He may be a messianic rockstar candidate but to date he’s parroting John McCain’s leadership like a bad mime.
Let us count the ways:
* Obama was against the surge before he was for it. How Kerryesque! Only after taking a beating from the legitimate criticism that Obama had never been to Iraq did Obama go.
* A few painful polls later, and Obama is now following McCain’s lead on offshore drilling too. (Indeed, even obstructionist Nancy Pelosi has quietly conceded to allow a vote in September so the Democrats in Congress don’t get creamed on the issue).
* From the first hours of the Georgian conflict McCain’s message has been clear and blunt. Meanwhile, Obama is perpetually “refining” his position. First Obama released statement worthy of vying for a state department position, that “it is important at this point for all sides to show restraint.” Yes, Georgia, please show more restraint as Russia slaughters you. Then Obama’s campaign, rather than point out the obvious Russian power grab, decided to attack a McCain staffer (Randy Scheunemann) for previously working with the Georgian government (as though that was illicit or something). Finally, Obama is coming close to unequivocally saying that Russia must withdraw from Georgia, moving ever closer to the McCain position.
None of this matters to the Kool-Aide drinking left. Perhaps the Obama followers forgot that last April the senator voted with McCain and the rest of a unanimous Senate to admit Georgia into NATO? Of course, in recognizing this inconvenient truth they declaw their primary attack on Bush — that his Georgian NATO insistence made Russia feel threatened. Why a supposedly reformed Russia would feel threatened by a fellow Western-style government joining NATO undercuts that argument, of course, and exposes both Russia’s intentions and the Left’s intellectual dishonesty on Russia. But while Bush’s reaction to Georgia is as spinelessly diplospeak as Obama (as the Obama supporters point out), the fact remains that George W. Bush isn’t running for president.
John McCain is Obama’s opponent. And fate just handed him a sledgehammer with which to pound Obama’s foreign policy paradigm.