Get Out of the Golf Cart!

This is no time to get photographed in a golf cart—not with gas prices keeping many Americans from vacationing and Barack Obama traveling the world with a media entourage normally reserved for popes and presidents. The video footage of Obama shooting hoops with Marines and sinking a 30-footer provided a sharp contrast to the stooped figure of John McCain riding in a golf cart with the senior President Bush and sharing the indignities of being sidelined. The former president admitted to being "a little jealous" while McCain can't hide his disbelief that Obama, belatedly visiting Iraq and touching down in Afghanistan for the first time, gets heralded like a conquering hero.

The two men can feel each other's pain. George H.W. Bush, a fighter pilot at age 19, couldn't believe that a little-known governor with no foreign-policy experience and a history of draft avoidance could beat him.  Riding with McCain in the golf cart, the senior Bush and his visitor to the privileged Kennebunkport compound appeared as out of touch as critics, then and now, say they are. Somebody should tell McCain that country-club Republicans went out with the '80s.

It must be infuriating for McCain to have his best buddy, Republican Chuck Hagel, joining The One (as the McCain camp derisively calls Obama) in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hagel has long spoken out against President Bush's war policies and his visible defection lends credibility to Obama as a potential commander in chief. The trip abroad has been a test for Obama, and he's gotten through it thus far without a misstep. With Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki endorsing a U.S. pullout along the lines of what Obama proposes, McCain is the one who's out of step. Images of Obama conversing with the generals and listening intently to Iraqi leaders while keeping his own counsel convey the portrait of a leader confident in his ability to make the right decisions should he become president.

McCain's war experience is his greatest asset as a candidate, but it's not enough to get him over the finish line. George H.W. Bush in '92, Bob Dole in '96—you can even put John Kerry in the mix—military heroism is not necessarily rewarded at the ballot box. When Kerry stood before the Democratic Convention in July of '04 and said, "Reporting for duty," he signaled a campaign based on his biography. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth saw an opening and leveled enough falsehoods about Kerry's service in Vietnam to shake the bedrock of his candidacy. McCain is dangerously close to the line when he says Obama's refusal to solely credit the surge with stabilizing Iraq means that he cares more about advancing his political ambition than winning the war. McCain is flailing—and it's only July. It's too early in the campaign for attacks that go to patriotism.

McCain claims to be strongest on national security, but not many among military brass are standing up and endorsing McCain. They don't like him. They see him as a hothead flyboy, and he never worked the bureaucracy to win them over. The military are organization men, and they're careful chess players. A Democratic strategist who has studied military culture says McCain is more like Ollie North, the rogue Reagan aide, than Eisenhower. "He's the guy you send out there to get the bomb down the smokestack—he's not the guy you want sending other people out." McCain has made enemies in the military just as he has on Capitol Hill. "When he wants something, he pulls the same thing on us he does on senators," says one high-ranking military commander, referring to McCain's well-known temper. Quick to anger and generous in his apologies, this is who McCain is, for better or worse.

Obama doesn't have to beat McCain in the category of commander in chief. He only has to do OK, and he more than met that threshold on this trip. This isn't 1964 when a single daisy ad cemented fears about Barry Goldwater. Obama isn't scary. If anything, he's had to show he's tough enough. This is more like 1980 when Ronald Reagan lagged in the polls until mid-October in his debate with President Carter when he put concerns to rest with his reassuring manner that he was not trigger-happy. The commander-in-chief category is the only area where McCain is ahead. Obama couldn't let that gap widen through the summer and into the fall. Conversely, if McCain is the favorite of the national-security community and the military, where are the generals standing with him? He probably figures he doesn't need to generate those photo ops, but in the wake of Obama's boffo performance in Europe and the Middle East, McCain has to recalibrate. Assailing Obama as a novice in foreign policy won't stick now that he's successfully navigated the Middle East and charmed Europe.

© 2008