In an interview that will air tonight on ABC, Charlie Gibson asks John McCain about one of the principal criticisms he receives from Democrats in general, and Barack Obama in specific.
Though the general election has yet to hit high gear, in the latter stages of his primary fight against Sen. Clinton, Obama did turn his sights on McCain. And the line of attack was clear: a vote for McCain is a vote for a third Bush term, Obama contends.
“I hear that over and over from the Democrats and from Senator Obama, and I understand that political tactic. I don’t think it’s going to work,” McCain told “World News” in an interview Thursday.
“What Americans want now, in my opinion, from having literally hundreds of town hall meetings, what are you going to do about gas prices? What are you going to do about health care? What are you going to do about the threats that we face from radical Islamic extremism?”
“I haven’t heard anybody at a town hall meeting, although I’m sure that it’s on their minds, say, “Well, you’re too close to President Bush.” What they’ve said is, “What’s your plan of action?” That’s what they’re interested in, and that’s how I think that I can meet that particular campaign tactic,” McCain countered.
McCain’s response suggests he doesn’t really understand the problem he’s facing. The issue isn’t whether he’s “too close” to Bush (though you can expect to see the picture of them hugging quite a bit); the issue that he agrees with Bush on everything that matters. When he hosts town-hall meetings and people ask him, “What’s your plan of action?” no one cares whether he and Bush are buddies, but everyone cares that his “plan of action” is identical to that of Bush.
Indeed, McCain is making this easy. Which issues does he bring up? Energy, healthcare, and foreign policy in the Middle East. And how is McCain different from Bush in these areas? That’s just it — he isn’t different at all.
On Iraq, for example, this video helps drive the point home nicely:
Yglesias adds a very good point:
As John McCain likes to say, he has at various points in time disagreed with George W. Bush’s tactical approach to Iraq. But in the ways that matter, he’s generally agreed with Bush’s strategic vision….
In some ways, I think McCain himself doesn’t quite realize how Bush-esque he is. He clearly doesn’t like Bush, and has been disliking him for a long time. But that kind of personalized, overblown disdain for Bush-the-man can wind up leading you to overestimate Bush-the-grand-strategist. To McCain, Bush’s policies have failed because of Bush. Replace Bush with McCain and shift tactics around the margins, and the same basic ideas should work out fine. It’s a nice theory, but I don’t think it’s a true theory.
Noam Scheiber added:
McCain believes the issue in Iraq was competence–he doesn’t think Bush had it, and is confident he does. But, as many argued at the time of the invasion, the bigger problem was that it’s just really, really hard to occupy a large country, particularly a large Muslim country rife with sectarian divisions, and you should try to avoid it if at all possible. Bush didn’t try to avoid it, and McCain wouldn’t have either. Worse, like Bush, he still doesn’t think we should have tried to avoid it, even with the benefit of hindsight.
And the senator still thinks the problem is Obama thinks McCain is “too close to President Bush.” McCain doesn’t, in other words, even understand the challenge in front of him.
