McCain Painting Himself into a Corner?

After writing yesterday about John McCain and his efforts to clarify the differences between his plan and whatever it is the Prez is going to announce tonight, I got to thinking about his position some more. It's been a common theme among right-leaning politicians and commentators to paint liberals and even moderate Democrats as hoping for the military to fail in Iraq. Whenever Democratic support is less than what conservatives insist it should be, they simply paint the other side as unpatriotic losers who don't just lack the resolve to win, but who don't even want to win in the first place. Tony Snow hinted at just that in yesterday's press briefing:

Well, look, Democrats are going to have to make a choice here and they're going to have to decide where they stand in terms of two issues: Number one, do you want Iraq to succeed, and, if so, what does that mean? And, number two, do you believe in supporting the troops as you say, and how do you express that support? Those are questions that will be answered in the process of public debate and also -- and a lot of other considerations. So we'll just have to see how it plays out.

That's ridiculous, of course, but in considering McCain and his recent gymnastics to find a position more hawkish than the Prez without coming up with something so extreme no one will take him seriously, I had to wonder if the charge of hoping for defeat now applies to him. McCain completely seems to be setting up a "You should've listened to me" or "I told you so" strategy for himself to run for president in a scant twenty-two months. Along with Joe Lieberman, who seems intent on playing Bucky to McCain's uberhawk Captain America, he's one of the few on the national scene actively lobbying for more troops. A lot of Republicans are willing to go along (although it's not like old times, as 30 percent of Republicans oppose a "surge"), but there aren't many leading the charge or trying to outdo the Prez. In the link above, McCain says he's happy to stand or fall on his call for additional troops, but we'll have to see whether he's still distancing himself from the administration after tonight when at least some of his proposals are likely to become presidential policy.