I (Don’t Really) Hate To Say I Told You So
Here was my reaction to the inexplicably stupid line of attack Wesley Clark, in his role as Obama campaign surrogate, undertook when he suggested that McCain’s military service was not the right stuff (at least for a potential commander-in-chief):
Attacking McCain’s military record? Very, very stupid…and ought to be enough to kill any chance of Wesley Clark as VP…
Many of my regulars expressed their disappointment that I characterized Clark’s comments as an attack, suggesting I was parroting McCain campaign talking points. And yet, here’s the latest on the story from The Politico:
Nearly a week after his controversial “Face the Nation” appearance last Sunday, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark is taking a break from the presidential campaign — but many Democratic insiders think he has already been crossed off the list of Barack Obama’s potential running mates.
Sunday morning on CBS News, Clark argued that John McCain’s military experience — and his years as a prisoner of war — in no way qualified him to be president. Following his appearance, one prominent liberal blog, apparently seeing the genie as out of the bottle, launched into a considerably harsher attacks on McCain’s service headlined “Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in the military?”
“On a scale of 1 to 10, Clark’s words were a 10 in terms of unhelpfulness,” said one Democrat who has helped manage past presidential campaigns.
At first, Clark moved aggressively to defend his remarks, scheduling additional press appearances and even updating his Facebook status to “Wes Clark knows that John McCain is largely untested and untried when it comes to matters of national security.”
But now Clark is looking to put the remarks behind him. The former NATO supreme allied commander and 2004 Democratic primary candidate is “moving on,” said a close aide, who added that Clark can now “devote his time to the business affairs which pay the bills.”
The aide nonetheless revisited the remarks, saying that Clark was “asking tough questions and moving beyond sacred cows” and that Clark was “not auditioning for a post in anyone’s administration.” He added that Clark “doesn’t need anyone’s permission to stand up for this country or to challenge John McCain’s fitness to be commander in chief.”
So a close aide characterized Clark’s remarks as a “challenge [to] John McCain’s fitness to be commander in chief”. Jeez, so sorry I thought he was attacking McCain – now I see he was praising him to the high heavens…and many Democratic insiders see him as no longer in the running for veep.
Guess I won’t be running a retraction…but let’s wind up with a quote from Jim Jordan:
Democratic strategist Jim Jordan emphasized that Clark’s comments were “fair” insofar as they were intended to question whether McCain would be “an effective president.”
“But Gen. Clark’s remarks were both clumsy and badly timed and, really, a gift to McCain,” Jordan continued.
“[C]lumsy and badly timed”?…No, no, no…the word of choice for the Obama campaign is “inartful“…
UPDATE 1:47 p.m.: Add Robert Novak to the list of those who saw Clark’s comments as an attack, and who also thinks he’s kaput as a VP candidate:
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, whose stock as Sen. Barack Obama’s possible vice presidential running mate had been rising, may have ruined his chances with his belittling attack on Sen. John McCain’s war record.
Clark, along with other Obama surrogates, followed the campaign’s line of downgrading McCain’s performance as a Vietnam War POW. But Clark was particularly insulting. (“I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”) He also got more attention by appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” while other surrogates addressed campaign gatherings.
The whole Wesley Clark episode is a pointless distraction from the most important issue of this presidential campaign, namely, the cost of oil and the damage the high price is doing to Americans and American businesses. Diverting attention to bogus issues like this shifts voters’ focus away from Obama’s opposition to drilling for oil in American territory and all of his nonsensical reasons for why we should not.
Anyone who hasn’t signed Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” petition should do it post haste. If you want a free template for stickers to put on the letters you mail that advocate the petition and other worthwhile conservative causes, visit Declaration 2009.
Dave, I appreciate your passion for your issue, and I won’t mark this as spam, but do try to stay on topic, would you? The price of oil is important, but this is not “The Price Of Oil 2008″, it’s Decision ’08, and we blog about a variety of things here…
This argument is weak sauce, Mark. You don’t do anything based on any evidence to back up your point. You only point to damage control by Democrats based on the huge media overreaction and capitalization by Republicans based on the huge media overreaction. Are you above making your own argument to make your own case, or is the fact that somebody else made a similar argument once good enough around here now?
I’m just saying I saw immediately that it was a big mistake and would take Clark out of the VP running…and I think the quote from Clark’s aide says volumes about the fact that it WAS intended as an attack…
And I don’t mean to sound like I’m tooting my horn – but many (you included) slammed me hard over the original post…
Your post says nothing of the sort. Of course Clark was challenging McCain’s fitness for the job. He’s an Obama supporter, and that’s why he was on TV. What he clearly didn’t do was attack McCain’s service. The two are transparently not the same. I don’t mean to toot my own horn or anything, but you’ve said nothing more now than you did in the first place.
Whatever…my post said all three of the things I mentioned in comment #4 – it said it was an attack (which it was), it said it killed his VP chances (which it did), and it said it was a mistake (which it most CERTAINLY was). If you can’t see that, then you must be reading a Chinese translation of this blog – I suggest you try the original English version…
Let’s revisit that quote from Clark’s aide again:
Note that his phrase was “challenging McCain’s fitness to be commander in chief”. There is no more important function of the presidency. I can’t imagine a more direct attack on a presidential candidate than to question his “fitness” to play the most important role he will be asked to play.
The fact that the words were somewhat measured and mild-mannered doesn’t hide the severity of the line of attack – unless you’re willfully blind to the meaning behind the soft words, as you apparently choose to be…
The distinction is between whether McCain is ‘qualified’ to be commander in chief (the only ‘qualification’ required is to be elected president) and whether he is ‘fit’ to be commander in chief. Perhaps I put too much stock in the words of Clark’s aide…but by phrasing the question as to McCain’s ‘fitness’, he is very subtly shifting the ground…in fact, it was the very point of the much-maligned “Swiftboat” campaign to undermine Kerry’s “fitness” for the job…Again, I’m not suggesting this is anything like the Swiftboat campaign…that was much more organized and harsh. Just saying that fundamentally, the root intention is the same…
Idiocy. You’re just saying the same thing over again in different words and then folding your arms and smirking. Awesome.
Yeah, you’re doing yourself no favors here, Mark. Of course Clark was attacking McCain’s fitness to be commander in chief. That’s just plain not the same as attacking his military record. Why are you unable to separate those two things?
Look, if you guys can’t see the difference between fit and qualified, that’s your ignorance, not my problem. If you want to insult me, I choose not to participate any further. Ryan, who brought up McCain’s military record in the context of his ‘fitness’ to be commander in chief, me, or Wes Clark? I guess all the media that made this into a big deal are just ‘in the bag’ for McCain, though, right?…You guys act like I’m the only person who interpreted Clark’s comments in this manner, but it seems to me to be the majority opinion…
Answer me one question, though, smart guys, since I’m so dumb: what was the point of the Swift Boat campaign, if not to demonstrate John Kerry’s ‘unfitness’ to be commander in chief?…
Because if it’s ‘fair’ for Clark to belittle “riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down” as a qualification for president, as if that’s all McCain’s military service ever amounted to (and that’s not an attack? Please…), then I know you’re okay with that tactic, as well…
As far as ‘qualified’ to be commander in chief, all you have to do is be elected president. That’s it…
Let me try one more time to explain what I find wrong with Clark’s comments, Ryan. His comment (“I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”) puts McCain in the same status as a passenger in a car who has a wreck. That’s NOT what McCain’s service amounted to, that was the unfortunate consequence of his willingness to serve. Clark’s comments are insulting to any POW, not just McCain…
Last comment, for now, as I realize that of the seventeen comments on this thread, I’ve left the majority of them, which is perhaps slightly ridiculous – but let me ask you this, if you’re still reading and willing to answer: Is John McCain either ‘unfit’ or ‘unqualified’ to be the commander in chief? If your answer is no to both questions, that what the hell is Clark doing making that point in the first place?
Barack Obama is both fit and qualified for the presidency (equivalent to commander in chief). He’s 35, and a natural-born citizen. If he is elected, he is by definition qualified. Similarly, he is ‘fit’ – I see nothing in his background (schizophrenia, diagnosed paranoia, lack of loyalty to his nation and the Constitution the president is sworn to defend) that would make him ‘unfit’, a most severe criticism that should be reserved for exceptional cases.
This is not fertile ground for honest debate. It is the stuff of political attack machines. You can scream it, or you can whisper it, but that fundamental fact remains…
1) Wesley Clark used the word “qualification.” He did not use the word “fitness.” His aide did, but you’re coming dangerously close to lying in how you’re talking about this. Is it an entirely unreasonable concession to make to admit that the aide may have intended the word as a synonym for qualification?
2) Wesley Clark was responding directly to Bob Schieffer. He said Barack Obama hadn’t “ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down,” to which Clark responded “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” That’s it. He used the question’s own language, which he didn’t even introduce into the conversation, to respond to it. He wasn’t saying why he thinks McCain is unqualified. He was saying why he thinks Barack Obama isn’t unqualified, by Schieffer’s incredulous standard.
3) Bringing up the Swift Boat veterans after you’ve said that you’re not trying to compare this to that is base and ridiculous. Not two comments after you said that, you ask us to, for some reason, explain the motivations behind the Swift Boat Vets, as though we’re trying to defend them. Cognitive dissonance much, Mark?
All of this stuff added together, but especially point number two in this post, puts the lie to all of the characterizations you’ve attempted. It’s a shame, because I expected better of you. Yours is the only right-wing blog I read anymore, because you were the most reasonable of those I’d been reading. I’m sad to say that with your recent performances it appears to be time to reassess that conclusion.
Oh, and the title of the Swift Boat attack book on John Kerry? Wait for it…
Unfit For Command…
Imagine that…
But Fargus, I’ll grant that it was the aide who used the fitness characterization…and I admitted in an earlier comment that perhaps I am relying too much on the aide’s characterization…
I’m not trying to be combative and I’m certainly not trying to be dishonest…it’s not that big an issue for me.
However, I maintain that John McCain’s military service is not a place that the Obama campaign can find fertile ground for ‘neutralization’. It’s one of the main things McCain has going for him. Obama has many, many advantages – he should let McCain’s service alone, as he did earlier in the campaign, and concentrate on his strengths…
However, Clark has been riding that horse for some time…the reason Bob Schieffer brought up the question in the first place is that Clark has been writing, reading, and saying for weeks to anyone who will listen that “McCain doesn’t have command experience”. Well, Obama does? That was Schieffer’s point…and it’s a damn good one…
Source:
Now, I’ll meet you halfway – Clark is honoring McCain’s service on the one hand…but what is he doing on the other hand? Why this constant emphasis on McCain not having command experience?
Well, we know the answer: the Obama camp figured with his military experience he was the ideal man to ‘neutralize’ McCain’s war record…but it’s a ridiculous point since Obama has NO MILITARY RECORD at all!…
But I’ll let it go…I’ve made my point as best I can, and I reiterate, to me it’s not that big of an issue…right now, like most Americans, I think the economy is the biggest problem we have. Let me just reiterate that I think Barack Obama is perfectly qualified and fit to be commander in chief, and I think John McCain (and Wesley Clark) are, as well…and I’ll leave it at that…
Okay, okay, I know – I said last thing above…but one more thing…you are right that it was Bob Schieffer who supplied the original phrasing “riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down”. Reading back over the comments above, I admit to too much emphasis on that phrase. It was not Clark’s wording, but Schieffer’s…point taken…
Umm, Fargus…in comment #6, you said: Of course Clark was challenging McCain’s fitness for the job.
In comment #18 you said: Wesley Clark used the word “qualification.” He did not use the word “fitness.” His aide did, but you’re coming dangerously close to lying in how you’re talking about this. Is it an entirely unreasonable concession to make to admit that the aide may have intended the word as a synonym for qualification?
So which is it? Before you accuse me of ‘coming dangerously close to lying’, is it entirely unreasonable to suggest that, if you make such a careless lack of distinction, being tuned in very closely to this issue, that the average voter will also lose that distinction, if they’re capable of making it in the first place?
In fact, a cynic (not me – I’m an eternal optimist!) might even suggest that the Obama camp is counting on that distinction being blurred through oblique lines of attack, as a direct approach on the issue is obviously political suicide…
And my own wording was retroactively sloppy, considering the parsing you’ve insisted on doing.
McCain has been running on his service, and Obama hasn’t. Clark emphasized why he thinks McCain’s argument doesn’t hold water. Since Obama’s not making the argument, it doesn’t have any bearing there. This is really easy.
Alright, fair enough…I’ve already commented at ridiculous length – see what happens when I’m home for a long weekend?…
I think Fargus has done an adequate job of pointing out the nuttiness here, but I’ll go ahead and answer the question that was put to me.
I think, as a long-serving senator over the age of 35, John McCain is certainly qualified to be President. That said, I think he is also staggeringly unfit for the office. Anyone who so callously disregards human life and who would so unashamedly *lie* about his opposition to torture is someone I, quite frankly, wouldn’t trust with the keys to my car. His (and the GOP’s, in general) brand of blustering, reckless, saber-rattling bravado makes up a substantial portion of what’s wrong with my country and its foreign policy. Someone who looks at McCain and sees “tough” is the sort of person who thought it was cool to steal people’s lunch money when we were kids.
The difference here, of course, is that I’m not a surrogate for Obama’s campaign. When I say that I think John McCain is basically a bad guy, it doesn’t really amount to anything at all. But I’m hoping that by saying it here, I can illustrate how Wes Clark saying military service isn’t a qualification for the Presidency is a good deal different from saying that McCain’s service somehow makes him *unfit*. (Point of order: he’s not unfit because he served. He’s unfit because his service so clearly taught him nothing.) I hope you can also understand the difference between Clark saying, “Yeah, he served. So?”, and the Swift Boaters openly questioning the patriotism of John Kerry. Even I don’t question McCain’s love of country; I just think he loves it a lot of wrong ways.
Well, Ryan, I honestly don’t know how to talk to you anymore – your rhetorical style is to call anyone who disagrees with you ‘evil’. You are, my friend, over the deep end with hatred towards Republicans. It’s not pleasant to see.
To say that McCain is a supporter of torture and is callous towards human life is frankly despicable.
You are very, very reckless with your accusations. You can get away with it over the Internet – but I hope you are more circumspect in your face-to-face interactions.
In this case, you are every bit as bad as the Swift Boaters, whether you realize it or not…you make the very same accusation they do, and then excuse it because you’re not questioning McCain’s patriotism, you’re just saying he’s ‘basically a bad guy’.
John McCain is not a bad guy…nor is Wesley Clark…nor is Barack Obama…nor is John Kerry (there – I said it!). They are people we sometimes disagree with, but you have to go a step further, and actually call McCain unfit for service. Well, we don’t have to parse words with you – at least we know where you stand…
Mark, you miss my point. I’m not saying I’m *not* as bad as the Swift Boaters. Unlike other people who generally supported John Kerry (which I did), I said from the beginning that running on his military record was, in effect, begging people to call him a coward or a traitor. If you run a campaign in which you claim that one of your major qualifications for office is that you served in the military, the other side doesn’t have much choice but to demean that claim. Political campaigns are *supposed* to call into question the claims of the other side. I mind dirty politics much, much less than the prudish, bourgeois types who dominate the media landscape. If I were Wes Clark, I *would* call John McCain unfit for office because I believe he is and I have no patience for mincing words when it’s important for people to know the truth. But I’m not Wes Clark and that isn’t what Wes Clark has done. This is my point.
That said, there are plenty of people I disagree with who are not evil. Andrew Sullivan and I disagree about tax rates. Daniel Larison and I disagree about basically everything. Neither of them are evil. John McCain, in fact, isn’t evil either. But he is willing to contemplate American soldiers dying in Iraq for another 100 years. And he says he opposes torture while voting against bills to ban it. He sincerely believes that the suffering caused by his policies is making the world a better place. But he’s wrong, and his wrongness has caused an awful lot of death.
Your statement on McCain’s 100 years is not true. You say he is willing to contemplate soldiers dying in Iraq for 100 years, but that is contradicted by his own words:
We constantly hear about the first part of that statement, but seldom the second, where he unequivocally makes it clear he is talking about a presence, not a hot war…
McCain specifically introduced a bill to ban torture in 2005 called the Detainee Treatment Act. Here was his response when criticized for the recent vote on CIA techniques that Democrats assure us was only about waterboarding, a premise that McCain rejects:
McCain voted against enjoining the CIA from torturing people (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/us/politics/17torture.html). Does that make him “a supporter of turture”? I dunno. How about “an enabler of torture”? Would that be a more nuanced characterization?
I realize there’s a certain amount of cognitive dissonance on this subject. If anyone in the US Congress should be staunchly and uncompromisingly anti-torture, surely that person is John McCain. It take a bit of effort to separate what what most normal people think McCain’s position ought to be from what his actual position is.
I left out an important phrase above – the Detainee Treatment Act was aimed at military interrogators…I “inartfully” suggested it banned torture in general. Of course, the big criticism was that it did not affect the CIA – but it’s clear from McCain’s statements quoted above that he believes the CIA is already legally prohibited from practicing torture…
Jacques, again, the very article you cite shows that McCain believes the CIA is already prohibited from using torture:
In fact, read further to see his comments on waterboarding specifically:
Mark, I realize the difficulty with the 100 years claim, but here’s the thing: McCain *won’t* answer a question about how long he’ll stay if people keep dying. He always changes the subject to say it doesn’t matter how long we’re there if no one’s dying. But that’s not the issue. The number of people who care if American troops are in Iraq sleeping safely at night is virtually zero. And McCain knows that, and he knows that no one will accept his position that our troops should be there even if they’re dying, so he won’t answer the question he actually gets asked. It’s that decision that I consider the most callous. Intellectual and moral honesty demand that he tell us what he wants to happen if our guys keep dying. His silence on that point is telling. His “nuance” on torture is pretty equally telling.
As for your claim that I hate Republicans, I guess the only thing I have in response is this argument by Brad DeLong from a little over a year ago: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/06/a_proposed_peck.html
Virtually everyone who is intellectually honest and conservative has long since ceased supporting the Republican Party. That’s why, when I wrack my brain trying to come up with people I disagree with who aren’t “evil”, the best I can do is Andrew Sullivan and Daniel Larison, both of whom are conservatives who don’t really care for Republicans any more than I do.
Well, I assume that both Barack Obama and John McCain would, if elected, weigh the advice they are given by the military and the situation on the ground before deciding how long the troops will stay in a combat position (i.e., in a really large deployment). Is it intellectually dishonest to say there is no black and white answer?…But I need a specific citation on McCain avoiding the question to examine HIS answer…the one I just gave is my own.
What I don’t like about the DeLong piece is that it just assumes that it is self-evident that to support Bush is to be dishonest and/or stupid…and then proceeds to classify all conservatives and Republicans along those lines.
But what if I don’t accept the premise? I support Bush, generally, though I can hardly be accused of being a flunky – I’ve criticized him mightily for his handling of Katrina, his flawed decision to go to war, and his inept handling of the initial occupation of Iraq. His presidency has been very flawed. But, for a conservative (and that’s what DeLong is talking about, conservatives), his presidency has hardly been without victories…two I’ve mentioned before are the Bush tax cuts, and the appointment of Alito and Roberts to the Supreme Court. You might not agree with those decisions, but conservatives in general would surely applaud them…
Mark, it doesn’t have to be self-evident. We’ve had eight years; the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. And we’ve eaten several truckloads of the pudding.
And, subsequently, the Administration has admitted to having waterboarded detainees, and McCain has not uttered a peep of protest.
That may sound inconsistent, until you recall that the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which McCain touts, in the passage you cited, left it entirely up to the Administration itself to define what is, and is not, torture (which is to say, the only interrogation techniques it forbids the CIA from using are those which the Administration decides to forbid them from using).
Sorry, Mark, but you and/or John McCain will have to work a little harder to convince me that he is, in any meaningful way, opposed to this Administration’s use of torture.
Look, I don’t want to be associated in any way, shape, or form with defense of torture…while there’s a part of me that says the three people known to have been waterboarded were very, very bad people, there’s another part that is in wholehearted agreement that the very thought of torture is very much anti-American, in the broadest sense.
My only point is that McCain has publicly stated his views on waterboarding and torture in general on many occasions, and he has wholeheartedly condemned the practice. Furthermore, he has stated that it is his belief that the CIA is prohibited from using torture, and the reason he voted against the recent bill was that it applied a military field manual to a non-military agency, and that the CIA should be able to use some techniques that the bill would have outlawed, provided they were not inhumane, cruel, or degrading.
You may not buy it, but that’s his position…
I should have pointed out that it was McCain himself, who brokered the “compromise” in the MCA, which allowed the Administration itself to define what constitutes ‘inhumane, cruel, or degrading’. In fact, people, who have a better grasp of these things than I, argue that the MCA deliberately undercut existing anti-torture statutes.
McCain can boast about having brokered the compromise that brought us the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Or he can utter platitudes about how he thinks torture is “bad”. But I don’t understand how an intellectually honest person can, in 2008, do both.
I profess to no expertise on the MCA, I regret to say…time permitting, I’ll look into it more and seek out some critiques of McCain’s position…and also some defenses…but I make no promises, as – alas! – my three-day weekend has come to an end, and it’s back to the grind…
[...] in danger of way over-emphasizing what I think is a minor story…but it is relevant to our recent discussion, so here’s Eleanor Clift’s analysis of where Wes Clark went wrong: Mistake Number One: [...]
Bob Schieffer, bastion of knowledge and truth:
Bob Schieffer, Face the Nation, 12/12/99: This year’s Republican debates have been polite as a sixth-grade spelling bee. So if the Democrats want higher TV ratings for theirs, maybe Bill Bradley should start by calling Al Gore an “Internet-inventing, Love Canal-discovering, earth tone-wearing tree hugger.”
Good times. He helped perpetuate this crap 10 years ago, and now he’s manufacturing it. Good times indeed.