McCain's Iraq Speech Tomorrow
by Ryan Sager
Tue, 10 Apr 2007 at 6:45 PM
updated Tue, 10 Apr 2007 at 1:46 PM
Tomorrow, John McCain will give what is being billed as a his "first major policy speech on his commitment to winning the war in Iraq" at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington. It will be followed up later in the month by speeches on economic policy and Mr. McCain's domestic agenda.
Given how Mr. McCain's been sagging in the polls and in the cash chase, this is also seen as something of a "relaunch" of his campaign.
With such high stakes, one would have to hope (at least one rooting for Mr. McCain) that he's got something flashy up his sleeve tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. If the early account of the speech I've been given is accurate, however, there's not much to knock one's socks off...
To be fair, unless one were to magically come up with "the way to win," I'm not sure what one could say that would knock anyone's socks off. But therein lies Mr. McCain's problem. We all know he supports the war. We know he wants to give the surge time to work. We know he thinks the consequences are dire if we don't prevail in Iraq.
So what does he have on offer with his political life on the line?
Apparently, his speech tomorrow will put Iraq in the context of a larger battle for the soul of the Muslim world (we've heard this from President Bush). It will give a very frank assessment of what's gone wrong in the war so far (OK, we haven't heard that from Mr. Bush, but we've probably heard a lot of it before from Mr. McCain). He will itemize what's going right under General Petraeus (as Mr. McCain learned recently, happy talk on the war = big gamble). He's going to call out by name the Democrats who want to pursue the easy, foolish choice of surrender and withdrawal (Tony Snow's job?). He'll pitch himself as the hard, wise road to victory (fair enough ... but do Americans still believe we can win? can Mr. McCain convince them we can?).
Maybe there's still some big surprise or policy proposal still being held back. But if this is all there is, one would have to predict little change in Mr. McCain fortunes based on this effort. Still, we'll all see how it goes tomorrow.
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