Posted by Shyam Moondra
Sen. Barack Obama has been talking about his strategic vision on a number of different issues, only to be mocked by Sen. John McCain and his surrogates. However, in the last few weeks, President George Bush seems to be embracing some of Obama's ideas, which lends the question if Bush is secretly trying to torpedo the campaign of McCain, his one-time political foe.
Here are a few examples:
1. Obama has been consistently advocating direct diplomacy in dealing with Iran. He was the first to say publicly that he would be willing to meet with the Iranian president to discuss the nuclear issue. McCain and others quickly jumped on Obama, calling him naïve and inexperienced in foreign affairs. However, recently, President Bush dispatched a top State Department official to join the representatives of other major powers at a meeting with the Iranian officials to discuss the issue of nuclear enrichment, undercutting McCain's position on the issue.
2. Obama has been talking about setting a time-table for withdrawing American combat forces from Iraq, His main reason for this position is that a time-table will force the Iraqi government to speed-up the internal political reconciliation, so that Iraq could become a full-fledged sovereign country sooner rather than later. McCain is, of course, opposed to setting any time-table. But now Bush is talking about a "time-horizon" within which American soldiers could be pulled out of Iraq. Even Iraqi officials are now in agreement with Obama, leaving McCain in a very awkward position.
3. Long time ago, Obama correctly identified Afghanistan/Pakistan as the region to focus on in the war on terrorism and not Iraq, He even suggested that 2-3 brigades from Iraq could be moved to Afghanistan to deal with the deteriorating situation there with respect to Al Quaeda and Taliban. Lately, the Defense Department is also talking about the need to send more forces to Afghanistan. That led McCain to also jump on the band wagon and call for more troops for Afghanistan.
4. When McCain proposed a gasoline tax holiday, Obama called the idea a "gimmick," which will not provide any meaningful relief to the consumers. The Bush administration and other Republicans seemed to agree with Obama, and the McCain proposal was dead-on-arrival.
5. Obama proposed to make a major investment in transportation and infrastructure projects to create thousands of jobs in the construction industry. McCain thought that was pork-barrel spending. However, many in the Congress in both parties seem to agree with Obama, and now efforts are underway to position infrastructure spending as the second round of stimulus to give a boost to the sagging economy. While Bush has not explicitly signed-up on a second stimulus package, he has not said "no" either.
Lately, the way Bush has been aligning himself with Obama on so many different issues, it is forcing McCain to make u-turns, again and again. That makes McCain look like a typical politician, while Obama is winning the praise from the electorate as being a pragmatist, a strategic thinker, and a problem solver.
