John McCain’s support for the Surge. Another issue that I would discuss at every opportunity is McCain’s support for the Surge strategy in Iraq. This is another one of those issues that is pretty easy to break down for voters. Whether or not you think the decision to invade Iraq was a good one, John McCain’s position on how the war was waged is worth repeating as frequently as possible. John McCain saw a problem with the way the war was being fought. He called for a change in strategy and for more troops to be deployed to the region. When the Surge strategy was put together and presented by General Petraeus, John McCain fought for it in the Senate. Barack Obama opposed it. Obama and congressional Democrats declared the war virtually un-winnable, or in some cases, already lost. Barack Obama said of the Surge, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there, in fact I think it will do the reverse.”
Even after the Surge strategy was obviously producing results in Iraq, Barack Obama declared it a failure. After the progress in Iraq was sustained for an extended period of time and became impossible to deny, Obama reluctantly acknowledged it, saying in an interview with Fox’s Bill O’Reilly that it had succeeded “beyond our wildest dreams.” In that same interview, however, he refused to admit he was wrong to have opposed the surge. As with the Freddie/Fannie mess, John McCain identified problems with the war in Iraq and took action to correct them. Barack Obama was wrong about the Surge. If he had been President we would have surrendered to defeat in Iraq two years ago. John McCain easily has more credibility than Barack Obama on the question of who would make a better commander-in-chief.
Fitness to lead. The two examples cited here are the basis for a strong argument that John McCain is more fit than Barack Obama to lead this country in a time of war and in time of financial crisis. There are many other examples in the backgrounds of McCain and Obama that provide evidence of which man is more qualified to lead, but I see these two as some of the strongest and if I were in the McCain campaign I would find every opportunity possible to remind voters of them.