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Presidential Candidates To Question Petraeus Today
A big story to watch out for today is the testimony before key Senate committees by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker — and specifically, the fact that all three remaining presidential candidates will be questioning him at various points throughout the day.
Expect John McCain to give praise in the form of questions, and for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to lay out their views on why we should be leaving Iraq in an orderly fashion. But expect all of them to be careful — the news media will be watching very closely, and replaying their "questions" all over the nightly news for some time to come.
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This is an improvement for Allen. Collins starts out with a big lead. Allen's campaign needs to work harder debunking Collins' moderate branding, which she adopts like a magic election cloak every six years.
April 8, 2008 9:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
the questions the candidates ask can frame or reframe the discussion on iraq.
i think many people have been disappointed to how little attention/discussion has been given on iraq during the last couple of months. this could be the beginning of a renewed discussion (amongst the candidates) on how they will each handle the situation in iraq given the opportunity.
sens obama and clinton might try to differentiate from each other given the close races in the upcoming states. seeing that there isn't a debate until after pennsylvania, this committee hearing might serve as a defacto debate to see who will be
a) tougher in their questioning
b) more "genuine" in praise for the troops
c) "fair" to petreaus (as he is only the messenger)
this could be an opportunity for each of these candidates to take a step forward to defining themselves as "commander in chief" (even though they are at a senate committee hearing) and it could go a long way to helping out the democratic candidates who could use a bit of a boost in that category when confronting mccain in the general.
April 8, 2008 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
The General's name is spelled:
B-E-T-R-A-Y-U-S
April 8, 2008 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hate that "betray us/Petraeus" thing. It just lumps reasonable people that oppose the war along with the loony anti-war types....there's no need to resort to name calling to make our point about the Iraq War.
April 8, 2008 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink