What we need to hope for

Bill Kristol:

In politics, as one suspects in life, no good deed goes unpunished. John McCain staked everything on success in Iraq. He advocated the surge publicly and made the case for it privately. He defended it passionately and intelligently, and was indispensable in beating back critics, shoring up nervous supporters, and keeping enough public support for the surge so the Democratic party's repeated efforts to abort it failed.

The surge worked. It worked better than even its proponents expected. The strategic and moral calamity of an American withdrawal in defeat from the central front in the war on Islamic jihadism was averted. The positive outcome of a reasonably stable, democratic, and friendly Iraq is now in sight. Thanks in large part to John McCain, we did not have a second Vietnam-like humiliation. Thanks in large part to John McCain, the United States is on the verge of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

And as a result of the remarkable progress in Iraq over the past two years--progress whose possibility was scoffed at and whose reality was then denied by all leading Democrats except Joe Lieberman--Iraq faded as an issue in the presidential race. And with it, the critical question of who should be commander in chief also receded. By the fall of 2008, McCain got no credit for one of the great acts of statesmanship by a senator--let alone a senator who was also a presidential candidate--in American history. President Obama will now be able to draw down in an orderly manner,
following (we trust) the guidance of Generals Petraeus and Odierno--generals who consulted with McCain often and whose achievement McCain helped make possible.

John McCain said repeatedly that he'd rather lose an election than lose a war. We ended up winning a war, and he ended up losing the election. It's not quite the cosmic injustice of the British electorate rejecting Churchill in 1945--but it's no small injustice either.

...

One of the things the media was able to do was prevent the Democrats from paying a political price for being so disastrously wrong about Iraq. Of course they had their own self interest in in that out come since almost all of them has been disastrously wrong about the surge too.

McCain was effective in making this an issue in the summer, but dropped it this fall for reasons I cannot explain. He would occasionally mention it in a debate, but had no good YouTube ads on the subject. It was an important issue and voters will probably be reminded of it as Democrats institute their policies of weakness and retreat.