McCain's Iraq Argument

By Liz Halloran Wed Jul 23, 6:56 PM ET

John McCain woke up this week to front-page photographs of Barack Obama helicoptoring over Baghdad with American commander Gen. David Petraeus. To reports of the Iraqi prime minister's agreement with Obama's basic timetable to bring U.S. troops home. And to the Bush administration's talk about a "horizon" for the American military presence in Iraq.

McCain's campaign has struggled mightily to counteract his Democratic opponent's much-ballyhooed trip to the Middle East and Europe. And it has grappled with how McCain, who has opposed timetables and whose premier issue has been foreign policy, keeps the upper hand with voters when the ground has shifted. The campaign at times seemed to be flailing, testing messages that could resonate. It borrowed a page from Obama's Democratic primary rival Hillary Clinton and attacked the media for its "swoon" over Obama. It mocked the Democrat's planned presidential-style meetings with European allies later this week. And McCain himself accused Obama of being willing to "lose a war in order to win a campaign."

Though a number of conservative strategists diverged when asked how they'd advise McCain to handle Obama's news-dominating trip, there was clear agreement on at least one issue: Don't fight the pictures.

"Things are so high profile, and things are going so well for Obama," says John Fortier of the American Enterprise Institute, "that in terms of this week, it would be hard to make much of a difference." Says Dave Winston, a GOP pollster: "Right now, rightly or wrongly, the focus is on the pictures, but McCain's got to eventually make it about content."

To grab control of the Iraq issue and prevent Obama from narrowing his trust deficit with voters on foreign policy, the strategists suggested several options. And, not surprisingly, given the McCain campaign's own difficulty figuring out how to go after Obama on his timetable and continued opposition to the 2007 troop surge in Iraq, some of the suggestions are contradictory.

1. Emphasize his support of the troop surge. McCain should continue to focus on his support for the surge, which flooded Iraq with 30,000 additional troops and helped stabilize the country. He should emphasize that Obama's proposed timeline is possible only because of the surge, says Winston. "He needs to say that you can attribute the situation in Iraq to McCain yelling at the White House for three solid years."

2. Don't emphasize the surge. By looking back, McCain could risk becoming too focused on an "I was right, you were wrong" message that won't strengthen his hand. "His strongest line is not to go back and make that argument," says Fortier, but to talk about Obama as a "smooth talker, not a straight talker." McCain's key argument, the strategist says, should be that he is somebody who can lead the larger war on terror.

3. Both should move on from the past. "The rhetoric is irrelevant," says Jim Carafano, a retired military officer and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Carafano's view is that President Bush "solved the [Iraq] problem before leaving office," and that both Obama and McCain need to "focus on their vision for the Middle East." Obama has begun doing that--he referred Tuesday to a "growing consensus" on troop withdrawal from Iraq. Says Carafano: "There's been silliness on both sides," with Obama denying the surge worked and McCain saying he doesn't want a timeline. Bottom line, Carafano says, is no matter who is elected, their Iraq policy will turn out about the same.

Can McCain still dominate foreign policy and the Iraq issue? Yes, the strategists say, though Obama has made strides this week in powerful photos, if not in rhetoric. And it's early. Both candidates have the potential to stumble before Election Day, and no one expects conditions on the ground in the Middle East to remain frozen in time.

Meanwhile, McCain this week will simply have to grit his teeth. "There's nothing he can do to change the story of the day," Fortier says. "But longer term--there is opportunity."

Wednesday afternoon McCain canceled an availability with the national press. And a short time later, his campaign announced a new appearance for the candidate Thursday in Ohio. It will be a town hall meeting with Lance Armstrong. The topic? Cancer. Both men are survivors.