
    General Odierno and General Chiarelli, the colonels and the generals
    who are on the ground in Iraq, they do not share that view. But I
    believe that there is only one thing worst than an overstressed
    military, and that is a broken and defeated military.”

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