Did he or didn't he?
John McCain has accused Mitt Romney of having "wanted to set a date for withdrawal [from Iraq] that would have meant disaster." McCain apparently is referring to a statement Romney made last April in which he assumed President Bush and the head of the Iraqi government might discuss timetables and troop levels in Iraq. I don't think Romney's statement fairly can be construed as advocating setting a date for our withdrawal.
On the other hand, there’s little doubt that Romney was less resolute on Iraq than McCain. When I interviewed Romney around the time the administration had decided to surge, his position was that the surge was well worth trying, that we’d know in a few months whether it was working, and that if it wasn’t working we’d have to try something else. I wasn’t able to get Romney to say what his “Plan B” was, but he seemed clear that it wasn’t withdrawal.
The other thing that came through in my interview was Romney’s tendency to defer to experts in the government. He agreed, for example, that the Defense Department’s benchmarks for success were reasonable and added that without access to classified information it was difficult to make independent assessments.
It’s hard to fault Romney for taking something of a “wait-and-see” attitude towards the surge – that was certainly my attitude. It’s also hard to fault Romney for the deference he showed the government, given its superior access to information.
But the fact remains that, throughout the debate about Iraq, John McCain brought to the table an independence of judgment that Romney (and just about everyone else) did not. McCain refused to defer to the Defense Department when things were going badly in Iraq. Rather he kept advocating another approach – essentially the one that’s working now. And, though I doubt McCain would have advocated surging forever if the surge had been a clear failure, I think it’s fair to say that his commitment to the strategy ran deeper than Romney’s; certainly it was less tied to the judgment of the Bush administration.
So McCain has the better record, but that doesn't justify trying to make Romney’s record sound worse than it is.
UPDATE: Lindsey Graham was on with Sean Hannity this evening and misrepresented Romney's statement. Par for the course for this reprehensible politician.
What post do you think a President McCain would offer Lindsey Graham? I'm guessing Attorney General or Supreme Court Justice. Maybe both, if McCain gets two terms.
A WORD OF THANKS to Real Clear Politics for including this post in the early morning update, and right above a piece by Caroline Kennedy (endorsing Barack Obama). I never thought my name would appear on the same page as Caroline Kennedy's.
UPDATE: Paul adds more here.
