The campaign of presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has already gotten tedious. In a campaign appearance the other day, he said in his characteristically sanctimonious way, "I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign."
We ought to be jaded enough by politics to know that when a candidate says he'd rather lose the campaign than do X, Y, or Z, he's being anything but courageous. Nothing is more calculated to help one win the White House than to say he'd "rather be right than president." The last guy to say it and apparently mean it was Henry Clay in 1839.
The media focus on McCain's remark has been on its harshness towards his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, who is more or less promising to remove most troops from Iraq within 16 months of his inauguration. Candidates for the presidency don't usually accuse each other of wanting to lose wars. That's because candidates are usually careful to sound like they favor winning. In the American political creed, there is nothing worse than opposing the starting of a war (at least one started by a president who is of your own political party), opposing "victory with honor" once it's started, or supporting an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops. Doing any of these things will most likely get your patriotism questioned. McCain's faux pas was his bluntness.
The Obama supporters' reaction, of course, was high dudgeon. Talk-show host Rachel Maddow said McCain was calling Obama a traitor. He does not want to lose the war, she said.
This is politics, and these are political statements. That means they are not intended actually to be scrutinized. They are only for political effect, that is, designed to advance the speaker's own political interests
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