Behind the Headlines

All of a sudden things are happening so fast it's hard to keep up with them all. In the last couple of days we've had the Edwards endorsement, McCain laying out an imagined retrospective of a successful first term and Bush blasting Obama as an appeaser to the Israeli Knesset. Let's take a look behind the headlines.

Barack Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod recently said the campaign was husbanding some announcements for use in the near future. They wheeled out one of the biggest yesterday, as John Edwards appeared with Obama in Michigan and endorsed the Illinois Senator. The timing was brilliant. Hillary Clinton was given all of a day and a half to bask in the glow of her sweeping win in West Virginia before this news knocked it off front pages across the country. These guys are good.

In an instant the question turned from "why can't Obama win white working-class votes?" to "how many will Edwards help him win?" Obama is also likely to pick up most or all of the 19 delegates Edwards won in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Eight of them announced for Obama already today. It is too late for Edwards to have much of an effect in the remaining primaries. In the general election he may help a bit with white southerners and union members across the country; not decisively but a little. Of course, there could be states where just a little may spell the difference between victory and defeat. But the main impact is the immediate. It hammers another nail into the Clinton coffin.

John McCain battles gamely. Yesterday he had the guts to go into the environmentally-conscious Northwest and campaign on global warming. Today he entered the hope contest, sharing his goals for the upcoming years. These include reviving the economy through tax cuts, fixing health care, not needing to be engaged in combat in Iraq in five years, and eventually balancing the budget. It is always welcome to hear a candidate spell out what he intends to accomplish and how he intends to accomplish it. Unfortunately, his tool kit for achieving these goals is the outdated set borrowed from George W. Bush. Voluntary solutions for global warming. Market solutions for health care. Staying the course in Iraq. Balancing the budget by slashing the revenues. Laudable goals pursued by methods that have failed time and again.

This is why the Republican brand is in trouble this year. Unlike Bush, at least McCain recognizes the problems. But like him, he cannot imagine any other ways to fix them than those in the same old Republican playbook that have gotten us into the mess we're in. Americans are looking for new approaches. Obama leads McCain nationally by an average of 4.4 percent in polls released in May. McCain-Obama Polling Data If Team McCain can't come up with better than this, Team Obama will have an easy time hanging the "Bush third term" tag on McCain. He must shake this. If not, game over.

The President himself chose this moment to try to help McCain by taking a swipe at Obama on foreign policy. Speaking in Israel on the anniversary of the founding of the Jewish State, Bush decried those who would show willingness to meet with foreign adversaries. In typical Bush-Rove fashion, and without mentioning Obama by name, he invoked images of fear to try to scare up some votes. This time it involved memories of appeasement and Nazi tanks rumbling into Poland. The Obama campaign and leading Democrats were quick to hit the President for politicizing U.S. foreign policy to a foreign audience.

If the Obama campaign is smart, this response will morph into two branches. One would emphasize historical examples such as Kennedy staring down Khruschev in Vienna, Nixon going to China and Reagan meeting Gorbachev. The other would make the case that it's a good idea to talk to some foreign rogues because, well, some of them could use a good talking to. Bush's plea assumes the only thing that can come out of talks is capitulation. Obama can make it clear that if he encounters threat and provocation the foreign leader will leave only with the impression of a steely-eyed American President giving a clear warning to back off or you will live to regret it. That is the kind of meeting that could have prevented, for instance, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

What Bush's remarks do accomplish for McCain are to help solidify the fundamentalist and strong defense conservatives behind McCain by painting a picture of Obama they already want to believe. Handled properly by Obama, though, all three of the issues I've discussed tonight should rebound to the Democrat's overall benefit.