{"id":12792,"date":"2007-09-06T14:27:32","date_gmt":"2007-09-06T18:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12792.html"},"modified":"2007-09-06T14:27:32","modified_gmt":"2007-09-06T18:27:32","slug":"petraeus-for-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/petraeus-for-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Petraeus for President?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last time the New York Sun looked beyond the existing Republican presidential field for their dream candidate, the conservative paper’s editorial board begged Dick Cheney<\/a> to throw his hat into the ring. Today, the Sun’s imagination went in an even more creative direction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I am prepared, even eager, to command our forces in this battle — but only on one condition: That you signal that you share my goal of victory. If you think I am mistaken and wish to continue your efforts to undermine me, then I cannot command. Absent that signal, I will resign, effective immediately, and take my case to the voters in a run for the presidency on a campaign to finish the work of winning the war and redeeming the sacrifice of so many Iraqis, allies, and our own GIs.”<\/p>\n

That’s the speech we’d like to see General Petraeus deliver to Congress on the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, the New York Sun wants Petraeus to run for president in order to keep Bush’s Iraq policy in place.<\/p>\n

Now, I’ve seen some suggestions that Petraeus should gear up for a 2012 campaign<\/a>, and others who have pointed to Petraeus as a great running mate<\/a> for the ’08 Republican nominee, but apparently a growing contingent actually sees the general as the real<\/i> savior of the GOP (sorry Fred Thompson, you are so<\/i> July 2007.)<\/p>\n

There are, of course, a few problems with this fairly silly idea.
\n
\nFirst, as Amanda noted<\/a>, Petraeus has a bit of a history of dropping his independence and reading from the Bush White House’s script.<\/p>\n

Petraeus “softened” the intelligence community’s judgments about Iraq violence.<\/b> After reviewing an early draft of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, “Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened” to reflect so-called improvements in recent months.<\/p>\n

Petraeus claimed the United States has “become liberators again” in Iraq.<\/b> In June, Petraeus argued there was a “golden hour” of “omnipotence” in the early stages of the war where the U.S. was “viewed as a liberator.” He then claimed that Iraqis perceive the United States to once again be “liberators,” this time freeing them from the bloody civil war instigated as a result of the U.S. occupation.<\/p>\n

Petraeus claimed life in Iraq is showing “astonishing signs of normalcy.”<\/b> In June, Petraeus stated that he sees “astonishing signs of normalcy” in Baghdad, despite a report that found violence had “increased in most provinces, particularly in the outlying areas of Baghdad province.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As part of this, there have been far<\/a> too<\/a> many<\/a> instances<\/a> in<\/a> which<\/a> Petraeus’ political beliefs appear to have taken precedence over his policy judgment.<\/p>\n

For that matter, Petraeus is not exactly a popular national figure. A new Rasmussen poll<\/a> shows that 24% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the general, while 35% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion. I don’t doubt for a moment that most of the country has no idea who he is, but numbers like these aren’t exactly the launching pad for a late-breaking presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

Indeed, whereas Gens. Schwarzkopf and Powell became popular and heroic figures during the first Gulf War, Petraeus is unlikely to bask in a similar glow — the first war in Iraq went well; this war has been a disaster. Schwarzkopf and Powell got to share lots of good news with the country about a war that went smoothly; Petraeus has to try and spin discouraging news to the country about a policy that doesn’t work.<\/p>\n

But putting all of that aside, there’s another overarching point to keep in mind: counting all of the announced GOP candidates, including some who’ve already dropped out, Republicans have had 11<\/i> presidential hopefuls to choose from, and they’re still<\/i> pining for some other candidate to get into the race and save the party.<\/p>\n

That’s just sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last time the New York Sun looked beyond the existing Republican presidential field for their dream candidate, the conservative paper’s editorial board begged Dick Cheney to throw his hat into the ring. Today, the Sun’s imagination went in an even more creative direction. “I am prepared, even eager, to command our forces in this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}