By Trish Turner

Call it the commander in chief dress rehearsal.

That’s the expectation, at least, when the three remaining presidential candidates take turns Tuesday questioning the nation’s top commander and top diplomat in Iraq during two Senate committees’ briefings on the war.

And presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain could be at a distinct advantage over his potential Democratic rivals, with a plum spot at the front of the questioning line. Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who have been sharply critical of the war, likely won’t get their inquiries in until much later in the presentations.

McCain’s top surrogate and pal, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he sees it as a winning day for his colleague from Arizona.

Both men sit on the Armed Services Committee, first stop for Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker Tuesday morning. McCain, as top Republican on that committee, not only gets to make an opening statement but also gets the first crack, after his chairman, at questioning the witnesses. McCain will have the opportunity to defend last year’s troop buildup, something he advocated.

“This is sort of a dress rehearsal of who is best prepared to be commander in chief, who has the best understanding of what has happened, what was wrong in Iraq, and how to fix it,” Graham said. “I think it’s a chance to showcase his commander-in-chief credentials.”

Clinton won’t be quite as lucky. She’ll have to wait for eight of her Democratic colleagues to have their five-minute questioning period before getting her own moment in the spotlight. And since Republicans and Democrats alternate in their questioning, she could end up 17th in the queue, behind Graham, if all of her colleagues show (and they are expected to).

Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said he’s not inclined to let the testimony slide into campaign fanfare and has no intention of giving the candidates preferential treatment.

“We can’t allow a political campaign to impact our operations here,” Levin said emphatically. “The American people want a discussion of policy. … They do not want to partisanize this issue. These are matters of life and death.”

The chairman acknowledged the candidate are likely to steal the spotlight, though.

“I think naturally there’s going to be a lot of focus on them. … The media will look at the candidates, scrutinize them and probably read all kinds of things into their answers, into their body language, into their greetings, into their hugs, into their coughs, into their sneezes,” he said.

As for Obama, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a junior member at that, he’ll have to wait until late in the day to get his chance to grill the general and ambassador.

His chairman, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., himself a former presidential candidate, said Obama won’t get any special treatment either.

“The American people are sick of this crap,” Biden said, though he wasn’t able to resist a dig at McCain.

“I love the idea of McCain having to explain what’s going on here and why it’s (the situation in Iraq) working so well. That’s just fine,” he said. “But the last thing we should be doing is viewing this through a political prism. This is life and death stuff that we get into. … A whole lot more guys and women are going to die there.”

Graham predicted McCain will focus on what he sees as a successful call for more troops very early on.

“I think John will try to highlight the fact that better security was the key to changing Iraq, and that with a better security footprint, with a new military footprint, more troops employed in a different fashion, we see things we did not see before and all the fundamentals are moving in the right direction,” he said.

Graham said he saw too big themes for McCain: Did his theory about sending more combat troops as a path to better security result in a more stable Iraq? Second, what would the consequences be of shifting strategy and adopting the Clinton-Obama plans for troop withdrawal?

Graham, with a grin, reminded reporters, “She (Clinton) said last time you’d have to suspend belief to believe the surge is working. I think that might come up a couple times.”

But the briefings are also an opportunity for Clinton and Obama to press hard on why the military is still mired in the conflict more than five years after it began. Both candidates advocate a swift withdrawal from the region upon taking the oath of office, though they have left open the door for some residual forces to stay in Iraq.

The tables will likely turn on McCain for a comment he made in January at a town hall meeting, where a participant asked the senator about a statement President Bush made that troops could stay in Iraq for 50 years.

“Maybe 100,” McCain replied. “As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, it’s fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.”

Both of his Democratic opponents have taken him to task for these comments, saying McCain wants to continue the war indefinitely.

McCain charges he’s being misquoted and says he’s only talking about a long-term troop presence, but Obama stood by his remarks Friday.

“I know that lately conservative commentators have suggested that somehow I’ve been unfair to simply quote back what John McCain has suggested, which is that we should maintain an occupation for as long as it takes, up to 100 years or — ya know I had been leaving out the quote of 10,000 years — I have not misquoted him,” he said.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a Clinton supporter, said he thinks this will be a time for Clinton to shine.

Clinton and Obama each will be able to voice their views on the war, Menendez said. He expects Clinton to display her “depth of knowledge on the issue … about the broader aspects of diplomacy and political reconciliation in many parts of the world.”

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 11:53 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Top Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.