GI-John, American HERO!

With the release of his first national campaign ad today, we caught a glimpse of what John McCain's general election strategy might look like: a supremely classy attempt to paint himself as authentically "American." But could it backlash? Ed Kilgore argues it might. McCain may be in the process of making the same big mistake his friend Kerry made in 2004--making his biography the overriding centerpiece of his national security message. Sure, McCain's war record attests to his character and patriotism, but hardly means he'd be an effective commander-in-chief. If that were the case, we'd only have military leaders as presidents. What McCain has to say about national security issues will, over time, have as great an impact on how he's perceived by persuadable voters as endless clips of him in uniform or returning from the Hanoi Hilton. The tragedy of the Kerry campaign was that the man did have a pretty powerful grasp of national security challenges and what to do about them, but it never much got a hearing thanks to the back-and-forth about his own "story." This seems plausible, but let's remember that 2004 is a much different race than 2008. Kerry was swift-boated to hell and back, so his American war hero narrative was skewed. He also was campaigning against Bush, a candidate whose own military failings were obscured when juxtaposed with that of a "pointed headed Northeastern elitist Winter Soldier." This time around, we have the old, white, POW presumably battling a bi-racial "pointed headed elitist" who a significant portion of the population still thinks (!) is a Muslim. I don't think McCain will win, but my guess is his war experience won't have much to do with it.