George W. Bush, once the albatross of John McCain's campaign, once the greatest obstacle for John McCain to overcome, is helping McCain win the election. The Bush Administration is undermining Barack Obama's most fundamental and defining political positions in an effort to aid McCain's White House bid. And I suspect it will be successful.
Although Obama's greatest weaknesses are foreign policy and defence, it is in these arenas that Obama has most fundamentally defined his candidacy. Obama's position on Iraq (will end it in 16 months) and on diplomacy (we must talk more to our allies AND our enemies) has been a central characteristic of his campaign thus far and was the central thrust in his attack on and defeat of Hillary Clinton in the primaries. Obama's cosmopolitan world view, his diplomacy-first policies, his bring-the-troops-home position, are the bedrock of his candidacy. And that is where President Bush has been undermining him, chipping away at the foundation of the Democratic candidate's platform.
In the last 4 weeks, Bush has made gigantic course changes on Iraq and foreign relations. Most of the media has called these moves flip-flops or as The Guardian puts it, a "remarkable turnaround". However, these moves are in fact constructed, nuanced changes designed to weaken the Democrats' positions going into the Fall election. Last month, Bush moved to adopt a "time horizon" for withdrawing troops from Iraq, reversing what was once a set-in-stone position against such a move. This will allow both the Bush Administration and the McCain campaign to adjust their positions on the increasingly unpopular war. McCain can now (and he has) suggest that troops CAN come home as the situation on the ground improves. With this, Obama's central position disappears. By using the vague language of "time horizon" Bush allows McCain and the Republicans to minimize the difference between Obama and themselves and appeal to independent voters, while not alienating the Republican base. This move seriously undercuts Obama's charge that McCain will not bring troops and wants a never-ending war.
A similar move by the Bush White House on diplomacy is undercutting Obama's central tenant of talking and negotiating with our enemies: Bush has announced a hundred new diplomatic hirings; the Administration has decided to station a diplomatic mission in Iran (the first in 30 years); Condoleeza Rice entered talks with Iran last month regarding their nuclear ambitions; and Rice personally delivered the Russia-Georgia ceasefire agreement to the Georgian President this week. Suddenly, George Bush has discovered the diplomacy that Obama has been campaigning for. And just as suddenly, Obama's calls for more talking and more negotiating don't seem so new and exciting; they no longer count as a "new form of politics" if the Bush government has already adopted them.
What these two abrupt changes by the Bush Administration represent is an effort to move the Republican Party closer to Barack Obama's core positions on foreign policy so as to eliminate those as viable reasons to vote for Obama. This election will be a referendum on Barack Obama and the perceived "riskiness" of electing an untested and inexperienced politician. If the Republicans can eliminate a few of the differences between Obama and McCain that may have driven voters into the Democrat's column, then Bush will have helped McCain win what should have been an unwinnable election. Voters have short attention spans and most Americans will just begin tuning in to the campaign in the next few weeks and THEN start making their decisions. If, come election day, there's increased diplomacy by the Bush government and McCain's talking troop withdrawal, it won't matter that Obama thought of them first, what will matter is that Obama will have lost his central thrust, he will have lost his campaign's foundation as a tenable issue, and he will have lost the election. And of all people, it will be thanks to George W. Bush.
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