Bush, Obama and McCain’s Choice

Three important pieces today, taken together, frame the central issue (or what ought to be the central issue) of the coming campaign:

Caroline Glick, in “Obama’s Unique Appeasement Style,” writes about the reaction to President Bush’s address to the Knesset:

To Israeli ears, Bush’s words were uncontroversial. Israel is beset by enemies who daily call for its physical annihilation and while doing so, build and support terror forces who attack Israel. For most Israelis, the notion that these enemies can be appeased is absurd and deeply offensive. . . .

From an Israeli vantage point then, it was shocking to see that immediately after Bush stepped down from the rostrum, Obama and his Democratic supporters began pillorying him for his remarks. . . .Obama’s response to Bush’s speech was an effective acknowledgement that appeasing Iran and other terror sponsors is a defining feature of his campaign and of his political persona. As far as he is concerned, an attack against appeasement is an attack against Obama.

Bret Stephens in “Obama and the Jews” reflects on Obama’s votes and vision:

Mr. Obama says he favors "tough diplomacy," including tighter sanctions on Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards Corps. Last fall, however, he was one of only 22 senators to oppose a Senate resolution calling for the IRGC to be designated as a terrorist organization, a vote that made him a dove even within the Democratic Party. Mr. Obama argued at the time the amendment would give the administration a pretext to go to war with Iran. It was an odd claim for a nonbinding resolution. . . .

In the Atlantic interview, Mr. Obama declared that "my job in being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth," particularly in respect to the settlements. Yes, there are mirrors that need to be held up to those settlements, as there are to those Palestinians whose terrorism makes their dismantlement so problematic. Perhaps there is also a mirror to be held up to an American foreign-policy neophyte whose amazing conceit is that he understands Israel‘s dilemmas better than Israelis themselves.

The New York Sun lead editorial today (“The Logic of Lieberman”) says that after Senator Joseph Lieberman’s speech Sunday night to the annual COMMENTARY dinner, McCain should consider choosing “the senator expelled by the Democrats two years ago in Connecticut” to “signal that Mr. McCain aims to unite the country with his actions rather than just Obama-style rhetoric:

Mr. Lieberman spoke of how the Democratic Party had lost its way, from a party that was once “unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American,” to one that came under the sway of a philosophy that saw America as the aggressor. “There is now more isolationist sentiment in Democratic than in Republican ranks,” Mr. Lieberman said, deriding what he called the “McGovern-Carter blame-America worldview.” He attacked Senator Obama, saying that the “presumptive presidential nominee,” “has really not been willing to stand up to his party’s left on a single significant issue this far in his campaign.”

Mr. Lieberman criticized Mr. Obama’s promise to meet with President Ahmadinejad and with the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Il, saying that Kennedy never met with Castro and Reagan never met with Ayatollah Khomenei. He pointed out that while Mr. Obama is courting the Iranians and the North Koreans, he is spurning our allies, opposing free trade agreements with South Korea and Colombia, and “pledging to abandon the democratically elected government in Baghdad.” He called President Bush’s speech in Jerusalem that Mr. Obama so heatedly objected to “magnificent.”

Whether or not Iraq, Iran and Israel become the important issues in the coming campaign (as opposed to ephemeral issues such as gas prices or content-less slogans such as “hope” and “change”), the central historic issues will in fact be the ones dealing with the multi-front war now hanging in the balance in the Middle East. 

It is ironic that McCain’s near-dead primary campaign was energized (and Rudy Giuliani’s effectively ended) earlier this year when Lieberman crossed the aisle to endorse him, and that now McCain’s decision whether to look back across the aisle for his vice-presidential choice may be the only way to provide a centrist, fusion ticket necessary not only to win, but to meet the central challenge the winner will face.