| 30.07.2008 |
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| An interesting undercurrent here: Even as John McCain looks like he's improving in the polls, he's been getting friction on foreign policy from influential conservatives. It's unclear what it means yet or if it's anything more than a coincidence of news events, but it's interesting to see the dissent. And it's coming from both directions, both the neocons and the realists. Tuesday, John Bolton, who's as neocon as neocons get, rejected McCain's idea to eject Russia from the G-8, and was skeptical about McCain's proposal to form a League of Democracies. For its part, the Weekly Standard, an influential conservative magazine, noted that the Bush administration is undermining McCain, particularly on foreign policy. But the piece blames the more diplomacy-oriented types at the State Department. |
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| 29.07.2008 |
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| Just when it looked like the presidential candidates were getting along so swimmingly on the United States' two ongoing wars -- Barack Obama emphasizing McCain-like "conditions" and John McCain being comfortable with Obama's 16-month timetable for troop withdrawal on Iraq, and McCain moving toward Obama's position on more troops in Afghanistan -- comes this analysis that suggests both Obama and McCain are wrong about the elder of the two conflicts. | ||||||||
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| 27.07.2008 |
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| --Barack Obama tried to shift perceptions about what would constitute a successful trip by saying he wouldn't be surprised if he dropped in the polls while he was overseas. His argument was that he was out of town and therefore wasn't focused on domestic issues like gas prices. Some early returns suggest he got an overall bump, while others were not as promising. That said, if voters don't give Obama a bump in the "who's best suited to be commander in chief" category, and/or in the "who's better on foreign policy" then it will have to be viewed as at least a partial failure. Wasn't that the whole point? --Even while Obama was away, he was getting plenty of coverage in big battleground states for his foreign trip, making the front page of many of the top papers in crucial capitals across the country, which Obama's campaign made sure to share with reporters. Many of them showed the sprawling, 200,000-strong crowd Obama drew in Germany. --Regardless of how it shakes out in the polls, even top Republican advisers now agree that Obama's has had an awfully good stretch, by contrast to John McCain. The way Obama handled himself on the trip, plus the fortunate news Obama got from Nouri al-Maliki, plus some McCain missteps and sourpuss comments toward the press, all add up to a very nice week or two for Obama. --If there was one thing McCain did to draw some favorable coverage while Obama was away (because the supermarket/sausage restaurant didn't get him much more than mockery), it was meeting with the Dalai Lama. The meeting still took a backseat to Obama's trip, and never mind that Obama's had his own meetings with the Dalai Lama. It was hinged to another news event, the Olympics, and while President Bush has also met with and praised the Dalai Lama, it did give McCain a chance to try to show some more daylight between himself and the incumbent, given that Bush is going to the Olympics despite the turmoil over Tibet. (The other way he got major attention: two attacks, one an advertisement and one a remark, both related to foreign policy but ultimately aimed at Obama's character. Hard to say that the coverage of those developments has been very positive, although that has rarely stopped attacks from working before.) --Although the Obama trip put a huge spotlight on foreign policy in this campaign, a remarkable number of experts are noticing how much more this election is focusing, overall, on international affairs. A historical amount, even. The San Diego Union-Tribune quotes a slew of them here. |
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| 26.07.2008 |
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| Given that Barack Obama has been visiting foreign lands where the U.S. attitude toward free trade is a major concern among European leaders, and given that Obama is campaigning in a U.S. presidential race where the economy is of foremost interest, it is still not terribly surprising that Obama has had little to say during his trip on the topic of international commerce. Consequently, perhaps, the issue vis-a-vis Obama's trip has received little coverage in the U.S. press. Obama's skeptical view of free trade is surely his least popular position among top European officials, and Obama bringing it up would have highlighted differences that could distract from some of the glossy photos. And, since this is the trip designed to burnish Obama's commander-in-chief credentials, a good portion of the trip -- including the European leg -- has been heavily focused on security issues. Here, so far as I can discern, is all he's said, which he uttered at the Column speech: "Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all." It didn't come up at all in his press conference with Nicolas Sarkozy -- well, unless you count the Afghanistan narcotics trade. An Obama team press summary of Obama's meetings in Germany made only a passing mention of discussions with Angela Merkel on "broader economic challenges," but the bulk of the summary indicated the meetings were about NATO and the like. Polls show free trade is not so popular in the United States. Many Americans think that it has not helped the economy. But European leaders and thinkers believe a U.S. backslide on trade would be bad for their continent. This New York Times piece, one of the few to tackle the Obama/Europe trade divide, notes that "Europe’s trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, last month urged both Mr. Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, to reject 'the false comforts of populism' and abandon 'the protectionist and antitrade rhetoric' that dominated the primaries." Mandelson went on: “A crisis of American confidence in globalization could knock it off course.” The piece also notes European anger at U.S. farm subsidies and renewed bidding on a refueling tanker contract originally won by a European-led consortium. In the long run, Obama's position on free trade could affect an impasse in WTO talks. So while John McCain's more welcoming attitude toward free trade might not do him favors in the U.S., and while George Bush's policies in general are wildly unpopular, this is one of the few areas where the GOP president and his party's 2008 candidate are more in tune with Europe than Obama. "When it comes to trade, Obama could actually be less helpful for Europeans than McCain because I am sure that a President Obama with a Democratic Congress would be pushed to be more protectionist, while McCain would be more keen on promoting open borders and the free market than Obama," said Francois Lafond, director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund, speaking about WTO talks. "This is a tricky thing for Europeans as they are backing Obama to a certain degree. But indeed it could become more difficult for the Europeans to get an agreement if the Democrats returned to the White House, because public opinion will be pushing towards more protectionism, meaning that Americans will be more selective on what products should be allowed access to their market." One more day to go on a trip that largely has the looks of a resounding success. Let's see if the leaders or press in London force Obama to talk more about free trade. |
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| 24.07.2008 |
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| What's wrong with Barack Obama asking Europe for more help on Afghanistan, on its face an act of political daring? Maybe it will be more effective than President Bush's "swaggering unilateralism," but there may not be much more Europe can do, even if it wants to. Which it doesn't, really. |
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| 23.07.2008 |
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| For all the warnings from the media about how "risky" Barack Obama's world tour would be -- and I was one of the people who issued such a warning very early on -- so far, it's hard to imagine how it could have gone better for him. There's more yet to go, and the ultimate effect of it probably will not be determined until polls afterwards. But let's take a look at what Obama's gotten out of it so far. Separate from, but surely deliberately timed to, Obama's trip, is the now quite indisputable fact that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is more aligned with Obama on a U.S. troop pullout than his Republican opponent, John McCain. There can be no more denials or ambiguities on this, thanks to third party translations of Maliki's original remarks and subsequent comments by a spokesman that point to substantial agreement with Obama. He's gotten good news in other ways, too, such as Great Britain's own plans for Iraq. He's gotten tons of images of himself looking presidential, one of the areas where he's lagged behind McCain in the polls, by meeting with foreign leaders. He's getting more glowing press than ever, perhaps more than he will ever get, which is saying something. As Obama's jump shot with the troops has made evening news rundowns, McCain has been left, somewhat pitifully, complaining about the lack of news coverage, being greeted by crickets in Maine and despite his own history of receiving glowing press, just generally being left in the dust in this category. Meanwhile, McCain's gotten attention primarily for increasing press notice of his own, foreign policy-related gaffes. That's not to say Obama's trip has gone perfectly. His uncertain response in a television interview about the apparently successful troop surge that he opposed but McCain backed shows that this particular issue continues to be an advantage for the Republican and a weak point for the Democrat. There are grumblings that maybe he's been a little too concerned with appearing presidential, prematurely, something that plays into the perception of some voters that Obama is arrogant (whether it's accurate or not, this perception could be damaging -- on my last visit to my hometown in Indiana, more than a few relatives who tend to vote Democratic but only follow politics casually and vote said they were having a hard time embracing him for this very reason). Obama's done as well as he can explaining away his apparent shifts on Israel, but they still count as stumbles. Add it all up, though. When you combine the successes and failures of the trip to this point, can anyone say Obama has done more harm than good to his presidential bid with the trip? Coming soon is the Europe wing. There are plenty of subjects he can discuss there. |
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| 21.07.2008 |
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| Ask and ye shall receive. Earlier Sunday, I questioned Nouri al-Maliki's motive in both praising Barack Obama's 16 month timeline for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq and in offering a quasi-retraction. Later Sunday, the Associated Press answered the first and The Washington Post answered the second. According to the AP, Maliki's interest wasn't in influencing the U.S. election, but, rather, using the U.S. election to influence the Bush administration's commitment to removing troops. "Let's squeeze them," Maliki reportedly told advisers. The maneuver came with a side of electoral politics, the AP reported. Why the semi-retraction? According to the Post, which quoted a White House press secretary, that move came after the Bush administration called Maliki's office "to express concern and seek clarification of the remarks." It's still unclear if Maliki has any sense of how much impact his comments might have had on the U.S. election, or how much pressure the Bush administration put on Maliki's office. But since I raised the questions, I felt obligated to report back after they were essentially resolved, assuming the reporting is accurate. |
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| 20.07.2008 |
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| Nouri al-Maliki's possibly game-changing comments to Der Spiegel endorsing Barack Obama's timeline for a pullout of U.S. troops, and his subsequent unclear "retraction," raise questions about what exactly he is trying to do. An unnamed Republican adviser said Maliki must be playing domestic politics. But as Ben Smith points out, why would he do it in Der Spiegel? It looks more like Maliki was trying to influence the U.S. election. But the same question follows: Why would Maliki try to influence the U.S. election via Der Spiegel? Perhaps he knew that with Obama's trip to Iraq near, media scrutiny would be at a high and as such the actual outlet he made his comments to wouldn't matter much because they inevitably would be picked up far and wide? This could still very well be about both, despite the choice of outlet. Most believe Maliki's recent announcement that he supports a timetable for troop withdrawal was tied to his effort to get reelected. And Maliki, were he to try to influence the election Obama's way, would end up with a U.S. president more likely to follow through on the actual troop withdrawal, so it would have a practical effect, too. Besides Maliki's peculiar decision to make his remarks about Obama in Der Spiegel instead of another publication, there are other reasons to question what, exactly, Maliki was trying to do. Why, if Maliki was trying to make a splash with his comments, did he offer a semi-retraction? And through Centcom? Did he regret his foray into U.S. politics? Did he genuinely believe his marks were mistranslated, and if so, why didn't he make a more specific retraction? Was he pressured by the Bush administration into the retraction he offered, or was he trying to give lip service to the Bush team that he still has to deal with until January? Does he realize that some of the impact of his remarks will have already sunken in by now, regardless of what he's said since? (Several objective observers have concluded that Maliki's remarks are a huge help to Obama, even with the semi-retraction.) |
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| 18.07.2008 |
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| At first glance, the agreement Friday between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government to set "time horizons" for a withdrawal of U.S. troops steers American policy toward that of Democrat Barack Obama. But the campaign of John McCain has done as much as it can to steer the development to the Republican's favor. It was Obama, not Bush or McCain, who wanted a timetable for troop withdrawal, a notion also recently backed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The "time horizon" agreement is less firm, but certainly more like the Obama/al-Maliki position than the GOP had previously taken. In that regard, the agreement has strong elements of a win for Obama. On the other hand, after an initially muddled response to al-Maliki's call for timetables, the McCain campaign has found a line of attack that at least is somewhat credible. That is: None of this would have been possible without the success of the troop surge that McCain backed and Obama opposed. It's a point of sensitivity for the Obama camp, as the removal from his website of previous, unflattering remarks about the surge indicate. That al-Maliki never, to my knowledge, mentioned the surge's success as a reason he wanted a timetable -- press accounts show him mentioning a desire for full Iraqi sovereignty and resistance to administration demands on a status of force agreement, plus there is some speculated re-election pressure -- doesn't help the McCain camp's argument. But perhaps a different security situation would not have led al-Maliki to place less of an emphasis on full Iraqi sovereignty, etc. At any rate, it's better than what McCain's camp had been saying, or an advertisement that the Boston Globe somewhat debunked, or criticizing Obama's Iraq trip -- a trip that McCain pushed. |
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| 18.07.2008 |
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| A couple nights ago on "The Daily Show," a British journalist called attention to the fact that the U.S. media had not spent much time talking about the candidates' views on the oppression of opposition by Zimbabwe's ruling government. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have, in fact, reacted to what has happened in Zimbabwe, but both of their positions are so dependent on the actions of other countries as to point to another issue all together: On some of the top foreign policy issues for the United States, or on foreign policy challenges where the United States could play a role, the actions of other countries are just as important and often more. Take Zimbabwe. Both candidates have called for some form of international pressure. But last week, U.N. Security Council actions to implement an arms embargo, travel restrictions and so forth were vetoed by China and Russia. Or Darfur. There, China's veto on the Security Council has proven crucial to ending the humanitarian crisis. Even many of the specific foreign policy plans of the two candidates are heavily reliant upon other countries. Obama, as Michael has written for this blog, may soon be calling on Europe for more assistance with situations like the war in Afghanistan. It even applies on the macro level. The New York Sun editorial linked here about McCain and Zimbabwe hails his "League of Democracies" as a solution to the problems with the U.N., but what if McCain forms a League of Democracies and no one joins? |
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| 16.07.2008 |
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| The whole “horse race” element of politics is usually pretty shallow stuff, but it’s relevant here: It’s hard to imagine how John McCain could be having a worse week or so on national security, a week that comes just as Barack Obama has been stepping up a multi-faceted effort to prove his own competence on the issue. Since much of McCain’s presidential hopes are predicated on his national security strength, that is not a welcome development for him. The latest news, on Wednesday, is that the Bush administration is authorizing what the International Herald Tribune called “the most significant U.S. diplomatic contact with Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.” Added the Herald Tribune: “the decision appeared to bend, if not exactly break, the administration’s insistence that it would not negotiate with Iran over its nuclear programs unless it first suspended uranium enrichment.” Barack Obama, who has encouraged such meetings, hailed the development as a plus for his policy. McCain, who had encouraged isolating Iran, was left reacting by saying it was a rejection of the “unilateral” meetings Obama supported. More than one journalist concluded that this was advantage: Obama. On Tuesday, McCain made some ambiguous statements on his Afghanistan plan that opened him up to charges of flip-flopping in a way that ends up making him look like he has come to think of things the way Obama has on troops levels. Also on Tuesday, McCain again made a reference to Czechoslovakia as if it still existed, at least the fourth occasion he has done so in this campaign. It’s a gaffe, so it is far less important than any of the other developments, but McCain’s had his share of foreign policy slip-ups, something that doesn’t exactly speak well of his expertise in that regard. And early last week, of course, McCain was confronted with the news that the Iraqi prime minister was calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops – which Obama favors but McCain does not – which McCain first greeted with skepticism, then silence, then a continuation of his own policy. Meanwhile, Obama conducted a CNN interview with foreign policy expert Fareed Zakaria Sunday and appeared at ease with the subject. He released advertisements that highlights his national security views in states where such a move could be valuable. He penned an op-ed in the New York Times Monday which further clarified his Iraq position, in case there was any lingering doubt on that. And on Tuesday he delivered a wide-ranging foreign policy speech that the AP deemed his “most ambitious… to date,” where he again gave no major cannon fodder to opponents. All of this comes in advance of his trip next week to Europe and the Middle East, where, Brandenburg Gate controversy aside, he will probably be well-received and stands to make up even more ground on foreign policy and national security. Despite all this, there is good news for McCain. First off, it’s just one week so far – it doesn’t yet have the look of the kind of week from which he cannot recover. Part of the reason he can recover is that he still was viewed by voters before any of this as the one with the edge in foreign policy, and, despite hostility from voters on the Iraq War, his plan for the country was running neck-and-neck with Obama’s. There are still areas where McCain can attack Obama, such as on his opposition to the Iraq troop surge (although that attack will be met with an answer that McCain showed bad judgment himself by supporting the war at its onset) and Obama’s absence on foreign policy issues as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations panel. And McCain’s remarks, shifts and other problems haven’t caught fire in the media. McCain’s warm relationship with the press has long annoyed his opponents, who see favoritism in the coverage. None other than George Bush himself was irritated when, in 2000, McCain got away with referring to Czechoslovakia: “I don’t think there is any plot; I hope there isn’t,” Bush said. “But it’s an amazing phenomenon, I’ll tell you that. It’s like the flap over the foreign-leader deal. A guy gets up and quizzes me — it’s my fault for trying to answer — but John McCain says something about the ‘ambassador to Czechoslovakia.’ Well, I know there is no Czechoslovakia (there’s a Czech Republic and a Slovakia), but yet it didn’t make the nightly national news. I’m not going to gripe about it, but the media question is starting to pop up.” |
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| 14.07.2008 |
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| Credit where credit is due: There's been some sharp political reporting over the past couple days on the similarity between the presidential candidates' immigration stances, where the candidates have been right and wrong in their claims about their mutual records and why they're fighting over all of it. Given the poor job so many outlets did of reporting on Barack Obama's alleged (and non-existent) flip-flop on Iraq, it's encouraging to see. This Newsweek blog does all of the above, but this ABC blog and this LA Times piece pick up some of the major components. The first: Obama and John McCain have substantially similar positions on immigration -- securing the borders, pathway to citizenship, etc. The only difference is that McCain may or may not want to do this in two separate pieces -- border security first, the rest second. It may seem a tiny difference, but it is not an inconsequential one. Many believe that in order to get something that the entire Senate can support, the two must be joined. That leads into the points about both men's records. The Obama charge against McCain is that he abandoned the "corageous stance" McCain himself speaks of by backing away from the comprehensive legislation he helped put together with liberal icon Ted Kennedy. Obama's charge is on target. It's actually possible to find three distinct and different shifts in McCain's immigration record over the past couple years, although some are only of emphasis, and that's not including some alleged flip-flops. And McCain on Tuesday appeared to fuzz up whether he wants to do two bills or one. McCain counter-charges that Obama voted for several amendments to that bill which could have upset the delicate balance of the legislation, amendments that would ruin its support. McCain's charge is on target, too. Obama said he was just trying to make the bill better, but the fact remains that he voted for amendments that also would have made the bill fail. Lastly, that aforementioned Newsweek entry has a run-down on the political stakes. That is, immigration is a big issue for many Hispanic voters, and Hispanic voters could help decide the race in several states, thereby helping decide the race itself. McCain, per Newsweek's statistics, has a long way to go. He's worse off than Bush was in 2004 and Obama's better off already than John Kerry was in 2008. Making matters more of an uphill climb for McCain is that his support among diehard conservatives is less than that of Bush's, so if he wants to keep them happy, he can't stray too far from conservative orthodoxy on immigration. Of note, however, is that McCain's Latin America trip was extremely well-received by the Hispanic audience who heard his speech Monday. That audience may or may not be representative of Hispanics as a whole, but it's definitely a good sign for McCain that every time he mentioned the trip, it was an applause line. I had asked before whether McCain's Latin America trip was a waste of time; based on today's results, it no longer looks like it was useless, anyway. If this opens me to charges of flip-flopping, I accept those charges. What can I say? The facts on the ground changed. |
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| 13.07.2008 |
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| Let's lighten the mood around here with some campaign trail foreign policy comedy... --Wired's Danger Room, as well as Boing Boing, have been having a grand old time collecting others' photoshop takes on the recent Iran photoshopping job on its missile tests, an issue that prompted some exchanges between Barack Obama and John McCain. I'm partial to the Wile E. Coyote one. (H/t Foreign Policy's Passport blog) --McCain has pushed the comedy envelope on foreign policy issues himself, in a way that actually may have an impact on U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Like the joking he does about killing people in Iran. More than once. Or like the quip that might tick off Belarus. (Hillary Clinton had a few moments herself in the awkward foreign policy comedy arena, before Obama bested her for the primary nod.) --I delved a couple times into the whole inaccurate charge that Obama was born a Muslim and that would impact how he's received in the Middle East. My take wasn't funny. Things More Muslim Than Obama is. --The Onion, a satirical newspaper, has a campaign section on its website, and aside from the stream of headlines ("McCain Vows To Withdraw All Troops From The U.S."), there are also candidate profiles that mock their respective foreign policy stances. Ex. on Obama: "Guarantees improved relations with Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii, and Illinois." --Regular sources of international affairs-related campaign comedy can be found at Wonkette and on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The Daily Show even has an Indecision 2008 blog where they collect the foreign policy stuff, and a clips link. Sometimes, satire and other forms of comedy tell the story better than straight news. |
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| 12.07.2008 |
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| We've been doing our own fact-checking here, and I've encouraged readers to use the links in our blogroll to double up, but here's the best of recent foreign policy-related fact checking elsewhere, focusing on the claims that were most faulty: --I said Barack Obama didn't flip-flop on his Iraq stance; much of the mainstream media bought the flip-flopping charge hook, line and sinker. Politifact agreed with me. --The Democratic National Committee alleges John McCain has been inconsistent on when to bring Iraq troops home. I said he's been about the same as Obama, consistency-wise, but with some problems here and there. Politifact found that the DNC was mostly wrong. --McCain said Iran, "in the view of every objective observer," is pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Politifact says not so much. --Politifact says Obama's being misleading when he claims McCain would "give more tax breaks to big oil." It just so happens that McCain's also been wrong about part of his own economic policy -- Factcheck.org says he's been using bad numbers about the benefits of the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. --McCain's waaaaay off-base when he says a handful of things about Obama's energy policy, according to Politifact. Factcheck.org also rules the Republican National Committee's attacks on Obama's energy proposals are out there. Candidates sometimes don't tell the truth! Gasp. Happy Friday night. (My sarcasm is flippant; really, one of the best things a journalist [or blogger, or just the media generally] can do is sort out the facts for the people to decide, which is why I make a stab at it as often as I do. And it's why any concerned voter should be checking in at Politifact, Factcheck.org and some of the other fact-checking operations of newspapers as often as possible.) |
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| 11.07.2008 |
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| I thought this was a great find from the team over at the Foreign Policy Passport blog: the notion that John McCain would some how use money from the conclusion of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which are paid for by borrowing, to reduce the deficit. As it happens, Barack Obama has the same notion of using savings from the conclusion of the Iraq War to spend on other things. It sounded, on the surface, like it was an impossible notion. That's what federal budget experts have concluded, too: "Washington is charging the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to its national credit card. So far, the government has spent between $700 billion and $800 billion since 2001. Simply deciding to spend less money the government doesn't have will not free up real money to pay down the current deficit or help pay for new endeavors." Added Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: "They kind of create money out of thin air." Read the whole contents of the link for what McCain and Obama's advisers had to say in defense of this notion, and how even then the two campaigns are on shaky ground. And then go back to Passport, where Blake Hounshell wonders appropriately about how McCain can even count on the conclusion of the war in Afghanistan any time soon -- "Imagine telling your mortgage lender: 'My plan to pay off this debt in four years is to get a new job that pays me a million dollars a year.' Sure, it could happen. But I doubt the bank would be impressed by the proposal." |
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| 10.07.2008 |
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| This will probably be my last refereeing of who's flip-flopping or not for a while, because you could be at it all day every week in this campaign lately... but the Barack Obama campaign has been making some effort to act like he hasn't shifted his stance on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation that the Senate voted to send to President Bush for a signature Wednesday, and their explanations deserve a response. There are two explanations, both faulty. One is that this bill is different than the one he pledged to filibuster. Here's what's wrong with that: He vowed to filibuster ANY bill that included retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly assisted President Bush's warrantless surveillance program. There is no one who has argued credibly that this bill is likely to result in anything but retroactive legal immunity. The second explanation offered by the Obama camp is that he voted in favor of amendments to remove retroactive legal immunity from the bill, therefore his position is consistent. Here's what's wrong with that: He vowed to filibuster ANY bill that included retroactive legal immunity, and this one effectively does. So while his opposition to retroactive immunity is consistent, his position is not. If he was committed to blocking any bill that includes retroactive immunity, though, why did he support this one? He may oppose retroactive immunity, but he no longer opposes any bill that includes it. What's more, Obama had a chance to vote to continue debate -- that is, filibuster -- and on Wednesday he voted against continuing debate. It amounts to a pretty obvious shift from Obama's previous stance. And it may be that he has good reasons for revoking that stance; it's not for me to decide. This piece runs through some of them, and includes some previously unrevealed details about some of the advice Obama received. But when Obama chides the media and others for saying he has shifted to the center, he should leave FISA off the list of things on which he hasn't changed positions. |
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| 08.07.2008 |
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| I've spent some time here delving into whether Barack Obama flip-flopped on Iraq, concluding that he did not; now, today, comes a maneuver similar to Obama's from John McCain, so let's see whether he's subjected to the same charges. The impetus for McCain's situation is Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's call for a memorandum of understanding about a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of his country. McCain has spoken at least as adamantly about the foolishness of timetables as Obama has about their wisdom. Probably more so. Obama did indeed reserve the right, all along, to change his plan based on conditions in Iraq. A McCain adviser on Wednesday cited similar "facts on the ground" caveats to McCain's anti-timetable stance. McCain, as demonstrated here, has indeed built some flexibility into his Iraq stance. (It's fair to say that judging by the McCain campaign's relative silence on the point that al-Maliki's pronouncement caught them off guard. In a race where some of the momentum on the Iraq issue appeared to be shifting to McCain's advantage, more than just McCain's team failed to take into account that the Iraq War could take a turn against the Republican.) If there's a difference -- besides one of tone -- in the situations Obama and McCain have found themselves in on Iraq in recent weeks, it's that McCain has been less clear than Obama on what he intends to do next. After all the confusion, Obama settled on what amounted to a clarification of his position: I very much intend to end the Iraq War, but that intention could change based on conditions in the country and the advice of military leaders. Per the Post: "On Tuesday, McCain's campaign declined to respond directly to the question of whether he now supports the idea of setting a date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country." Making matters more difficult, McCain years ago said that if a sovereign Iraqi government asked the U.S. to leave, then it's "obvious" troops would have to be removed. It may be hard to level the charge of flip-flopping at someone who won't respond about the nature of his current position. But stopping short of that: Obama said he supports a timetable, but might not depending on the facts on the ground; McCain said he opposes a timetable, but an adviser hinted he might not depending on the facts on the ground. The coming days will determine whether political reporters apply the same standard to McCain as they do Obama on this issue -- and whether they press McCain to clarify what his position is. |
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| 06.07.2008 |
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| There's some snarkiness out there today toward Barack Obama from reporters after he chided them for their coverage of his recent statements on Iraq. We reporters, like all humans, do sometimes bristle at criticism, but everyone who erroneously reported that Obama had somehow changed his position ought to just go ahead and swallow this medicine. Obama simply did not change his position, as some reported he did. A little basic research is all it takes to learn that. Obama, as far back as September of 2007, refused to commit to fully pulling out troops before 2013. That's more than 16 months, the timespan he frequently cites for ending the Iraq War. No, he has not often emphasized his "facts on the ground" argument, but it's always been there. When Obama said today, "I was surprised by how finely calibrated every single word was measured," he was wrong in his characterization of the media's calibration. It was quite poorly calibrated, in fact. The New York Times piece linked above suggested that somehow Obama was doing a flip-flop within a flip-flop by changing his story from "I wasn't clear enough" in Thursday's second press conference to "you didn't hear me right." To me, this reads more like the kind of thing anyone says in an argument; being charitable to the other party, one might start by saying, "Perhaps I should have said it better," but when the message still doesn't get through, charity goes out the window and things shift to "You should listen better." Obama might have felt compelled to bring the subject up again because of pieces like this, which delve into whether he's on the verge of getting saddled with a flip-flopper label. Writes the AP in another bit of strange reporting: "His problem is that his change in emphasis to flexibility from a hard-nosed end-the-war stance — including his recent position that withdrawing combat troops could take as long as 16 months — will now be heard loud and clear by an anti-war camp that may have ignored it before. So he could face a double-whammy in their feelings of betrayal and other voters' belief in the Republican charge that he is craven." It's hard to understand why any reporter would postulate that. A very casual scan of some of the most liberal blogs -- home of the most strident anti-war positions on the left -- shows that, in fact, it is only the media that has drawn their scorn, not Obama. And as TPM pointed out, the 16-month timeline is not "recent," either. In my day job at Congressional Quarterly, I report on policy first, politics second. But here, at Across the Pond, I'm a political reporter first and foremost. And incidents like the recent spate of reporting and "analysis" on Obama's Iraq stance give dishonor to that profession. |
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| 04.07.2008 |
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| The Republican presidential candidate just completed a trip through Latin America that had The Washington Post asking, "Why is John McCain in Colombia?" McCain has his own answer, but some saw the trip as a risky gambit. McCain, as I wrote recently, is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to emphasizing his foreign policy strengths or the economy, on which he is weaker but that voters care more about right now. On that count, this trip could further enhance his foreign policy experience, but the Post notes: "McCain could not have made this trip because he needs to burnish his foreign policy credentials," because he already has the advantage there. Barack Obama's planned overseas visit is certainly for that reason. In many areas of Latin American policy, the two men are alike. Could the trip be about trade? Perhaps, but in that regard, the U.S. public is very divided about free trade agreements. Could the trip be about immigration? Maybe, but McCain's stance against an immigration bill he once helped negotiate has put him in a strange position, caught between Hispanic voters and those on the anti-immigration right. And while many have interpreted the trip as an attempt by McCain to curry favor with Hispanic voters, that very immigration position has probably cost him -- at least compared to Obama, whose views are closer to those McCain once held that were more forgiving of illegal immigrants in the country now. That leaves appeal to Catholics as a highlight of the trip, as the Times suggests, since McCain spent some time with the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City. That's a significant voter group, but could McCain have won them over without a visit to Latin America? It could just be that this whole thing is a leftover from the perception that McCain's campaign is wobbly and still finding its legs -- which, given the campaign shakeup of late, is not the most implausible reason for the visit at all. |
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| 04.07.2008 |
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| It's not as if there isn't serious ammunition for anyone who wants to claim Barack Obama has shifted his positions on some issues of late, or (gasp!) flip-flopped. But Friday's confusion -- in the press, in the blogosphere -- over whether Obama has changed his stance on pulling troops out of Iraq isn't that ammunition. If someone thought that Obama had put in place some kind of absolute plan for all troops to be removed within 16 months, they could hardly be blamed. Obama himself has made it sound like that's his stance. But that position has always come with caveats, caveats that were common to all the Democratic presidential candidates. None of them, in a September debate, would promise to withdraw troops by 2013. Why not? For the very same reason Obama wouldn't Friday: “I have always reserved the right to do what’s best for America’s national interest… I would be a poor commander-in-chief if I didn’t take facts on the ground into account.” What's new here, if anything, is the emphasis. By signaling he was open to the possibility he might "refine" his Iraq plan, he called attention to something that he had not much called attention to before. That he would do so may or may not be worthy of criticism, but it is that shift, not the imagined one, that should get it. |
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| 02.07.2008 |
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| These things keep coming in twos: A pair of articles out today argue that the next president won't undo President Bush's foreign policy. One, here, focused exclusively on Barack Obama. The other, here, expands to both candidates. What say you, reader.... are they wrong? |
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