While talking about the war in Afghanistan yesterday, John McCain predictably went after Barack Obama, saying Obama “has no strategy.” It was an odd attack, given the fact that McCain had just flip-flopped on his Afghanistan policy, and embraced Obama’s strategy as his own.
Here’s McCain yesterday, talking about his plan to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, in order to bring an Iraq-like strategy to the country.
The key quote, of course, was pretty straightforward: “[O]ur commanders on the ground in Afghanistan say that they need at least three additional brigades. Thanks to the success of the surge, these forces are becoming available, and our commanders in Afghanistan must get them.”
What’s important to realize, though, is that while Obama has been arguing for a year that he wants to send additional troops to Afghanistan, McCain has always held the opposite position, opposing the deployment of more U.S. troops, and arguing that any additional troops come from NATO.
Yesterday, however, McCain reversed course, change his position, and embraced Obama’s policy as his own. As Josh Marshall explained, “So let’s all say it out loud: McCain is now copying Obama’s position on Afghanistan. And with troops that he doesn’t have since he’s against pulling any out of Iraq.”
But it gets worse. McCain has actually held multiple positions on Afghanistan in the last seven days.
Last Tuesday, McCain did not want to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
By yesterday morning, McCain said he does want to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Almost immediately after giving his speech — literally just minutes after the event — McCain said he didn’t exactly mean what he’d said in his prepared remarks, and argued that the additional troops could come from NATO, not U.S. forces.
And then a few hours later, McCain refined his policy a little more, saying the additional troops would come from NATO and U.S. forces.
Remember, the premise of John McCain’s presidential campaign is a) his expertise on foreign policy and national security; and b) his consistency.
By any reasonable measure, this had to be humiliating for McCain. Not only did he flip-flop on his policy, and not only did he borrow Obama’s policy as his own, but he had to keep clarifying what he actually meant.
Surely the media would jump all over this, right? Not so much. Very few news reports mentioned McCain’s switch, and even fewer noted that McCain embraced Obama’s policy. Time’s Mark Halperin offered an example of what’s wrong with campaign reporting:
[L]ook at the headline at Mark Halperin’s The Page: “Obama Acknowledges ‘Shift in Emphasis’ on Issues.”
And here’s Halperin’s gloss on McCain’s new Afghanistan strategy: McCain “highlights the success of the surge (and Obama’s opposition to it), says the troop increase strategies used in Iraq should also be applied to Afghanistan.”
It’s almost comical. It doesn’t fit the script so it didn’t happen.
Late Update: Okay, it’s 7:27 PM. And Halperin now has a headline noting that McCain is “supposedly adopting Obama’s position on troops in Afghanistan.” The key though is that the headline is prompted by an email the Obama campaign sent out to reporters at 6:41 PM (yeah, we got it too.) Did I mention it’s only “supposedly”?
Just out of curiousity, if Barack Obama had reversed course, flip-flopped on Afghanistan, and taken McCain’s policy as his own, do you suppose we might have heard more about it?