Russian aggression could hurt Obama

Should the conflict in Georgia escalate and manage to drive news coverage in the United States, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign will have a serious issue to contend with early in the general election race.
It is well known that one of Obama’s greatest weaknesses is his lack of foreign policy experience. His rival John McCain has this asset in spades. Whether this deficit has a large impact on his electability has everything to do with the prevalence of foreign policy issues in voters’ minds on Election Day.
During this general election season the major issues for Americans have been the economy and energy policy, which are naturally interconnected. Although neither candidate holds a clear advantage in expertise or experience on these two domestic issues, a bad economy tends to favor a Democrat’s chances. A foreign policy crisis, however, would tend to favor Republicans.
Two examples include the Iran hostage crisis during the 1980 election helping Ronald Reagan win, and fear of Terrorism keeping George W. Bush in the white house four years ago.
This time around is no exception, as McCain’s military background and foreign policy experience have already created a contrast with Obama in the minds of voters. A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 55% of voters see McCain better qualified to deal with Russia, compared to 27% favoring Obama.
The turmoil in South Ossetia has provided the McCain campaign with the fuel necessary to change the discussion from energy to one of foreign policy. “It presented John McCain and Barack Obama with a true “3 a.m. moment,” said Ben Smith of Politico.com. He was referring to a television ad Hillary Clinton’s campaign aired during the primaries about the importance of experience when facing a hypothetical foreign policy crisis in the middle of the night. “Their responses to the crisis suggested dramatic differences in how each candidate, as president, would lead America in moments of international crisis,” Smith added.
The candidates’ responses were indeed revealing. McCain blamed Russia and told them to "immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory." He asked the United States and the EU to put diplomatic pressure on Russia "to reverse this perilous course that it has chosen."
This is stronger language than was used by the Bush Administration who opted not to take sides and acted more diplomatically alongside other world leaders.
Obama’s campaign followed in the same line as the administration. “I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict,” Obama said in a statement. “Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint and to avoid an escalation to full-scale war.”
In their official responses to the crisis two weeks ago, McCain was seen as taking a clear stance while Obama’s campaign released a very diplomatic statement while the Senator was on his way to a vacation in Hawaii.
Obama’s campaign has more recently decided to repeat the same argument they used to respond to Hillary’s “3 a.m.” ad. They have continued with the refrain of good judgment being more important than experience, an allusion to Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war. Obama’s foreign policy argument largely derives from the fact that the most recent foreign enemy presented to the American public, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, turned out to be much less of a threat than advertized.
Obama’s argument is more effective when the situation is more complex or nuanced, like the idea that the crisis is a result of long-term neglect. This is what Obama surrogate and former Democratic Senator Tom Daschle was attempting to argue Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “What we’ve done is focus so much on Iraq, that a lot of these other issues have slipped, they’ve not had the priority they deserve, they’ve not have the kind of attention that an Obama administration would provide,” he said.
The Republican “us vs. them” foreign policy viewpoint, which John McCain has embraced with regards to the Georgian crisis, is far more effective with a visible enemy in Americans’ faces. The McCain campaign has an interest in making the world seem dangerous in simple terms, which they can do with the emergence of a powerful antagonist on the world stage. They have found themselves with an opportunity to target Russia as that antagonist. Whether they are justified in doing so depends on which analysis of the conflict you’re reading or listening to, but according to Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer, “the next U.S. president will need to devise a united policy with Europe to confront a Russia indifferent to European norms.”
On ABC’s This Week, Daschle was countered by McCain surrogate and former Republican Governor Mitt Romney, who unsurprisingly antagonized Russia and referred to McCain’s experience. “The Russians have been looking for an excuse to be able to punish either the Ukraine or Georgia or to flex their muscles in the Caucasus, and this is something that they have been anticipating for some time…In a dangerous and troubled world, it’s helpful to have a leader of a nation that knows these places, knows the people, understands the setting,” Romney said.
Whether John McCain would antagonize Russia as President is another issue, but for the moment antagonizing Russia helps drive home the narrative of proven, experienced leadership being important in an unstable climate.
If the situation in the Caucasus escalates and Russia is perceived as the aggressor, something like the campaign video of Obama stating he plans to “cut investments in unproven missile defense systems” and “slow development of future combat systems” could come back to haunt him. In the words of a pro-McCain blogger at The Elephant Bar blog, “The sounds of Russian tanks should be the sounds of a crushing defeat for [Obama].”