Grandiosity (0.00 / 0)

Josh Marshall made the point that people who want to be great leaders have an easier time if they lead during a crisis, so there is always the temptation to (1) foment a crisis and/or (2) puff up whatever crisis you find yourself in.  

Certainly both have been the case with the neocons, who last we looked had us in a great Clash of Civilizations that we had to win or the Judeo-Christian tradition, Democracy and Free Markets would all end up on the ash heap of history.  And McCain bought into that wholeheartedly, with Iraq as The Central Front in the War On Terror.

Now, in the blink of an eye, while everyone was watching the Olympics, suddenly we are back in the Cold War, a tinpot, hothead dictator (don't believe all the hype) Saakashvili is the new George Washington, and we are back defending the West against the Evil Empire of the Russians.

So McCain is hyping up Georgia (which right now looks more like a public relations disaster for the US, as it demonstrates that the Russians can thumb their nose at us and do what they think they have to in order to secure their borders) in order to puff himself up and make both himself and the situation seem more important than they really are.  Plus, from everything I have read and heard McCain and the US and the press are seriously misreading and misreporting the situation.  As a consequence, they are making things much worse.  Like Josh, I think McCain would be a really scary, really insane sort of Cheney-on-steroids kind of Pres.

Fortunmately, I don't think thatis going to happen.  Obama has the Pacific and North Atlantic Coasts and McCain has the South and Plains.  The election is going to be won in the MidWest, and that is Obama country.  And those folks are much more savvy than they were 70 years ago, but they atill aren't enamored of foreign adventures.  Thinking they can revive the Cold War and ride to power on it as if this was 1984 seems to me to very seriously misjudge the mood of the country.

I really, really hope I'm not wrong about this last part.

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

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by: Mimikatz @ Fri Aug 15, 2008 at 13:27:05 PM CDT

Looks like Georgia had to fold (0.00 / 0)

There is a cease-fire, but Russia will not only keep its peacekeepers in South Ossetia but no longer says it will respect Georgia's current boundaries, and can send its military on patriols outside South Ossetia.  Plus they've destroyed much of the Georgian military, and the cease-fire says that the West bears some responsibility here.

Details here

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

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by: Mimikatz @ Fri Aug 15, 2008 at 13:48:03 PM CDT

Interesting... (0.00 / 0)

That every single blog jumped on this immediately, but the only normal-media source I see even mentioning this so far is a columnist (blogger?) on the U.S. News and World report website...

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by: mcc @ Fri Aug 15, 2008 at 15:04:37 PM CDT