John McCain’s dilemma
It is not out of place to find a politician who struggles to get a coherent message together against an opponent but the befuddlement of the campaign of Senator John McCain on how to develop a viable strategy against Senator Barack Obama is especially intriguing.
So it is with some astonishment that we observe the alarming confusion that seems to be reigning in the camp of Senator John McCain’s campaign team. First, we were bombarded with a great huff about Senator Obama’s lack of experience and how that does not bode well for a presidential candidate; then there was the hue and cry about his not visiting Iraq and “sitting down with the generals”; then there was the infantile posting of a “count down” or “Iraq visit timer” on McCain’s website about Obama’s visit to Iraq. To top it all up, some erstwhile opponents of John McCain who now see themselves struggling to be relevant in the current political dispensation, namely, former Governor Mitt Romney and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, took it upon themselves to dress down Senator Obama in the public square by taking the senator to task over executive experience, leadership, the economy, world affairs and of course, the war in Iraq. For all intent and purpose, the last point seems mute now given the pronouncements of Al-Maliki of Iraq that there needed to be a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. toops in Iraq.
What is amazing in all of this is the “deer-in-the-headlight” reaction of the McCain campaign to the lack of traction these tactics have garnered from the American public. First, Senator Obama took up the challenge and has been visiting the crisis areas of Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine and some European countries. In a somewhat laughable display of what could amount to jealousy, every attempt has been made to cast aspersions and heap untold scorn on the gains of Obama’s tour of some key Middle East and European countries. We’ve heard the familiar complaints of the media’s “love” of Barack Obama and how his speech in Germany was akin to a premature “victory lap”. Then there was the scorn heaped on Senator Obama’s “Never again” comment when he signed the guest book at the Holocaust Museum in Israel because he had argued that genocide was not enough reason to keep American troops in a foreign country for a long period of time.
That the enthusiasm generated by Obama’s visit to Europe and the Middle East was far greater than the reception John McCain received is pretty evident. But that is not necessarily the making of Senator Obama. Rather, the world is really tired of the Bush presidency and is eagerly anticipating a change of guard in the leadership of this country. Granted, Barack Obama is not the president, yet, but it is hard to ignore the excitement he generates in a war-weary world that will most likely see a McCain presidency as an extension of the Bush regime, whether the McCain campaign agrees with such an assessment or not.
Even the Bush administration has been making some efforts at softening its stance on some major international issues in recent times – like the decision to send a top diplomat to the meeting between Iran and some European countries in attempts to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis; or the change of tone on the issue of a time-table for the withdrawal of American troops in Iraq; or the consideration of sending additional troops to Afghanistan etc. It is not enough to criticize everything an opponent does just for the sake of it. Sometimes, there is no harm is saying that your opponent may have a valid point, just as Senator John McCain did recently when he acknowledged that a 16-month time-table for troop withdrawal from Iraq was “a pretty good timetable.”