×
The Obama campaign had former Senator Bob Kerrey release a statement today:
"As is often the case in politics, the most important questions do not get debated while the most trivial ones are pushed front and center. Such is the case with the current attacks by Senator McCain's supporters purporting that Senator Obama's failure to support the surge demonstrates he has been wrong on this important foreign policy question.“Assessing all facts available to us today, Senator Obama's judgment six years ago looks a whole lot better today than either Senator McCain's or mine was back then.[...]“Let's not re-fight the past. From what I've seen of the two candidates, Senator Obama has the better strategic vision and judgment to meet our challenges moving forward."This is the really weird thing abut the McCain campaign's current surge line: The surge isn't up for debate. If they want to argue that McCain was right for the job in 2005, so be it. The Obama campaign can reply that they were right for the job in 2002, before we went to war. But so far as 2009 goes, the question is a timetable for withdrawal, and on that, Obama stands with American public opinion, Iraqi public opinion, the Iraqi government's expressed wishes, and more than a few Iraq experts. I get why McCain doesn't want to engage with that particular debate, but not why he thinks he can get away with not engaging with it.
