Looking The Part

It's amazing that all it takes for the media to swoon over John McCain is for him to huff and puff while Russia goes ahead and does whatever it wants anyway.

For the last several days, Senator Barack Obama has seemed to fade from the scene while on his secluded vacation here, as his opponent, Senator John McCain, has seized nearly every opportunity to display his foreign policy credentials on the dominant issue of the week: the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Only once, at the beginning of the week, did Mr. Obama discuss the fighting in public, when he emerged from his beachfront rental home to condemn Russia’s escalation, in a way that seemed timed for the evening television news. He took no questions whose answers might demonstrate command of the issue.

Mr. McCain and his surrogates, however, have discussed the situation nearly every day on the campaign trail, often taking a hard line against Russia to the point of his declaring the other day, “We are all Georgians.”

First - Honolulu is a major city, and not secluded in any way. Second, McCain has "displayed" his foreign policy credentials in ways that are ignorant:

My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression.

Presumptuous:

Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for president.

Asked about his tough rhetoric on the ongoing conflict in Georgia, McCain began: "If I may be so bold, there was another president . . ."

He caught himself and started again: "At one time, there was a president named Ronald Reagan who spoke very strongly about America's advocacy for democracy and freedom."

And thuddingly stupid, not to mention dangerous, involving himself in a foreign conflict where one of his staffers is a registered lobbyist for one side, talking to the Georgian President several times a day, which obviously sends mixed messages, and advocating what amounts to war with nuclear-armed Russia.

But none of that, of course, matters. I understand fully the optics of this. Whether McCain is cynically using the conflict to make himself look Presidential or not, the contrast between the two candidates when you have the sound off is pretty glaring. If Obama comes back tomorrow at the Saddleback Church event in Orange County (the first joint event of the campaign) and looks the part a little bit then this could blow over. However, there is a contrast here that the right will be sure to exploit. And it certainly gives reporters the shakes to see bravely bold McCain strongly calling for the mass deaths of their sons and daughters. That makes him "serious."