The McCain Meltdown

John McCan, who has been wrong every step of the way on Iraq, keeps trying to come up with a response to Obama (who has been right from the start). Today McCain said, “This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”

In a post entitled McCain Meltdown, Joe Klein gives his view on this statement:

This is the ninth presidential campaign I’ve covered. I can’t remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

I’ve heard lots of scurrilous statements so I don’t know that this is the worst ever made, but it certainly adds to the question of whether John McCain is fit to be president. Questioning political decisions is part of living in a democracy. The fact that Obama happens to be right weakens McCain’s case even further.

To mischaracterize Obama’s views on the war as wanting to lose the war makes McCain no better than all those right wingers who regularly accuse opponents of the war as being traitors and of hating America. In other words, this statement places him among a crowd which lacks the temperament, as well as integrity, to lead. If anything, Obama deserves credit for standing up and opposing the war at the very start when many other political leaders, who should have known better, lacked the courage to speak out.

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