Polls show that the economy is a big deal to American voters in the 2008 election. But the apparent effectiveness of the 3 a.m. ad in Texas is a reminder of the importance of national security in voters' minds, and of just how high the stakes are for the next commander in chief. The United States is bogged down in two nasty wars, and the Army and Marine Corps are stretched thin. China and Russia are on the rise. The Middle East is roiling, and Iran continues to bluster and obfuscate over its nuclear program. Something unexpected and bad is likely to happen during the next presidency, maybe even at 3 a.m. Washington time.
But while the consensus is that the 3 a.m. ad helped Clinton, it has also drawn criticism as a tactic that ultimately benefits John McCain, particularly if he is to face Obama in the general election. In essence, Clinton has now turned the debate about commander-in-chief readiness into a contest of résumés. And the conventional wisdom is that John McCain -- ex-fighter pilot, former POW and war hero -- wins.
But that's not necessarily the case, say senior military officials and political analysts. In interviews with Salon this week, several experienced military officers said McCain draws mixed reviews among military leaders, and they expressed serious doubts about whether McCain has the right temperament to be the next president and commander in chief. Some expressed more confidence in Obama, citing his temperament as an asset.
It is not difficult in Washington to find high-level military officials who have had close encounters with John McCain's temper, and who find it worrisome. Politicians sometimes scream for effect, but the concern is that McCain has, at times, come across as out of control. It is difficult to find current or former officers willing to describe those encounters in detail on the record. That's because, by and large, those officers admire McCain. But that doesn't mean they want his finger on the proverbial button, and they are supporting Clinton or Obama instead.
"I like McCain. I respect McCain. But I am a little worried by his knee-jerk response factor," said retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004 and is now campaigning for Clinton. "I think it is a little scary. I think this guy's first reactions are not necessarily the best reactions. I believe that he acts on impulse."
"I studied leadership for a long time during 32 years in the military," said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, a one-time Republican who is supporting Obama. "It is all about character. Who can motivate willing followers? Who has the vision? Who can inspire people?" Gration asked. "I have tremendous respect for John McCain, but I would not follow him."
"One of the things the senior military would like to see when they go visit the president is a kind of consistency, a kind of reliability," explained retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, a former Republican, former chief of staff of the Air Force and former fighter pilot who flew 285 combat missions. McPeak said his perception is that Obama is "not that up when he is up and not that down when he is down. He is kind of a steady Eddie. This is a very important feature," McPeak said. On the other hand, he said, "McCain has got a reputation for being a little volatile." McPeak is campaigning for Obama.
Stephen Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown who is studying the personalities of the presidential candidates, agrees McCain's temperament is of real concern. "The anger is there," Wayne said. If McCain is the one to answer the phone at 3 a.m., he said, "you worry about an initial emotive, less rational response."
We've had a president with an anger management problem for the last eight years, one who cowed the press corps into submission and who lashed out at intelligence agents who dared interrupt his summer 2001 vacation, after barely six months in office, with a Presidential Daily Briefing with the blazing title "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US". Do we now really need one with a big honking chip on his shoulder who is still trying to win the Vietnam War taking the reins when we may very well have already attacked Iran by the time the election takes place -- if it does at all?
Which brings us to the second part of this story, and that is how George W. Bush, no lame duck he, is preparing to clear the Centcom decks of Adm. William Fallon, who has said that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch", and replace him with someone more agreeable to going to war with Iran, according to Thomas P.M> Barnett, writing about Fallon in Esquire (h/t: ThinkProgress):
So while Admiral Fallon's boss, President George W. Bush, regularly trash-talks his way to World War III and his administration casually casts Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as this century's Hitler (a crown it has awarded once before, to deadly effect), it's left to Fallon--and apparently Fallon alone--to argue that, as he told Al Jazeera last fall: "This constant drumbeat of conflict . . . is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions."
What America needs, Fallon says, is a "combination of strength and willingness to engage."
Those are fighting words to your average neocon--not to mention your average supporter of Israel, a good many of whom in Washington seem never to have served a minute in uniform. But utter those words for print and you can easily find yourself defending your indifference to "nuclear holocaust."
How does Fallon get away with so brazenly challenging his commander in chief?
The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer. President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough.
Last December, when the National Intelligence Estimate downgraded the immediate nuclear threat from Iran, it seemed as if Fallon's caution was justified. But still, well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way.
And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he's doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn't do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq: He's standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war.
It may very well be that by the time the election takes place, we'll be at war with Iran, if ONLY to secure a Republican victory -- particularly if the Democratic nominee is Barack Obama, but I'm not sure that it's going to make much difference which Democrat is nominated at that point. It may also be that the Bushistas will cancel the election and install John McCain as successor "at a time of war", if only to try to avoid a revolution in the streets.
I, however, don't believe that such a revolution will take place. I've written before about the "tipping point of evil", a point the Bush Junta has crossed over with gusto time and time again over the last eight years, while Americans are still wondering if Britney Spears is bipolar and who's going to win American Idol and counting the days until the new Indiana Jones movie opens.
Some mornings I wake up and sit at the computer, and there's so much to write about, and the rants are coming so fast and furious in my head, that I go into complete paralysis and can't do a damn thing. I think that's where Americans are with this Administration. The evil they do is so pervasive and so monstrous, and now it has impacted them in the pcoketbooks, what with $3.50 gasoline and 23% credit card interest rates and $5/gallon milk and a disappearing job market and mortgages they can't pay. So these are hardly people who are going to storm the Bastille. The French in 1789 were used to being poor and they didn't have television, so they weren't suffering from some kind of culture shock -- they had just plain had enough.
And so we are paying the consequences of this notion that a government we elect -- even though this Administration was never elected the first time and only arguably was elected the second time -- is capable of the kind of evil we only expect from brown men leading countries south of the Equator and east of Greenwich Mean Time. Whether any of the three candidates is capable of ending this evil remains to be seen. We do know that one of them, John McCain, is, just as is the president to whom he sold his soul in 2001, bound and determined to continue it indefinitely. And like the president he hopes to succeed, he's perfectly willing to litter the path to resolution of his personal demons and issues with the corpses of American kids.
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