First Glance
Posted: Friday, March 02, 2007 9:28 AM by Huma Zaidi
Filed Under:
First Thoughts
From Elizabeth Wilner, Mark Murray, and Huma Zaidi
Presidential candidates seem awfully quick to mar their own announcements with unfortunate remarks these days, and nearly as quick to say they're sorry. Appearing on Letterman Wednesday night to officially declare his run for president, Sen. John McCain (R) suggested that the lives of US troops fighting in Iraq have been "wasted:" "Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be," he said. "We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives."
Oddly, McCain's flub was the same as the one committed by his colleague and potential future rival Barack Obama (D) just a day after he officially kicked off his presidential campaign last month. And, like Obama, McCain quickly apologized, saying less than 24 hours later that he should have used the word "sacrificed" instead of "wasted" in referencing US casualties in Iraq. "No one appreciates and honors more than I do the selfless patriotism of American servicemen and women in the Iraq War," said McCain, whose son is a Marine bound for Iraq.
Obama himself commented that "over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans" have been "wasted" in the war. A day later, he apologized and said he meant that "those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission." Obama mentioned to reporters yesterday that "nobody would question Senator McCain's dedication to our veterans," NBC's Ken Strickland reports.
If McCain and Obama seem like just the latest two casualties of foot-and-mouth disease, they also are new graduates of the YouTube school of politics. If the 2006 election cycle demonstrated the dangers of screwing up anywhere near an unidentified cell phone, the 2008 cycle will be the cycle of instant apologies in an effort to squash such gaffes before video of them spreads so far and wide over the Internet that the mistake becomes uncontainable. A McCain aide yesterday called the written apology a "preventative measure." But even then, there's no guarantee that the instant apology will work. As the Cook Political Report's Jennifer Duffy wrote recently, "It's awfully tough for a politician to move beyond an unflattering incident when that incident never quietly fades."
In their cases, McCain and Obama both appear to have to stymied a problem that could have threatened to overshadow their respective announcements. Sen. Joe Biden (D) wasn't so lucky. On the same day as his official announcement, comments he made about Obama being "articulate and bright and clean" landed him in hot water. Biden issued several apologies, saying he didn't mean for the remarks to be construed the way they were, but the self-inflicted blow undercut his entrance to the race.
More troublesome for the Bush Administration, of course, is that the mini-trend of "wasted" comments highlights how two of the country's most prominent politicians, who take diametrically opposed positions on the war, seem to agree that the lives of US troops are being expended on an ill-judged and ill-managed pursuit. "What both [McCain] and I have simply tried to express," Obama elaborated yesterday, "is that when you give a mission to our extraordinarily brave soldiers that's not thought through, it's a failure of civilian leaderships." Even as McCain apologized for his "wasted" remark, he maintained that the Administration has made many mistakes in the execution of the war and that the country has "paid a grievous price for those mistakes."
Addressing a gathering of prominent conservative leaders and activists in Washington last night, Vice President Cheney called it an "inconvenient truth" that "the enemy we face in the war on terror has made Iraq the primary front in that war."
Addressing CPAC today, in order of appearance: Rep. Duncan Hunter, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Rep. Tom Tancredo, Sen. Sam Brownback, and former Gov. Mitt Romney. Tomorrow, former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will speak before the results of the group's straw poll are released in the afternoon.
And on Sunday, the Democratic party's presidential frontrunners come together -- or face off, as many see it -- to commemorate the 1965 civil rights march in Selma, AL. Former President Clinton will join his wife, lending her his popularity among African-Americans. That announcement that came shortly after a new national poll showed Obama gaining on her among that crucial voting bloc. Obama told NBC's Norah O'Donnell, "I think all of the candidates are going to be actively soliciting the support of the African-American community and that's how it should be," and that he doesn't take the community's support for granted.
