Three weeks ago, Obama has excoriated for saying that the Dems where not interested in playing Chicken with the troops.

I missed that excoriation.

I was personally very disappointed that Obama witlessly repeated the hard right line about abandoning the troops if they did not fund Bush's war.

Bill in Maine has a kind of funny line over at Kos. He mentions that the troops have not been left naked, hungry and penniless as has already been proposed by Bush as past the deadline. It is, of course, Bush who would defund the war with vetoes. I think that would be a fine thing. Geez, give the guy credit.

Any dang fool who posts doubts about Obama's political skills should consider asking for a refund for their keyboard because it doesn't work right.

But Obama was surely wrong to say what he did. He is smarter than that. When you stab yourself in the back, all you should be given credit for is some physical agility but not mental prowess.

Best, Terry

While I get your point, I don't think that approach would be Constitutional or practical. Congress is in charge of authorizing and funding war, but the executive branch is in charge of managing the war. I think Dems would be accused of micro-managing.

While I agree that it is being used by the Repubs as a talking point, I also believe that it is a legitimate and substantive seperation of powers issue under the Constitution.

Just because we think the war is horrible, doesn't mean we can ignore the Constitution. That is bad law and bad politics.

Thanks for your response. I know you feel deeply about the need to end this war, as soon as possible, at all cost.

I think it is interesting that I made two posts yesterday morning. One here about Obama and strategy for trying to end this self-inflicted war, and one about JE's haircuts. I got two responses to my "strategy post" and over 150 to my "haircut post." I enjoyed the haircut discussion, but I am not sure I like the implication made by the relative number of posts in each thread.

My point here was that I believe Obama was spot on about what was politically possible. Follow the logical steps:

1) Obama knew that the Dems don't have the votes to override Bush's threatened veto.

2) That leaves them with two courses of action:

2A) Simply refuse to appropriate any money for the troops. I think you support this approach, but I don't think it is viable. Both Hagel and Smith will not go along with the Dems on this approach. Many of the Dem moderates are also unwilling to pursue this approach because it would lead to a disorderly retreat from Iraq, and it would be viewed as a lack of support by much of the public. Trying to force the issue in this manner would split both the Senate Dems and the House Dems with the progressives not having the votes to sustain the strategy.

2B) Obama proposed an alternative. Give the Pres short term funding under a continuing resolution. Give the anti-war movement more time to crank-up the pressure on moderate Repubs facing election next year, and force the Repubs to revisit this issue every two months as the election grows closer and closer.

You claim that Obama "stabbed himself in the back." I refer to it as being honest and precient, and making the most out of the limited leverage we have.

I'm sure you and I will have many opportunities to discuss this cursed war in the weeks and months ahead. I wish it weren't so, I wish we could end it now, but we don't control the levers of power, yet.

That comes from the kooky "unitary executive" theory pushed by my (unfortunately) former 7th grade American history student, John Yoo.
The idea is simple - the President has extraordinary power in time of war. Bush self-declares a never-ending war on terror. Thus the President has never-ending extraordinary executive power (at least, until a Democrat becomes President at which point I imagine these unitary executive theory promoters will change their tune).

Tom

Terry,

I don't think that is what Obama said. I believe the quote was something like this, "I don't think the Democrats are interested in playing a game of Chicken with our troops."

This can be interpreted as acknowledging the "support the troops" meme, but it is not the same as repeating it. In subsequent interviews, Obama said the quote was not quite accurate and did not give the full context of his comments. Obama said he meant that the Dems didn't want to get drawn into playing a game of chicken with Bush.

I find your next comment incomprehensible, "I am not even sure at this point that Obama is against the war." How do you justify such a comment? Obama has been against this war from before the beginning.

He has said that we need to disengage in a responsible way that attempts to limit the chances of a genocidal civil war and external meddling, but he has always opposed the war. I don't mind you disagreeing, but I can't help being deeply bothered by your statement which seems to directly contradict and misrepresent Obama's actions.

I think the big problem with Obama's statement is that it takes the pressure off Bush. He hasn't vetoed the bill yet. There should have been no public words of compromise at this point, and Obama's statement was exactly that.

Why do you assume that Dems can't sell the reality that Bush's veto will be the act that undercuts support for the troops, but the Bush regime will have no problem blaming it on Congress? Obama's statement gave your prediction more credibility than it warrants, IMO.

This is not about Obama, at least for me: I'd be happy with pretty much any of the Dem possibilities except Clinton. But Obama has been showing his political amateurism with some regularity. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but he needs to think more about the effects his hasty words will have.

This is really crass. He wasn't taken to task for being realistic, or for floating his own strategic plan. No he was taken to task because officially conformed what the Democratic plan was.

He thus gave Bush the incentive and blew a good change to place bush under more pressure so the subsequent steps would be easier. He also made it harder for the dems to work the media narrative.

Obama didn't set the strategy, he was simply being a tattletale. And for you to spin it like he was a visionary that showed the way to the other dems is dishonest and a twisting of reality. This is really pushing it.

You are making an accusation that is entirely new to me, and I follow news about Obama obsessively. Give me a source for your accusation. I find it hard to believe that if your accusation was accurite it would not be all over the media.

What am I accusion Obama of?

This whole brouhaha started when he spoke too soon of what they were going to do next hand instead of waiting untill the current hand was played out.

A temporary, two-month funding bill strategy has been circulated as the back up response to a veto right from the start.

Obama told that they were probably going to do just that. Making what was a public plan that was still unoffical, semi-offical. And he did it while using terms not beneficial to the Dem media framming.

That was unproductive and that was all over the media. Nothing new here. So If I'm accusing him then I'm not accusing him of anything but making a small mistake. All this must certianly be known to you.

What I do take issue with is that you are spinning it like the temporary funding was his idea. And that he is the master tactician whose proposed plan has every Dem is rallying behind it.

That's not supported by any fact nor does it fit with any time line. Even Obama doesn't even claim he thought up that plan or that it was wise to say what he said when he said it.

Obama is a good candidate who has been a reliable and correct voice on the Iraq war. This small dent is nothing compared to the dents the candidates will end up with. Every other major candidate has made similar or worse gaffes. But please your spin is absurd, Obama is a good candidate, but he didn't invent the everlasting lightbulb or invented the way out of Iraq and when you make claims like that, you're putting people off.

He has of course done phenomenally well "given his lack of experience on the national stage." When he shows that lack, as in the case under discussion, that's what I mean by amateurism. Since you acknowledge that his lack of experience shows, I don't see any need to search around for the specific examples that formed my impression.

I think what bothers me is his seeming reluctance to play hard, partisan politics against a regime that I consider not just the opposition but the enemy. I still don't see how you can claim his statement didn't undercut the congressional Dems' game. He gave away something for nothing. To me that smacks of amateurish politics.

Again I have nothing against Obama. If he's nominated I'll happily vote for him, which will be the first time in some decades. Whether I vote for him in the primary is yet to be determined.

The only way to be really sure is to send Bush a funding bill with a date to start withdrawing troops. If he vetoes it, then Bush has flatly told all Americans that he simply will endanger the troops because he flat will not withdraw them.

The right thing to do, of course, is to not vote for any funds at all for more war. Obviously funds will be needed to withdraw but they are hardly absent now.

I don't care to argue that position would startle most Americans but Richardson has stated quite plainly that is what he would do the day he takes command without any uproar.

Obama has backed himself into a corner. He can no longer say what Richardson did without cost. He has already paid a penalty for trash talk about the war.

Is Obama the best candidate? That is an entirely different question. Maybe he is but he has not exactly covered himself with glory on Iraq. For sure most candidates can be expected to fudge their positions to appeal to the widest group of voters possible. Harry Truman was a very rare specimen who spoke with incredible bluntness. I do not expect another in my lifetime.

Again, ULC, I am not sure that Obama really understands the position that the U.S. has put its troops in as nothing but targets for all sides except the Kurds. If he did, would he have talked about "playing chicken" with the troops? I took that as not essentially different than refusing to "support the troops" by ordering them to go get killed for no good whatever.

Best, Terry

Look, he may have made one inartful statement, but you can hardly extrapolate from that to say that he doesn't understand what's going on in Iraq.

Where was Richardson before the war started? I don't recall hearing about any speeches he gave against the war. That's the sort of judgment and bravery and leadership that we need.

A complete war defunding bill is not going to pass the Senate anyway, as the GOP has enough support to block it, so the entire rest of this debate has been pointless. Very, very few voters are paying attention to this level or arcana. If elected, all of the Dem candidates are going to get us out of Iraq.

Fair enough.

I would agree that Obama was perhaps a bit too honest in this instance. My point is that his understanding of the politics of the situation was right on.

Regarding his reluctance to play hardball, read some of his statements. He hits hard without being mean or bitterly partisan. I think that is critical to the fact that he has much better numbers among independents than HRC. These are the people that progressives need to pull into our camp in order to win the White House and in order to build a working majority in Congress. I think Obama's style is much more likely to have coattails.