The entire Clark blow-up is silly and stupid, but so is our discourse. That said, I do blame Clark, though not for attacking McCain, something he didn’t do. I blame him for bad message control.
He threw out a pithy line about McCain which is fine enough, but the problem is it brought us to McCain’s one strength–people’s perception of his defense background. As an academic point, Clark is right–then again so was Michael Dukakis when he talked about Belgian Endive.
The Netroots is up in arms because the argument is that Obama is capitulating on the issue. That’s entirely wrong. Of course Obama wants to get off of McCain’s war record, it’s McCain’s only strength. In fact, if this election is about McCain’s war record, he might win–though the electoral wave suggests that might not even save him and the rest of the GOP.
On every issue other than McCain’s personal background as a pilot and war prisoner and terrorism, Obama wins. Clark didn’t belittle McCain’s service, he made a fairly decent point, but that point was completely off message. Get off of McCain’s history in the Navy and talk about anything else about McCain, but especially his judgment.
The left blogosphere is up in arms that Obama isn’t tough. This has nothing to do with toughness. Standing and yelling at the top of your lungs on any issue isn’t smart. It’s as if you were to attack your opponent in battle at his strongest point. You don’t do that–you attack their weak spots to undermine their strenghth and anyone paying attention to Obama should see him doing this. You don’t start an attack on McCain’s credentials as a member of the military–you start it by talking about the fine mess he helped get us into in Iraq.
After doing that, you can flip it back on McCain and point out that experience as a pilot didn’t do him much good with his judgment.
The left blogosphere is so frustrated with weak candidates that they have forgotten what strength is. Part of is strategy and one never attacks strength. The netroots learned the wrong lesson in the case of Kerry and the Swift Boat liars. It wasn’t Kerry’s strength Rove had them attacking–it was his weakness. Kerry’s problem wasn’t that he was perceived as a war hero–it was that he was perceived as not being strong enough to protect America from terrorists. That was wrong, but it was perception. The guy in the brand new Carhart going out shooting or in a wet suit wind surfing doesn’t strike many Americans as tough even as he is. And there was Rove’s opening–he attacked Kerry as an elitist who didn’t share American values and the Swift Boat crap tied up Kerry on the issue he was weakest–defense.
The only way Obama loses this race is by fighting it on John McCain’s war record. McCain is very vulnerable on defense, but not through his war record. The war record is a bright shiny ball for the press to fawn over and avoid asking tough questions. Avoid talking about it–accept it and move on to McCain’s judgment.
My guess is that Clark was trying to do that, but got caught up in the moment. The rest is history and now at least two newscycles are about McCain being a war hero and the McCain camp is trying to continue that meme for as long as they can.
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