What We Learned in the War
By GAIL COLLINS
NYT
As we slink off into the long holiday weekend, let’s see if we can tout up the lessons learned from Wesleygate.
That was the outcry that erupted when Wesley Clark, the retired general, suggested that John McCain’s military command background did not, by itself, qualify him to be president. You’d have thought that Clark had dissed McCain’s record as a prisoner of war. (“Minimized five and a half years in a hole!” — Laura Ingraham.)
Clark, who has been available for a vice-presidential nomination for so long that his shelf-life sticker is expiring, actually said that the year McCain once spent running an aviation squadron in Florida did not amount to serious executive experience. “He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall,” Clark told CBS’s Bob Schieffer energetically. “He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say: ‘I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not — do you want to take this risk?’ ”
A picky observer might have a few quibbles here. Do wartime squadron commanders typically receive reports from diplomats? Also, is this the best possible line of attack for an Obama supporter to take, when Barack’s only big claim to executive leadership was being a community organizer? Not generally a job that involves ordering bombs to fall.
(Continued here.)
NYT
As we slink off into the long holiday weekend, let’s see if we can tout up the lessons learned from Wesleygate.
That was the outcry that erupted when Wesley Clark, the retired general, suggested that John McCain’s military command background did not, by itself, qualify him to be president. You’d have thought that Clark had dissed McCain’s record as a prisoner of war. (“Minimized five and a half years in a hole!” — Laura Ingraham.)
Clark, who has been available for a vice-presidential nomination for so long that his shelf-life sticker is expiring, actually said that the year McCain once spent running an aviation squadron in Florida did not amount to serious executive experience. “He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall,” Clark told CBS’s Bob Schieffer energetically. “He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say: ‘I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not — do you want to take this risk?’ ”
A picky observer might have a few quibbles here. Do wartime squadron commanders typically receive reports from diplomats? Also, is this the best possible line of attack for an Obama supporter to take, when Barack’s only big claim to executive leadership was being a community organizer? Not generally a job that involves ordering bombs to fall.
(Continued here.)
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