McCain groping for a campaign message

By Libby

Poor old McCain. Maliki ruined his campaign strategy and now he's left to mumble about how smart he was to support the surge. In making the rounds of the teevee talk shows he repeated this theme about Obama's trip throughout the day.

"He'll be able to have the opportunity to see the success of the surge. It is a success. This is the same strategy that he voted against, railed against," McCain told ABC News' Diane Sawyer.

I'm not going to bother to debate whether the surge was really a success. That notion has been thoroughly debunked by my colleagues here. But, I think McCain is setting a trap for himself. Even if one was inclined to agree that the surge was a success, the surge would not have been necessary at all if we hadn't invaded and occupied Iraq in the first place. Additionally there's reason to think Afghanistan wouldn't be in the mess we're in now, if we had stayed there instead of moving the operations to Iraq.

McCain may have quibbled with the White House over strategy but there's no escaping the fact that he supported the boneheaded policy of invading Iraq in the first place and thus is very much responsible for the disaster that is the Bush Doctrine. If we're to measure judgment calls by outcomes, Obama still comes out way ahead.

On another note, I know my posting has been light here lately. That's due to a number of reasons. I'm having some personal problems that are taking up a lot of time. I've been a little burned out generally and I've been doing most of my McCain bashing at the Detroit News on the premise that those readers need the education more than you well-informed readers here do.