Bob Wright, in his latest bloggingheads segment with Mickey Kaus, endorses the idea of General Petraeus serving as Secretary of State in an Obama administration (around 2:37), but can’t finish the thought as he begins laughing. He also compliments Petraeus for his strategy of ‘killing the irreconcilables, and talking to the reconcilables.’ Wright regards this Petraeus strategy as critical to the country’s stabilization. He says that Petraeus takes the approach that a left-of-center Secretary of State might — but it’s hard to imagine Warren Christopher or Madeline Albright as strong advocates of the surge. The idea is (unfortunately) laughable, and not just because it would be odd for a presidential candidate to preemptively name a Secretary of State who can’t either accept or decline the job. Rather, it’s inconceivable because the Democratic base hates Petraeus and has engaged in the vilest sort of slander against him. When MoveOn.org ran its ‘Betray Us’ ad, the best Senator Obama could do was to label the attack ‘a distraction.’ Wright later laments that Obama is ‘running away’ from the success in Iraq, and ‘denying the success that there is.’ Eventually, if Obama wants to win the presidency, he will probably be forced to acknowledge it.
