Obama Tries To Gain Street Cred

While Barack Obama makes his rounds on his I'll-Show-Everyone-I-Know-What-I'm-Doing-When-It-Comes-To-Foreign-Policy Tour trying to gain some street cred, John McCain was in New Hampshire, talking to the voters.

If Obama had his way and the 147,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq were withdrawn in March and the surge in troops had never occurred, McCain said, "My friends, that would have been a catastrophe for the United States of America."

McCain repeatedly said the surge of some 20,000 additional troops in Iraq has greatly reduced sectarian violence and American casualties over the last year. McCain criticized Obama, who was in Jordan on Tuesday and scheduled to visit in Israel today, for not supporting the surge.

"Our troops will be withdrawing and coming home, but they will come home in victory and not defeat, as they would have with Sen. Obama," McCain said. The Arizona senator said the United States and its NATO allies may need to put more troops in Afghanistan to achieve the same results there as they have in Iraq.

Why is it that even today, when the surge in Iraq has achieved stunning results, Obama only grudging admits the surge did exactly what it was supposed to do – bring peace in Iraq? And even then he doesn't really.

Is his overseas trip supposed to show the voters he has the foreign policy experience needed to be President? If so, he's failed miserably, even with the MSM's fawning coverage of his every move. Visiting a few foreign lands does not give anyone the foreign policy background needed to sit in the Oval Office. If that were so, I'd be far more experienced than Obama in that regard. (Oh, wait, I am!)

For some time now we've seen the Senator from Illinois have to explain comments he's made because they were “misconstrued”. It seems he has to do that a lot. Despite his eloquence, it appears he doesn't think well on his feet, making statements sure to offend the very people he needs in order to be elected. Unless he's got a teleprompter in front of him he's likely to plant a foot firmly in his mouth. Then he has to spend time trying to undo the damage done by his non-scripted remarks. That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

The more I learn about Obama, the more he appears to be nothing more than an empty suit. He's long on rhetoric but short on ideas, offering nothing new to the electorate. His claim that he offers change is no different from any other candidate. Unfortunately the change he's offering is a throwback the administration of FDR, with a little LBJ thrown in. A return to the days of the New Deal or the Great Society hold absolutely no appeal to me. Neither period is an example of “the Good Old Days”.

I think that as more people come to know Obama, the less likely they'll come to see him as worthy to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. Give him another 20 years or so experience and maybe, just maybe he'll be ready. But I doubt it.