When Barack Obama traveled overseas recently, and drew criticism for appearing “presumptuous,” Obama emphasized his belief that we “only have one president at a time.”
It’s a point John McCain may have forgotten.
At a press conference [yesterday afternoon], John McCain redoubled his efforts to thrust himself into a leadership role on the Russia-Georgia crisis front, announcing that two top campaign surrogates, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, are going on a visit to Georgia. […]
The idea is to showcase himself as a man of action during a time of international crisis and to remind people that the world is a dangerous place that’s still filled with aggressive actors, something that the McCain camp presumably thinks will play in his favor.
McCain’s announcement of his key campaign allies’ trip abroad also seems designed to shoulder Bush aside as the primary GOP leadership figure here.
McCain told reporters, “The situation in Georgia remains fluid and dangerous. As soon as possible my colleagues senators Lieberman and Graham will be traveling to Georgia. They’re both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I hope that other members of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate will go together.”
Now, to be fair, Lieberman and Graham, as members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, travel to hot spots with some regularity. But in this context, it seems McCain is dispatching his two top Senate surrogates to the middle of a conflict, just as the actual president is dispatching his Secretary of State to the same place.
It led Jonathan Martin to note that McCain’s “declaration has something of a shadow government feel to it, as though he’s sending his own emissaries into the war zone.”
Exactly. And presidential candidates aren’t supposed to have a “shadow government.” To do so would be … what’s the word … presumptuous.
Try to imagine the response if Obama dispatched two of his top campaign surrogates to Georgia to review conditions on the ground. There would be apoplexy — how dare a presumptive nominee act like he’s already president.
But that is effectively what we’re seeing here. McCain is on the phone with Saakashvili on a daily basis — occasionally multiple times throughout the day — having international discussions of an unknown nature. He’s also been taking a rather striking tone in criticizing Russia publicly. Now McCain is sending surrogates overseas.
My friend Adam Serwer
, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, has a spot-on take.
No doubt this will produce a flood of reports noting how cocky and presumptuous it is for McCain to be acting as though he is already President and should be formulating policy in response to the situation there. These reports will be almost as numerous as the stories noting that McCain does not have the authority to conduct negotiations on behalf of the United States, and that doing so deeply undermines the President’s authority to conduct said negotiations since foreign governments can’t be sure about where they actually stand with our own.
These will be followed by hysterical condemnations by Right Wingers about McCain overstepping his authority, much the same way as they did last year when they accused Nancy Pelosi of “conducting independent negotiations with foreign governments” on her trip to the Middle East when she simply reiterated U.S. Policy everywhere she went.
Of course, Pelosi wasn’t being advised by someone who is being paid by the very government McCain is undermining U.S. relations with to look after their interests. I wonder what exactly the Georgian government thinks they’ve paid for, besides potentially a host of unrealistic promises McCain has no authority to make, but clearly only Randy Scheunemann and his clients in Tblisi know for sure.
The media seems to have decided that the war in Georgia is a terrific development for McCain’s campaign. If reporters could just apply a little more scrutiny, and a little less sycophancy, we’d all be better off.