Campaign Diaries

In electoral politics, perception matters more than reality. Whatever the surge’s actual impact and whatever the consequences setting a timetable might have, there is no question that public perception on these two issues has shifted noticeably over the past few weeks - even over the past few days! On the one hand, Republicans have been pushed into a corner in withdrawal discussions; on the other, Democrats have noticeably quieted down their rhetoric when talking about the surge (though it is McCain who is committing grave mistakes on this topic, as I explain below). As a result, we have two presidential candidates wrestling to gain the upper-hand on issues that have come to define them.

The debate over withdrawal changed dramatically over the week-end, after Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki endorsed Barack Obama’s plan. And in case anyone was tempted to take Maliki’s post-interview denials seriously, another Iraqi official (Ali al-Dabbagh) said essentially the same thing as Obama was arriving in the country, ensuring maximum exposure of the Iraqi government’s position. That President Bush also moved in the direction of Obama this week-end to the extent that he called for a “time horizon” must have made McCain feel quite lonely in defending the impracticality of withdrawal.

Against these shifting winds, the McCain campaign has adopted four strategies:

1. Insist that withdrawing would have chaotic consequences and lead the country into civil war. This is what Admiral Mike Mullen told Fox News on Sunday - but it is a position that has become politically untenable once the Iraqi government said it supported the departure of American troops
2. Fudge McCain’s position and make it seem like he favors some kind of withdrawal plan. This is what (retiring) Rep. Heather Wilson attempted today. In truly stunning comments, she declared McCain was so much more flexible he could bring troops home sooner: “He’d like troops to come home earlier than 16 months if the conditions allow it… Senator Obama has said it’s a 16-month timeline no matter what.” Not only does this fly in the face of most everything McCain says, but Marc Ambinder points out that one of the reasons McCain opposes Obama’s plan is that he argues 16-month is too short a time for an orderly withdrawal, whatever the conditions on the ground.
3. Reframe the opposition between candidates, away from a debate pro or anti-withdrawal and towards a differential of pragmatism versus ideology. This is one of the favorite arguments of the McCain campaign, for instance in this statement by Randy Scheunemann: “Senator McCain is driven by conditions on the ground … and the advice of military commanders that led our troop in achieving the successes to date. Senator Obama’s unconditional 16 month timetable is artificial and ignores all these critical factors.”
4. Change the subject and talk about the surge. As soon as Maliki’s comments were made public, the McCain campaign rebutted that the only reason we were even talking about withdrawal was the success of the surge. This reply has little to do with the issue at hand, but the GOP believes it points the debate back to McCain’s strength.

That last item - talk about the surge - points to a second shift in perception that has occurred in recent weeks. That McCain would now be in a position to benefit from advocating the surge is a stark contrast to the time Democrats called that military strategy the “McCain doctrine” in a deliberate strategy to associate the Arizona Senator with an unpopular war. Now, McCain would love nothing more than to be associated with the surge and we seldom find a Democrat willing to go too far in criticizing the surge.

Indeed, the media narrative has changed drastically over the past few months. The reduction of violence is leading to the perception that the military surge has worked and the candidates are campaigning against the backdrop of that new conventional wisdom. Interviewed on ABC yesterday, Obama sought to strike a delicate balance, neither walking away from his strong opposition to the surge in 2007 nor denying its potential as strongly as he would have last year:

I did not anticipate, and I think that this is a fair characterization, the convergence of not only the surge but the Sunni awakening in which a whole host of Sunni tribal leaders decided that they had had enough with Al Qaeda, in the Shii’a community the militias standing down to some degrees. So what you had is a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment would have been correct.

Obama’s point here is essentially that the improvement of the situation in Iraq is due as much if not more to events internal to Iraq than to the implementation of the surge. This claim can certainly be rebutted intelligently - for instance Matthew Yglesias doubts that the Sunni awakening had much to do with the reduction of violence given that it had little impact with the situation in Baghdad (where a lot of the surge troops were deployed).

McCain, however, made a major mistake on CBS tonight in his attempt to rebut Obama’s causation claim. “I don’t know how you respond to something that is as– such a false depiction of what actually happened,” McCain said, before adding: “Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.” In fact, McCain’s argument is simply wrong. The Anbar awakening occurred 7 months prior to the surge - a disturbing chronological disruption on what is supposed to be the issue McCain knows best. (Kevin Drum reminds us that al-Sadr’s ceasefire, the second event Obama alludes to, also took place months before the surge.)

At the same time, Obama is no longer willing to clearly state that the surge was a bad idea. Speaking to CBS’s Katie Couric today, Obama was asked repeatedly to talk about the surge. Asked whether he thought that the strategy he was advocating at the time would have resulted in the same reduction of violence, Obama demurred: “I have no idea what would have happened had we applied my approach, which was to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation. So this is all hypotheticals.”

Of course, McCain is not advocating for a timetable, nor is Obama praising the surge. But both candidates are aware that the perception of these two issues is shifting, and they are reacting by playing down the issue that is shifting away from them and playing up the one they have an advantage in.

So where does that leave us? Has Iraq become a draw between the Obama and McCain campaign? It is of course too early to say how the issue will play out in the coming months, but something is missing in these discussions. Whose plan will be better in 2009 concerns the policies of the candidates. Who was right in 2007 concerns their judgment. But there is another Iraq-related moment that is linked to the candidates’ judgment: who was right in 2002-2003.

The question, then, is not whether the “surge” or the “timetable” will be more important in voters’ mind because the issue that is equivalent to the surge is not the timetable but the initial rush to war. Obama has already won the public opinion debate over who exercised the best judgment six years ago and as such he can easily neutralize McCain’s claim to have better judgment and a better record on Iraq. Remains, then, the question of future Iraq policy - and there Obama is increasingly gaining an upper-hand.