Senator Obama overseas - polispeak and votes

So Senator Obama has gone overseas to visit Iraq for the first time in years. His first trip to that nation was done with little fanfare and lasted less than 48 hours. This time he will spend another 48 hours in the company of 3 broadcast news agencies, dozens of reporters, and supplied with help by reportedly 300 foreign policy advisors.

Now tell me this isn’t a farce.

It’s a whirlwind tour of the Middle East with enough press corps to equate to several fire teams, not counting the hordes of military soldiers that will be flanking the whole group. But the question is can Senator Obama learn anything new? Can he find out any first-hand information about where Iraq stands and what America should do in the near future?

Well in truth neither candidate has a great position on Iraq. And as noted by a recent USAToday editorial

“It's difficult, for example, to imagine a President McCain insisting on keeping U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely if Iraq's government demands that they leave. Al-Maliki is acknowledging the reality that most Iraqis and most Iraqi politicians want U.S. forces out, at least as soon as they are confident that their own government can protect them.

At the same time, it's equally difficult to imagine a President Obama insisting on an inflexible withdrawal timetable if that means squandering security gains won with great American sacrifice. Though Obama has repeatedly insisted on a timetable, he has pointedly not said that every U.S. troop will be gone when the timetable ends. In fact, he has promised to leave a "residual force" of undefined size in Iraq, and carefully left himself an escape hatch in case the situation worsens. "You've got to make sure the country doesn't collapse," he says.”

So what are the realities of the situation then?

Well for Senator Obama I would think they include the following:

Senator Obama is the Democratic Party line. His votes are not only partisan, they are the extreme left of his party. Thus he was a strong backer of the comments by Harry Reid



Of course Harry Reid was wrong. The surge has worked as anyone with eyes can see. And now Senator Obama has to find a way to tactfully state the Reid and Pelosi were off their rockers. But he can’t say this in a way that agrees with General Petreaus (an enemy of strong Obama supporter MoveOn.org – which would make them enemies of the U.S. government no?) or the Republican Party, or Senator McCain who has visited Iraq 6 times and actually has a frame of reference on the events there.

Senator Obama must avoid making it seem like his trip is a polispeak ploy. It’s obvious to everyone that this trip is not a Congressional fact finding trip but a means to allay the fact that he has no international presence or experience. Senator Obama is spending 1 week to create the impression that he is knowledgeable of international facts, and Presidential in the manner that he acquires them.

His whole goal is to gain votes on the backs of soldiers that are following the orders of the Commander-n-Chief. Thus by standing near a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan he looks Presidential.

Of course if the trip looks like the blatant posturing it is, then he will get a negative backlash. You can’t look Presidential standing on the bodies of American soldiers. You are obviously spinning polispeak when insurgents act up as you proclaim them defeated and our job done.

Thirdly Obama wants to impress Europe. Both because of the fact that so many Americans have roots in Europe and that our economy is directly tied with the fate of those nations.

“It will not be a speech about campaign issues,” an adviser said. “He’s not going to address campaign issues in terms of other candidates, it is not a speech about American politics, and so it’s not a campaign event. We’re not trying to recruit support from the crowds that are coming. It’s not a campaign event.

The point of the outdoor rally is that the senator wants to speak directly to our allies and to the people of Europe and the people of the world and it would be inconsistent to do that and try to limit the attendance for that event. There’s a great deal of interest in his visit. We want to accommodate that interest.”

In fact this is a campaign speech. He is campaigning for the support of world leaders and corporations – who would then lend support to him and hopefully impress centrist Americans that would otherwise avoid his liberal policies.

If this is not a speech about American politics, what the hell is he going to say? He may not frame the speech in terms of McCain, but he will in terms of America and so it’s just another stump speech. Take out the polispeak and that’s all it is, but if his campaign makes it any more obvious it will backfire.

Will this all work? Well it depends. If you are of the mind of say Pete Hegseth maybe not

“Obama frequently decries the danger of “dogmatists” and “ideologues” in public policy, yet he himself has proved consistently uninterested in putting himself in situations where he might be confronted with the hard complexities of this war.”

If you are of a mind as say Peter Beinart then maybe

“This is not to say the security improvements in Iraq are illusory. It’s just that the war’s realities are too elusive to grasp on a brief trip led by people with a vested interest.”

Overall I have one overriding thought, this is political candy meant to do one thing – elect Senator Obama. There is almost nothing Senator Obama can learn with the media following him like puppies and the speed at which he is traveling. He isn’t there to learn anything substantive (lest he have an opinion that does not fall in line with Democratic Party lines, or worse contradict his far-left campaign speeches – more than he already has), he is there to look good. In the words of Fernando

“It's better to look good than to feel good."

And damn if Senator Obama isn’t being made to look good. But I wonder if all the bluster will lead to an Obama Presidency, and if it does will we be able to say this quote afterwards

“I hope when you are my age, you'll be able to say - as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. Our lives were a statement, not an apology." Ronald Reagan