McCain Has Twisted Obama's Words, Too

Both Barack Obama and John McCain have pledged to run a general election campaign with spirited argument, to be sure, but also with a civility uncommon in our politics. To the extent that their definition of civil extends to a proper characterization of their opponents’ positions, both have fallen short so far.

On Friday, they engaged in a long-distance colloquy about whether McCain believes that the economy is “great.” No need to rehash; one wonders, though, why Obama didn’t limit himself to McCain’s remarks, which posited that “an argument” can be made about the economy, although he, McCain, knows it would be of small comfort to those who are hurting. Instead of asking McCain whether he believes that argument, Obama accused McCain of affirming the predicate. As many of us who don’t take sides have written, Obama has regularly twisted Sen. McCain’s comments about the duration of a U.S. commitment to Iraq, completely changing the meaning of what McCain intended to convey. He has opined that McCain mean a "third Bush term" for the nation's energy policy, obscuring the fact that McCain opposed the 2005 energy bill that forms the basis for many of those criticisms. (Who criticized the bill's "handouts to big business and oil companies?" Not Obama.

But McCain is not as clean as his campaign’s outrage at such distortions would suggest. On consequential issues of national security policy, McCain has, at times, caricatured Barack Obama’s stated positions on several occasions. Sometimes the distortions are small, but the often the effects of the distortion on the message, and its subsequent transmission, can be big.

For example: Obama has said he does not believe that former President Jimmy Carter ought to have met with leaders of Hamas. McCain has suggested just the opposite, telling Fox’s Neal Cavuto that “Obama does not have the experience to make the right judgment as to how to deal with terrorist organizations, obviously. Otherwise, he would never approve of such a meeting.” But Obama does not approve of such a meeting. Obama never said he would meet with leaders of terrorist organizations, just leaders of rogue nations, (and then as part of a diplomatic process. ).

McCain has frequently used the verb “surrender” to characterize the consequences of Obama plans for Iraq. McCain’s advisers say that Obama’s position amounts to a surrender and that the word, while pregnant with meaning, is defensible and appropriate.

But McCain has taken the phrase a step further. Who precisely would Obama “surrender” to? “Al Qaeda” But that’s a bit of a distortion of the situation in Iraq, where a Sunni/US, eh, call it an alliance, has contained and significantly diminished the capacity of Al Qaeda to the point where the terrorist organization is no longer the predominant threat in Iraq. It makes no sense to say that Obama would “surrender” to a tiny, increasingly irrelevant faction even if that faction would declare victory. One could argue that Al Q might re-surge if US troops withdrew; indeed, McCain does argue that. Describing the Democratic plan as one involving a surrender to Al Q immediately brings and posits associations between Iraq, Al Qaeda, terrorism, 9/11, fear and evil. The distortion is significant. Obama wants to withdraw troops; that withdrawal will have consequences; one of them is not a “surrender” to Al Qaeda unless Iraq is a very different country from the one described last week by Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. If McCain were to substitute "Iran" for "Al Qaeda," there'd at least be a stronger factual basis underlying his claim, as Iran would, at this point, have more influence in Iraq than Al Qaeda does.

McCain has questioned whether, in electing Obama, “will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan?" Well, Obama did not say that. He suggested a more aggressive version of current US policy -- a policy that McCain himself has endorsed. All Obama meant was that if the US had actionable intelligence against a terrorist target in Pakistan and Pakistan’s government refused to act on the intelligence, President Obama reserved the right to take military action. One can question the wisdom of discussing the options out loud, but that does not translate into a desire to bomb an ally. Obama and McCain seem to have roughly the same point of view here.