Here is an interesting exchange from Brit Hume’s show last night on the spat between John McCain and Mitt Romney on the surge. Although they qualify their point (as I have), both Mort Kondracke and Charles Krauthammer agree that Mitt Romney was talking about withdrawal when he discussed timetables in an ABC interview back in April. As I’ve written before, I think McCain is well within his rights to have made the argument he’s made. Is it an aggressive political play? Sure. But is it “dishonest” or a “smear” as so many have alleged? I don’t think it is. (Fred Barnes, after the exchange below, called McCain’s claim “Clintonian.” Obviously lots of people agree with him. I don’t see it.)
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: I must say for most of the debate McCain was not at his best. He was irascible, self-righteous, and on a couple of issues, appalling. However, on this particular exchange, I looked at this quotation every which way, and even though McCain exaggerated, this is not exactly the equivalent of waving the flag the way that Hillary did in her response to a question about withdrawal in a debate. Romney protests too much. He pretends that what he is talking about in discussions with Maliki about timetables and benchmarks is about everything except withdrawal. It’s about troop training and rotation, et cetera. However, the sentence after he talks about timetables he says “You want this in private, you don’t want it in public, because otherwise the enemy will know what you are leaving.” BRIT HUME: Wasn’t that one of the big arguments against a timetable? KRAUTHAMMER: That’s the argument against, he says, against the public declaration of it. But he’s implying that you don’t want to say publicly, but if you are saying that a public announcement will alert Al-Queda about your leaving, it means that the private discussion was about your leaving. So, in fact, McCain is right. And, look, this was in response to a question about withdrawal. It’s not to say that somehow Romney is a traitor or he’s calling for an immediate exit. He was hedging. He hedged in April, and it was not unreasonable. Nobody had any idea that the surge would be such a success. A policy maker would actually have to think what do you do if it doesn’t succeed? And we are now having discussions with Maliki about a long-term agreement in which we will have timetables of withdrawal, ultimately. But in April of last year, and then in December of the year before, obviously, Romney hedged on support of the surge. And McCain is right, that he staked everything on the surge because he believed that it’s better to lose an election than to lose a war. MORT KONDRAKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, “ROLL CALL”: I agree with Charles. The question that Robin Roberts put to Romney was do you believe that there should be a timetable in withdrawing the troops? His answer is to take the idea of the timetable and say, no, we will not have a public timetable. But he was talking about timetable, and the question was about withdrawing troops.
