Buying into the Spin about McCain’s Foreign Policy Credentials

[babylonsister]

CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Aug. 13, 2008 – 12:32 a.m.
Buying into the Spin about McCain’s Foreign Policy Credentials
By Madison Powers, CQ Guest Columnist

snip//

Just look at some of the ways the media have dealt with John McCain ’s claims to special expertise on foreign policy.

The conflict between Georgia and Russia gave the press another opportunity to give McCain credit where credit is not due. David Broder on “Meet the Press” was emphatic when he pronounced McCain as prescient in his assessment of the renewed threat posed by growing Russian imperialism and the autocratic tendencies Putin has displayed.

This is not exactly news, however. Articles in the mainstream press have been making these observations for years. The only obvious difference is that they weren’t made in interviews with David Broder, which is the subtext of Broder’s “gush to judgment.” To repeat what so many have been saying for so long is not a sign of being prescient. It merely shows that the speaker is sentient.

ABC’s John Hendren was similarly complimentary. “And when hostilities erupted along the Georgia-Russia border, McCain was characteristically bold and quick to act.”

Let’s be clear here. McCain was quick to speak, not act. There is a world of difference between the two, even if some can’t tell the difference. How else would McCain go unchallenged when he says he knows how to win wars. I may know how to build a gazebo, but that doesn’t mean I have actually built one (or would want to).

As for whether what McCain says is bold or merely intemperate is not so clear. For someone who may well have to proceed as a diplomat, rather than as a gadfly, it is open to question just what sort of rhetoric will serve him well when negotiating with one’s enemies is often made unnecessarily more difficult by incautiously made snide remarks about someone whom you later have to sit across the table from.

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http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002937438

[babylonsister]

1. From article, conclusion reached:

While political commentators compare Obama and McCain on their initial responses to the crisis and conclude that Obama comes off as more restrained and more circumspect, failure to discuss any of the background of the conflict leaves it open for readers to assume that the facts don’t warrant a nuanced response. Much of the political reporting of how the candidates have handled this issue thus far assume that a sabre-rattling tone is somehow a mark of foreign policy sophistication.

The media coverage of the Georgia story and its implications for the campaign simply reaffirms what many have been saying all along. McCain gets a pass on his growing list of foreign policy statement gaffes. The speculation from many quarters is that Obama would have been roasted if he had confused Sunnis with Shias in Iraq or referred to Czechoslovakia long after it had ceased to exist.

The question is why that differential treatment occurs. The explanation, I think, is simple. McCain gets extra credit for what he does get right and loses no credit even when he gets it wrong. He benefits from a presumption that he knows what he is talking about, so much so that he goes unchallenged even when it is obvious that he does not. :eyes:

[iconicgnom]

2. 894th of 899 = Credential to be commander in chief.

[babylonsister]

3. Yes, why is that never brought up by the 'librul' m$m? nt