Keifus, I’m not even sure what a centrist on the war would be. We’re either there, with all that that entails, or we’re not. Maybe there are opposing camps of hawks? Anyway, my guess is that at some point between now and the end of the year, one of the GOP candidates will decide departure is the better part of valor and come out for peace with honor. McCain said something last week about withdrawing if that’s what the public wants, but that seems like an awkward stance — “We’re doomed if we leave but okay, if that’s what you really want …”

A local radio show had him on this morning (the price of being late to work–I loathe BBC World Service). McCain was quite confident that if we relax our effort in Iraq, the terrorists will follow us to these shores. (I am not quite so confident, needless to say.)

K

Weldon may be right about my McCain video. It’s debatable. I don’t think his larger argument is sustained by the facts. Do I think attacks on Republicans inevitably help Republicans? The idea is disproved by the very article Weldon links to which has this sentence:

“When Russ Feingold called for censuring the president a month ago, it seemed like a smart political move…”

That sentence can’t exist in a world in which I think it’s inevitable. Neither can other articles I’ve written which say a version of the same or, in some cases echo Democratic attacks against the administration or in some cases (http://www.slate.com/id/2148033/) confect my own lines of attack.

Sometimes I think such attacks are stupid. Sometimes I think they have unintended consequences. Sometimes I’m right and sometimes I’m wrong. I hardly think it’s inevitable.

This is why Weldon, since he is honorable and intellectually honest struck out those passages, as he has modified previous posts in the past in light of new facts. (In a perfect world these corrections would make their way through to the places that have crossed posted or prevent the charming comments about my mother’s corpse that popped up at Eschaton.)

I would also argue that the Pelosi piece was not about what Weldon says it was. It was not about whether Pelosi or Democrats should investigate but whether it made tactical sense for her to talk about investigations on the very day, the very day, she and her strategists were trying to show that they had a non-investigations agenda. Again, I may have been wrong in my argument, but I think I’m right about what my argument was.

I would also argue that his charge that I go for the shallow instead of the meaty—which is a potentially valid claim almost any day of the week– at least in the McCain case is wrong. I wrote about his speech at VMI a week ago (http://www.slate.com/id/2163956/) at far greater length than the piece we’re talking about and discussed some of the very issues, like loss of support from independents, that he suggests I missed in this post.