Many in the media have been critical of Barack Obama, suggesting that he wasn’t tough enough to battle the GOP in the fall. They cited his unwillingness to attack Hillary Clinton as an example.
Obama, however, did not want to alienate Hillary’s supporters. He got tough at times, but he often held back, knowing he would need her supporters in the fall.
With McCain, Obama is not holding back. He’s still running a generally positive campaign, but he’s showing he’s more than willing to go toe-to-toe with McCain on foreign policy and other isuues.
The latest scuffles involves McCain’s mistatement shere he claimed that our troops in Iraq were down to pre-surge levels. That was incorrect. Troop levels are 20,000 above pre-surge levels. McCain, however, would not acknowledge that he mispoke.
McCain has been hammering Obama for not visiting Iraq, so Obama took this opportunity to go after McCain.
We all misspeak sometimes. I’ve done it myself. So on such a basic, factual error, you’d think that Senator McCain would just admit that he made a mistake and move on. But he couldn’t do that. Instead, he dug in. And the disturbing thing is that we’ve seen this movie before — a leader who pursues the wrong course, who is unwilling to change course, who ignores the evidence. Now, just like George Bush, John McCain refused to admit that he made a mistake. And that’s exactly the kind of leadership that we’ve had through more than five years of fighting a war that should’ve never been authorized, and should’ve never been waged.
We don’t need more leaders who can’t admit they’ve made a mistake, even when it’s about something as fundamental as how many young Americans are serving in harm’s way.
This is great stuff. McCain was gaining traction with the issue of Obama’s visits to Iraq, but then he makes a fundamental mistatement about troop levels and is unwilling to correct himself. And then Obama hammers him. Get ready for more of the same.
