Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

BY TAYLOR MARSH
–updated–

Well, this ad was as predictable as it was preventable. The back and forth in the Wall Street Journal says it all:

Sen. Obama was flying from London to Chicago Saturday when the McCain campaign issued a statement from Joe Repya, a retired Army colonel who said Sen. Obama had broken a commitment to visit the wounded Americans, “instead flitting from one European capital to the next.” “Several explanations were offered, none was convincing and each was at odds with the statements of American military leaders in Germany and Washington,” Mr. Repya said. “For a young man so apt at playing president, Barack Obama badly misjudged the important demands of the office he seeks. Visits with world leaders and speeches to cheering Europeans shouldn’t be a substitute for comforting injured American heroes.” In turn, Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said Sens. Obama and McCain both believed that troops should be honored and noted that the Illinois senator had visited troops in Iraq and Afghanistan last week and had made numerous trips to Washington’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Sen. Obama still didn’t want injured soldiers “pulled into the back-and-forth of a political campaign,” Mr. Vietor said in a statement. “That’s why we imagine Sen. McCain would be surprised that his campaign released this wildly inappropriate accusation that politicizes the issue,” Mr. Vietor said.

McCain can get away with this because of his own biography. That’s why it was a big mistake not to get that he’d use it. Obama, of all people, knows how this type of hardball politics is played. He proved to be a master at it in the primary season.

This is the stuff and subject matter Republicans lap up and push forward with gusto. You just don’t hand them the weapon, especially not on the troops. It doesn’t matter that the script is as insulting as it is absurd. The effectiveness of the ad goes to the perception of Obama being a glory hound and like it or not if McCain and his team can make this stick, Obama’s going to spend the rest of the general responding to it. First huge mistake from team Obama of the post primary season campaign. Letting McCain define him through one of the GOP’s favorite standard talking fantasy points about Democrats: we don’t support the troops. Remember, it doesn’t matter that it’s a ludicrous notion. It doesn’t matter that McCain has a worse record on veterans’ issues, including ignoring Webb’s new GI bill. It matters if the public buys it. We’ll see if it sticks, but Obama left himself wide open for this one. A totally unforced error that was candidate inflicted.

On the west coast, “Meet the Press” hasn’t aired yet, nor have the other Sunday show in their entirety. We’ll see if Brokaw and Obama talk about it today or who else brings it up. You east coasters can respond if you’ve already seen it.

It’s clear Obama and his team made a calculated decision that visiting wounded troops would have looked like political grandstanding. The reality is that a politician will always be given cover when it comes to showing empathy towards wounded soldiers, the benefit of the doubt. But no one gets a pass for not showing up, no matter how sincere the reason. That’s military politics 101. There’s no way around it.

UPDATE: Obama’s team is in full damage control on this one. From “Face the Nation” today, but it’s hardly convincing:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator Reed, now you’ve done a lot of these trips. They call them “codels,” “congressional delegations,” go. Are you ever allowed to take cameras when you go in to visit wounded troops? I thought that was sort of the general rule that everybody knew about. JACK REED: I don’t think Senator Obama would have done that. Senator Hagel, Senator Obama and I visited the combat support hospital at Baghdad to thank those nurses, those doctors, to see patients that were there, to bring a bit of greetings from home and profound thanks. That should be in the ad that Senator McCain is running. I think Senator Obama made a very wise choice. Any suggestion that a visit to a military hospital would be political, he made the wise choice not to go. But when you were in Baghdad we made a point at the end of a very exhausting day to go in and see these magnificent young Americans and those doctors and nurses that give such tremendous care without a lot of fanfare, just to say thanks. He did it—the same thing. We went—we didn’t stay in Kabul. We went to Jalalabad to see the soldiers of the 173rd. We stopped in Basra to see our soldiers down there. We went into Anbar province to see soldiers there. That is a completely distorted, and, I think, inappropriate advertisement. CHUCK HAGEL: Let me add to that. As you know, Bob, the congressional delegation that you referred to ended when we parted in Jordan. At that point, it was a political trip for Senator Obama. I think it would have been inappropriate for him and certainly he would have been criticized by the McCain people and the press and probably should have been if on a political trip in Europe paid for by political funds—not the taxpayers—to go, essentially, then and be accused of using our wounded men and women as props for his campaign. I think the judgment there—and I don’t know the facts by the way. I know what you’ve just read. No one has asked me about it other than what you’ve just asked about. But I think it would be totally inappropriate for him on a campaign trip to go to a military hospital and use those soldiers as props. So I think he probably, based on what I know, he did the right thing. We saw troops everywhere we went on the congressional delegation. We went out of our way to see those troops. We wanted to see those troops. And that’s part of our job to see those troops, by the way, and listen to those troops, Bob. And we did. BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think that ad was appropriate? CHUCK HAGEL: I do not think it was appropriate.