Five things we learned from the Audacity of Hope world tour

It’s now taken as read that on a central question of military policy viz the central foreign entanglement of our time (and also one of the central political issues of the election), McCain was right and Obama was wrong. Unlike the war itself, this is an issue where Obama actually had to cast a vote in the Senate. With McCain driving the media narrative, Obama was asked repeatedly on the trip to recant his original position. His answers weren’t merely poor and grudging, but veered into the realm of falsehood when he suggested in interviews that he’d always believed the surge would reduce the mayhem in Iraq. In fact, he said at the time of its announcement, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” This is a question that Obama is going to be peppered with again and again, and he needs a better reply. The argument that judgment trumps experience in foreign policy worked in the Democratic primary, when the debate was over the authorization of the war itself. But now the debate is going to be more forward-looking, and McCain can claim his judgment on the surge as a means of bringing a measure of peace and stability to Iraq trumped Obama’s.