Obama's Iraq Problem

With Barack Obama's post-World Victory Tour bounce in the polls evaporating (if, indeed, there ever was one), it's becoming obvious that the candidate still has a major Iraq problem. Karl Rove, who has given the best and most accessible-to-the-average-person campaign analysis so far this election season, has another great op-ed up in the Wall Street Journal this morning, Obama's Iraq Fumble:

Mr. Obama's problem is he opposed the policy that created the progress that makes victory in Iraq possible. Mr. Obama's unbending opposition to the surge undermines his fundamental argument that he has better judgment on national security. Mr. McCain needs to use Mr. Obama's retrospective mistake to shape voters' prospective conclusion, convincing them that Mr. Obama's badly flawed judgment on the surge shows he cannot be trusted with major foreign-policy decisions.

Mr. Obama also created a problem by canceling a visit to U.S. soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and are now recuperating at Landstuhl hospital in Germany. His campaign has offered a welter of explanations. What's the real one? My rule is that when in doubt, see what a candidate said at the time and judge his candor. In a July 26 London news conference, Mr. Obama explained: "I was going to be accompanied by one of my advisers, a former military officer. And we got notice that he would be treated as a campaign person, and it would therefore be perceived as political because he had endorsed my candidacy, but he wasn't on the Senate staff."

The solution was obvious. Leave the campaign adviser behind and visit the wounded troops. Mr. Obama's decision to work out in the hotel gym instead adds to his growing reputation for arrogance.

Most importantly, Mr. Obama missed the opportunity to show he can admit a mistake. He could have said that what he saw on his visit to Iraq convinced him that the surge was right and its success now allows U.S. troops to be safely drawn down. Instead, he insisted he was right to say the surge wouldn't work.

That may give voters pause. If Mr. Obama can't admit the surge worked after the fact, how can voters count on him to keep his mind open to the facts on other important foreign-policy decisions?

The media is doing their best to cover for Barack Obama and his many errors. But I think that the American public is smart enough overall to see through that. And that's why the polls are still essentially tied when Obama should be ahead against an old mistake-prone candidate who is running a lousy campaign, in this "year of the Democrats", by at least 20 points.