E.J. Graff reflects on the Iraq War dead.

Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) is retiring.

Been a rough couple years. He got busted for apparently helping to keep the lid on Rep. Mark Foley hijinks. And now it’s just come out that under his leadership the NRCC a renegade staffer pilfered something like a million bucks of GOP money.

I often find it quaint when Republicans go after anyone for hateful rhetoric or race prejudice when it’s been a major pillar of GOP coalition going back more than forty years.

The co-founder of Laura Ingraham’s radio show who now helps run Hugh Hewitt’s ‘Salem Radio Network’ has mixed an Obama video interweaving Obama with Malcolm X, the Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics and Public Enemy’s ‘Fight the Power’.

From the NYT …

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers had hoped that the uproar over inflammatory remarks made by Mr. Obama’s longtime pastor that has rocked his campaign for a week might lead voters and superdelegates to question whether they really know enough about Mr. Obama to back him. Although it is still early to judge his success, the speech Mr. Obama delivered on race in Philadelphia to address the controversy was well received and praised even by some Clinton supporters.

…

No less important, the campaign hopes that Mr. Obama will have been battered by five rough weeks that raise questions about his past, including the pastor’s incendiary comments, that would underscore Mrs. Clinton’s warning to Democrats that they were rallying around someone who was untested and unvetted.

“The superdelegates are not going to really decide until June,” Mr. Penn said. “He’s just going through a vetting and testing process that didn’t happen a year ago and is now happening. The whole vetting and testing process will make a big difference.”

It is in the interest of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign to portray the contest as being highly competitive. Her campaign is intent on combating Mr. Obama’s efforts to pick off superdelegates. And it is increasingly concerned that any sign that the window is closing could lead a Democrat like Al Gore or Speaker Nancy Pelosi to step in and urge Democrats to back Mr. Obama in the interest of unity.

In truth, in interviews, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said that task was tough and growing tougher and that the critical questions were what would happen with Florida and Michigan and the possibility of developments involving Mr. Obama’s relationship with his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

…

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they had spent recent days making the case to wavering superdelegates that Mr. Obama’s association with Mr. Wright would doom their party in the general election.

That argument could be Mrs. Clinton’s last hope for winning this contest.

Did Dick Cheney personally intervene to break the Iraq election law impasse?

Jay Rosen, Spencer Ackerman and Robert Bateman all agree over in this week’s TPMCafe Book Club.

Scooter Libby disbarred.

Yesterday, I wrote the first in what I hope will be a series of posts making the case that a John McCain presidency would be a strategic disaster for the United States. McCain’s record suggests he has little ability to think in terms of America’s strategic goals around the world and focuses instead on near term tactical issues which he usually gets wrong.

Whether it’s going to be possible to make that case — which I think is an extremely strong one — in the context of an election campaign is another question. And whatever else we say about McCain any campaign strategy against McCain has to start with a recognition that he has very low unfavorable ratings for a candidate who’s been in public life for as long as he has. (According to the latest Gallup poll, each candidate’s unfavorable numbers are McCain 27%, Obama 33% and Clinton 44%. Other polls have different reads, but the basic point about McCain’s low negatives is a consistent finding.)

So if the Democrats want to run well against McCain they need to be focusing in on one key political fact. The Iraq War remains very unpopular. Most Americans think it was a mistake and most want to leave.

John McCain meanwhile is in lockstep with President Bush on the issue and wants to continue all his policies, including a decades long occupation of Iraq.

The details beyond these two salient facts are secondary at best. If the Democrats are serious about contesting this election, affiliated groups — and there’s at least one already out there specifically tasked with taking the fight to McCain — need to get on the air making this single point and running it in key states around the country.

Whether that pulls down his numbers in the short-term is an open question in my mind. But the realization of this key fact in the minds of voters is a necessary predicate for a Democratic victory in November.

The ‘Surge’ is working? Try reading Fareed Zakaria’s new column on just how poorly things are going on the ground. McCain’s opponents may seize on what may possibly be the beginning of an uptick in violence in the country. But that’s really secondary to the real issue which is that the strategic aim of the surge has failed. It’s fastened us down even more firmly in Iraq whereas the aim was to jumpstart a political process in the country that would allow us to begin to disengage.

These points are completely lost on McCain. A savvy campaign should be able to make McCain’s failure to understand the surge’s failure into a potent political issue.

This is why Clinton laudatory statements about John McCain as potential commander-in-chief amounted to such folly. McCain was a Navy fighter pilot. Everything suggests he’s incredibly weak on foreign policy. He doesn’t get strategy, doesn’t get the big picture of what’s going on in the world. At the simplest level he can’t grasp why it’s not in the United States’ interest to stay in Iraq for decades. The monetary costs, the inattention to the growth of other regional powers — all lost on him.

TPM Reader JR on McCain’s weakness as a foreign policy leader …

To follow up on Josh’s earlier post on “McCain’s inability to see beyond the immediate issues of military tactics to any firm grasp of strategy” — that reminded me of something that a conservative, long-time McCain foe told me recently about the McCain – it’s too neat of an explanation, but it occurred to me then (and now, reading Josh’s post) that it has some usefulness.

The guy — who has been watching and fighting against McCain for years — basically said that McCain has the personality of a Navy pilot, which is to say he is focused like a laser on tactics and maneuvering and has little grasp of overall strategy, nor does he want it; and that is coupled with a total enthrallment of his own rightness.

The guy’s point was — the skills of instant two-step-ahead (but no more) thinking and total faith in one’s decision-making are what keep you alive in a cockpit, but it doesn’t serve you well in politics (or leadership). It leads to what Josh was noting – an inability to grasp strategy or nuance, and a general lack of self-awareness that comes from self-questioning.

The closest parallel was Duke Cunningham, he said. Which I thought was kind of funny — McCain is clearly brighter and substantially less criminal that Duke. But they are/were both short-term thinkers absolutely convinced of their own rightness. Maybe it *is* a pilot thing.