The first presidential debate will be held next Friday night (so no one will watch it?) in Oxford, Mississippi. The topic with be foreign affairs. This is supposed to be McCain’s strong suit, and polls show that the public has more confidence in John McCain’s experience in foreign affairs than they do in Obama’s.
John McCain doesn’t seem capable of remembering that Czechoslovakia is no longer a country, or that Iran is a Shi’ite nation, or that al-Qaeda is a radically anti-Shiite organization, or that Spain is a part of Europe, a NATO partner, and has troops stationed in Afghanistan (and not on the Iraqi-Pakistan border, either). John McCain has less of a clue about foreign affairs than I do, and I haven’t been in the Senate for 26 years meeting foreign dignitaries and traveling on foreign junkets.
Nonetheless, the foreign affairs debate is supposed to be McCain’s big chance to demonstrate that he, and only he, is up to the job of obliterating Russia, China, Iran, and the very concept of terrorism. In other words, Obama is a heavy underdog. John McCain’s corner-man, Bill Kristol, has some advice:
McCain has a trickier task Friday night. He’ll be tempted to tout his foreign policy experience. But claims of wisdom based on experience alone tend not to impress the American people–(viz. Al Gore in 2000, George H. W. Bush in 1992, Jimmy Carter in 1980, passim). Instead, McCain needs to alarm voters about Obama’s dovishness–reminding them of his opponent’s misjudgment of the surge, for example–and tie around his neck all the stupidities of the woolly-minded Democratic party. He might want to mention in this context Biden’s rich career of misjudgments on foreign policy (against Reagan’s defense buildup, against the first Gulf war, flip-flopping on Iraq, silly talk on Iran–and more!), and cite the tough words uttered not so long ago about Obama’s naïveté and weakness by the woman Obama passed over as his running mate.
Of course McCain will need to lay out his own vision of a tough and principled foreign policy. For each of his 45 minutes of the debate Friday night, McCain will have to (quoting Kipling once again) “fill the unforgiving minute / With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.”
Maybe someone will ask John McCain where Bratislava is, and his head will explode.
