Posted by
ClearCommentary.com on Monday, June 30, 2008 3:02:53 PM
The search for political purchase leads some of the most astute among us down the well traveled road to humiliation. Jon Stoltz, writing in today's Huffington Post, provides the latest example of temerity gone wild, by supporting Gen. Wesley Clark's laughable assertion that Senator John McCain isn't qualified to be president because he lacks "executive responsibility." He quotes the general in an exchange between the general and Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation:
He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come in and say, 'I don't know whether we're going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it'.
Well, it's an illustrative example, because for many on the left, General Clark apparently among them, staring down a diplomat is on a par with facing Attila the Hun. Although it's outside the small intellectual universe Mr. Schieffer inhabits, his first response, which might have been uttered by a Russert or Wallace, should have been: "If Senator McCain doesn't pass muster, what does that say about Senator Obama?".
However, the more illuminating tack here is to examine Stoltz' attack, which has become the left's well-rehearsed--that is, tiresome--litany of charges, from McCain's allegedly poor judgment to his failure to confess his alleged sins in supporting the war in Iraq, and, of course, the fact that bin Laden is "still out there." For a frontal assault it's reeks of effete cowardice because it's a curious combination of policy differences and hyperbole, not a substantive prosecution of McCain's real capabilities.
This is a natural by-product of the fact that McCain is something of a political Rubik's cube for the left: He's a kind of perpetual puzzle that keeps on vexing them despite their best efforts to pigeonhole him. Indulging a slight digression, the same could be said for many conservatives, some of whom are undergoing therapy to begin the wholly traumatic process of accepting a perennially inconstant ally in the war against liberalism. But, as we've argued, McCain's candidacy would only be possible at a time such as this when unalloyed conservatism is unpalatable for so many.
Stoltz and his brethren on the left now find themselves in a decidedly awkward position: They have a candidate well to the left of failed presidential nominee George McGovern, who is inartfully making his way to the center by rewriting his script to comport with mainstream voters. But it's a study in desperation because despite his glaringly thin resume, there is, in fact, a wealth of quotes and clips that demonstrate that Mr. Obama is an extremist, from his support of partial birth abortion to his statements that he would ban handguns and have gun manufacturers prosecuted, to his goal of federalizing our health care system.
The left is certainly in lock-step with that agenda but the folks in Peoria remain in a state of shock when they hear the real Obama's vision for America. That's a problem for patrons of the Huffington Post and liberals nationwise whose blind hatred of President Bush and all things conservative has them mired in policy positions hostile to the common man. It leads them into embarrassing and untenable positions such as General Clark's, which is but one of many skewed lenses through which liberalism views the world.