Bush Redux?

By now each of us has heard the claim by the two Democratic candidates for President and other minions of the Democratic Party that Sen. McCain is running for a “third Bush term.” Of course this is nonsense. Sen. McCain was never one, for better or for worse, to toe the administration line and would not seek to perpetuate that line were he to become President.

The only reason his Democratic critics can allege that he is Bush redux–despite all those pesky matters of public record to the contrary–is because he, like President Bush, is determined to win in Iraq and stave off the devastating effects American defeat would incur.

But on second look, Sen. McCain and the Bush Administration have had two distinct positions on Iraq throughout the course of most of our involvement there, as David Brooks points out this morning. From nearly the moment that Saddam’s statue fell in Baghdad, Sen. McCain criticized the administration’s reconstruction strategy and advocated an infusion of American forces into Iraq to bring security to the country, the absolute requiem for a democratic process to develop. Only in January of last year did the Bush Administration abandon its own failed strategy and adopt that of Sen. McCain and other bright military minds in the country.

Sen. McCain never toed the administration’s line, and in fact it was the Bush Administration that eventually conformed itself to Sen. McCain’s line. Now Democrats would like to convince Americans that the opposite is true, seeking to penalize Sen. McCain for the fact that the Bush Administration eventually wised up and adopted his strategy.

Of course the irony in this is that it is now Democrats who support the old Bush/Rumsfeld strategy, preaching as gospel phased withdrawals of American troops with the simultaneous transfer of security responsibilities to Iraqi forces that are not yet ready to shoulder that entire burden themselves, the recipe for–as we have seen–al Qaeda terrorism and sectarian bloodshed.

In the end, as Mr. Brooks concludes, “Anybody who thinks McCain is merely continuing the Bush agenda is not paying attention.”