The Perils of Dismissing McCain's Military Service

Why? It's a) simplistic and b) counterproductive.

On Sunday, former NATO commander (and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate) Wesley Clark made some provacative remarks about John McCain on CBS's "Face the Nation." "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president," Clark said. "[McCain] has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn't a wartime squadron." (This echoed Clark's earlier claims that McCain has "never had leadership in crisis, or in anything larger than his own element on an aircraft carrier or [in managing] his own congressional staff.")

Many rank-and-file Democrats applauded Clark for his candor. "It's about time that someone told the truth (some of it) about Sen. McCain," Stumper reader D.R. wrote this afternoon in an email message. "He is not the hero that he or the media professes him to be, and there should be more questions about his life." This was hardly surprising. Attacking your opponent's strength is Rovian Political Theory 101, and there are few Dems better credentialed than Clark--who began his 30 year military career serving and sustaining injuries in Vietnam and would up successfully commanding NATO forces in the Kosovo War as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe--to lead a potential onslaught.

Unfortunately, questioning whether McCain's military service prepared him for the presidency isn't an onslaught worth leading. It's not that Clark's analysis is wrong; it's that it's so narrowminded and obvious that it doesn't do any damage at all. Of course spending five years as a POW doesn't automatically qualify McCain to take over the free world. No one--not even McCain himself--would argue that it does. There are only a few jobs, in fact, that provide direct, transferable training for the Oval Office--the vice presidency, the governorship of a large, complex state and/or military command service. Neither McCain nor Barack Obama has held any of these gigs, which means that Clark completely misses the point. Without a past "presidential"-seeming position to base their decision on, a la Dwight Eisenhower or Ulysses S. Grant, voters must instead examine all the available data points--the candidate's positions, plans, Senate votes and personal biographies--to determine who they trust to lead the country. Hiring a president isn't like hiring an accountant; there's no job like the presidency, so it's an informed leap of faith. To hint that McCain's searing Vietnam experience--especially his refusal to accept Vietnamese offers of early release--doesn't tell us something about his character, his sense of duty, his determination and therefore what sort of person he is and what sort of president he would be is simply absurd. It's not the whole picture. It's not his one and only qualification. But, like Obama's decision to forgo lucrative law jobs after college and work as a community organizer in Chicago, it's an undeniably, fundamentally relevant part of our portrait of a potential leader.

In the end, Clark's simplistic dismissal did little to hurt McCain. But it did hurt Obama. For starters, it provided the McCain campaign with the pretext to slam the Illinois senator for supposedly not living up to his lofty standards. Clark is not an Obama staffer, and Chicago did not sanction his statement; in fact, Clark supported Hillary Clinton until the bitter end. But as soon as the words "fighter plane" slipped out of his mouth on Sunday, Team McCain issued a pair of outraged statements attacking the candidate, not Clark. "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to question John McCain's military service, that's their right," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said at the time, conveniently ignoring the fact that Obama (and Clark, for the record) constantly calls McCain an "American hero" and expresses deep respect for his service. "But let's please drop the pretense that Barack Obama stands for a new type of politics. The reality is he's proving to be a typical politician who is willing to say anything to get elected, including allowing his campaign surrogates to demean and attack John McCain's military service record."

This was ridiculous, but it put Obama on the defensive, forcing him to do his opponent's PR work for him. "No one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign," Obama said today in Independence, Missouri. "And that goes for supporters on both sides. We must always express our profound gratitude for the service of our men and women in uniform. Period." (Spokesman Bill Burton added that Obama "rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark.") Finally, the media seized Clark's comments and cranked out a round of stories linking them to earlier (and often far more offensive) attacks--including the accusation that McCain was a North Vietnamese collaborator--leveled largely by fringe commentators who have even less to do with Obama's campaign than Clark (and would've been ignored in earlier, pre-Internet election cycles). This gave Team McCain cover to claim, as Rogers told reporters this morning, that "[this] is a pattern... Barack Obama wants to make... part of his campaign"--ensuring that questions of whether Democrats are conspiring to "Swiftboat" an honorable soldier would dominate the news for at least another 24 hours. Again, ridiculous. But today, Obama wanted us to talk about his patriotism. Instead we're talking about this.

In the end, it isn't difficult to see why Clark probably just lost his spot on Obama's veep list. As Ben Smith wrote this morning, "McCain's heroism is too well-established, and a climate of respect for soldiers too strong, for attacks on his service to do anything but backfire." Whether you agree with Clark or not, it doesn't take a pollster to determine which side of this particular debate most voters will favor: the side that seems to be questioning whether five years of torture, broken limbs, stabbings and starvation are relevant (or worse), or the side that is defending that record from criticism. The costs of Clark's comments simply outweigh the benefits. There are plenty of things Democrats can (and should) say about McCain. But as Obama knows, dismissing his service isn't one of them.