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By Mark Kilmer Posted in Face the Nation | FOX News Sunday | Late Edition | Meet the Press | Special Features | This Week — Comments (16) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Sunday, July 6, 2008

PREFACE:

On ABC's This Week, Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) asserted that the Iraqis were passing laws to make it seem like they were doing something but not enforcing them. (Actually, on oil revenue sharing, they've not passed a law but are enforcing the sharing anyway.) Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) noted that there has been a significant change in Obama's position over the past week, with Obama now expressing concern for the "stability of Iraq" when discussing troop withdrawal. That, Lieberman argued, is the McCain position.

Next on TW, Libertarian Bob Barr spouted a few agreeable platitudes regarding the Nanny State then posited that George Bush was worse for our civil liberties than was Bill Clinton.

On FOX News Sunday, Brit Hume hosted an entertaining panel discussion.

On NBC, Meet the Press was preempted by a tennis match.

On CBS' Face the Nation John Kerry ("reporting for duty") posited that John McCain has flip-flopped more often than he has, and that we should try to partner with the People's Republic of China. Gitmo should never have been opened, Kerry offered, maintaining that we should have tried the enemy combatants right there on the battlefield.

For his part, Lindsey Graham said that the biggest loser now in Iraq is al Qaeda, and the biggest loser longer will be Iran. He said that the only way we could lose this war is to do an Obama retreat.

On CNN's Late Edition, Wolf Blitzer did a 10th anniversary best-of show.

Read on for the show-by-show review.

LIEBERMAN AND REED ON TW. From Connecticut, Independent Senator Joe Lieberman was host George Stephanopoulos's guest on ABC's This Week, alongside Jack Reed, Dem of Rhode Island. Lieberman smiled that the situation in Iraq today is what a former-veep might call, "An inconvenient truth." McCain was right on backing the surge and Iraq was coming together. Reed countered that McCain "has been consistently wrong on strategy" in regards to Iraq, pointing out that McCain had voted to invade in the first place.

Steph played a clip of Obama telling the late Tim Russert at a debate earlier this year that he would get out of Iraq now and would not listen to any argument for any other position. Now, Steph pointed out, Obama says that he's willing to listen to the commanders. Reed shot back that Obama will redeploy. Lieberman noted that there has been a significant change in Obama's position over the past week, with Obama now expressing concern for the "stability of Iraq" when discussing troop withdrawal. That, Lieberman argued, is the McCain position.

Reed argued that while we are making military progress in Iraq, the Iraqi government is not living up to its end of the bargain. I didn't hear anyone mention that 15 of the 18 benchmarks have been met, but Reed claimed that the Iraqis were passing laws but not enforcing them. (Actually, on one of the three unmet benchmarks, oil revenue sharing, they've not passed a law but are enforcing the sharing anyway.)

Reed says that he's concerned that there could be military action against Iran, but he seemed confident that Israel would not attack them if we put up a strong negotiate-with-Iran front.

BOB BARR ON TW. Bob Barr was Steph's next guest on TW, and he complained about the Nanny State, which he said was the federal government. Steph pointed out that Barr had been a regular Republican statist and wondered when and how Barr had his "epiphany." Barr liked the use of that word, and he blamed Bush and wiretapping, and Bush and the sentiment that "habeas corpus is no longer important."

Barr said that Bush was much worse than Clinton.

Barr said that there was little difference between the two political parties, and that Lieberman and Reed had just proven this.

ROUNDTABLE ON FNS.. Brit Hume was in for Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday, and his panel was Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol, and Mara Liasson and Juan Williams.

Williams posited that Obama was compromising on key issues and thus losing his left wing base. Liasson interjected that the left wing base would certainly not vote for McCain. Fred Barnes offered that Obama changes his position for a given audience. Williams noted that Obama is "taking advantage of the fact that there is no left wing alternative" to his candidacy. (Isn't Nader running?)

Liasson posited that McCain's campaign "is less than the sum of its parts." It is the conventional wisdom that McCain's campaign is in trouble and he must do something or other to fix it. (I do not know if this were taped prior to Steve Schmidt's ascendancy on the chucking of the regional managers experiment.)

Fred Barnes said that McCain is facing a headwind in a strong Democrat year. Liasson suggested that McCain is "running ahead of his brand," while Obama is "running behind his brand." This means that McCain is faring better than would be a generic Republican, which one could intuit would be the case, but that Obama is faring worse than a generic Dem. I'd have to see that set of polls, if they exist beyond simple blather.

Kristol pointed out that Hillary was beating Obama in the end, when he was already the presumptive Dem nominee. He called Obama "too liberal" to win. He added that McCain can beat Obama but the McCain campaign, as currently constituted, cannot beat the Obama campaign.

Williams held that McCain needed to move the GOP brand to the center. Barnes countered that McCain needs to run to the center-right while paying attention to the right.

Williams disagreed, asking incredulously: "Where's the right going to go?"

Barnes replied, "They won't vote."

KERRY AND GRAHAM ON FTN. On CBS' Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer talked to JF Kerry ("reporting for duty") and Lindsey Graham. Schieffer began by playing a clip from an Obama speech about how he'd end the war upon inauguration then contrasted it with Obama's latest position. Kerry said that McCain is trying to obscure the fact that McCain wants to continue the war while Obama wants end it. He accused McCain of taking Obama's "sane" statement and twisting, although it is no position change whatsoever. Kerry hissed that McCain has been wrong about everything regarding the Iraq war. "The bottom line is, that they're trying to make an issue where there isn't one."

Schieffer explained to Lindsey Graham that Obama is finally doing what McCain would do, so why is McCain being so tough on it for him? Graham explained that McCain is about winning the war. He said that Obama's previous position was a political calculation: "I don't know what he's going to do. He's in a box."

Schieffer asked Kerry about his having seriously considered John McCain as his veep candidate in 2004, He asked, "Has John McCain changed or have you changed?" Kerry said that McCain is "not the John McCain who defined himself of a maverick." He said that John McCain has flip-flopped on more issues than he could have possibly been accused of flipping. (Yes, he still brings his own failed self and his failed run for the presidency into every conversation.)

Kerry said that he met with the king of Saudi Arabia who told him that we've handed Iraq to Iran on a silver platter. He said that the Saudis are outraged. He questioned McCain's judgment.

Graham said that he doesn't think Kerry will ask McCain to be his vice president if he runs again.

Graham said that John McCain has understood Iraq better than anyone else. The biggest loser in Iraq, he said, was al Qaeda; the biggest loser in the long term will be Iran. He said that the only way we could lose this war was to do an Obama withdrawal.

Kerry said: "Bob… Bob… Bob, I have to respond to that." He said that no one in the region is saying that Iran is contained. He said that Iran is proceeding in ways that we could not have imagined before we invaded Iraq. He said that we've provided Shi'ites with a way to defeat the Sunnis. Kerry said that the Sunnis made a political decision in Iraq to turn against al Qaeda, and they had decided this before we invaded Iraq. Kerry said that political reconciliation is not happening in Iraq. Kerry said that Obama has never said we'd withdraw completely from Iraq; we'd leave people for training and for protection. (For 100 years, John?)

Schieffer asked Kerry if Bush should go to the PRC for the Olympics. Kerry said we have not tried hard enough to be a partner to the PRC. Schieffer asked Graham, and Graham said that he wouldn't criticize the President for going to the Opening ceremonies.

Graham thinks we should look a Gitmo through the law of armed conflict, with the military "doing the trial in a military commission setting." He predicted that some of these people will die in jail. Kerry said that Gitmo should have never been opened and that the combatants should have been "tried on the battlefield," where they were. He said that closing Gitmo was "a priority for an Obama administration."

LATE EDITION. To mark a decade on the air, they played scads of their favorite Wolf Blitzer interviews.

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'T was a lighter week than usual. Have at it.