McCain: Obama unfit to defend America (from second rate regional power, Iran).

As the general election begins to ramp up, it’s worth marking off a number of Sen. McCain’s claims that are demonstrably bogus, despite being accepted more or less at face value by national political press.

First, McCain a critic of President Bush’s war policies?

Please.

Sen. McCain has consistently supported all of the president’s war policies. His dissents have been atmospheric and marginal, at best.

Indeed, his embrace of the advisors, outside supporters and policies of President Bush’s neoconservative foreign policy shows that it is President Bush’s failed foreign policies that he is most intent on continuing and expanding. Whatever McCain might do on cutting upper-income taxes is clearly not something he’s got his heart in. These are topics he doesn’t have a great deal of interest in and he’s espousing policies he denounced only four or five years ago. They are simply the necessary scaffolding of building a conservative coalition to support his war policies where are his real interest very evidently remains.

On foreign policy, McCain is 100% with President Bush’s policies.

Given the president’s abysmal public approval ratings, it’s in the Democrats’ obvious political interest to portray a McCain presidency as a continuation of President Bush’s foreign policy. But this charge has the benefit of being true. Simply listen to what he says. On every particular, it’s staying true to President Bush’s course.

As I noted a couple days ago, in recent weeks, Terry McAuliffe has managed to turn projectile nonsense into something approaching the sublime. But with the primary battle now rapidly winding down, Terry’s tear may be coming to an end. So before it’s over, in today’s episode of TPMtv we bring you some of Terry’s greatest recent moments …

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

One TPM Reader goes rational on President Bush …

When President Bush decries “the false comfort of appeasement,” and John McCain raises the spectre of Neville Chamberlain, they’re deliberately advancing a fallacious line of argument. Appeasement – the acceptance of conditions imposed by an aggressor in lieu of open conflict – is not the result of negotiation, but of capitulation. And the inverse proposition – the rejection of all negotiation even at the price of open conflict – is
just as rigidly obtuse. We call it war-mongering.

I don’t particularly mind that our President has chosen to air a domestic dispute abroad – that’s his perogative. And I’ve always been miffed by the notion that foreign policy is for the experts, and too delicate a matter to be subject to public debate or the people’s will – what the establishment terms ‘politicization.’ But I’m incensed that the coverage has focused on whether or not Obama’s support of negotiations constitutes appeasement, as if this were subject to dispute. It’s not. He has never proposed giving in to our enemies. His support of negotiation constitutes, ipso facto, a rejection of appeasement.

There are not two valid sides to this dispute. For the media to accede to this kind of slander, just because it’s what the GOP demands, well, it borders on appeasement.

As long as we’re insisting on a non-nonsense discussion of foreign policy, let’s note that Pres. Bush and Sen. McCain must be terribly illiterate of our history or extremely cowardly to compare the current president of Iran (who helps govern a country with a tanked economy and a third or fourth rate military) to Adolf Hilter who had regrouped and tossed the restraints from what was the greatest military, scientific and economic powerhouse in Europe.

I hear McCain’s top foreign lobbyist advisor Charlie Black (he’s the one who now conducts his lobbying business from McCain’s campaign bus) was just on the tube knocking Obama for his willingness to talk to international bad actors. Remember, this is the same Charlie Black who worked on behalf of Ahmad Chalabi (who unless I’m mistaken our government still believes spied on us on behalf of Iran) and then got the contract for creating phony news in Iraq …

Special TPM Bonus Round: Send us any examples you can find of reporters asking Black about his work for regime-change bamboozler and accused Iranian spy Ahmad Chalabi and other rogue regimes.

Super Double Bonus for any TPM Reader who can get us a clip of Black being asked whether he is sure Chalabi was not passing US secrets to Iran while he had Black on his payroll.

Right-Wing Radio yakker crashes and burns like the Hindenburg while trying to talk about appeasement …

As Duncan would say, Make it stop.

President Bush and Sen. McCain have been tag-teaming Sen. Obama on his willingness to hold talks with Iran. Jamie Rubin pulls the tape of him calling for talks with Hamas a mere two years ago.

(ed.note: As Rubin makes clear in his OpEd, there’s nothing unreasonable about McCain’s position from two years ago. It’s probably the right position. It just shows his campaign rhetoric today is dishonest posturing for political effect.)

Late Update: Here’s video of McCain’s 2006 statements:

The EPA’s newest contribution to its dreadful legacy under Bush: more smog in national parks.

Ruth Rosen remembers the beginning of the California gay marriage battle: San Francisco City Hall in 2004.