Wednesday, June 23, 2010

McCHRYSTAL FOR PRESIDENT?

Once the brouhaha with Gen. McChrystal broke, one of my friends wrote: I strongly suspect the Republicans might have a good candidate for 2012 there. He even voted for Barry, so they can't call him a racist.
 
Now that ‘Barry’ has replaced him with Gen. Petraeus, what are McChrystal’s chances of winning the presidency? In my opinion, slim to none.
 
Here are three reasons why I believe a McChrystal presidential campaign would be doomed to fail:
 
(1) These military guys are lousy campaigners. Remember Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark in 2004?
 
(2) The generals that have been elected president were all heroes who served in popular wars, like Gen. Eisenhower in WWII. The war in Afghanistan is unpopular with most Americans and if Ike were in charge there now, even he probably couldn't get elected.

(3) 'Support our troops' everyone agrees, but the truth is that with most Americans today, the military really isn't well-liked. There is still that fallout from the Vietnam War. There aren't enough old farts like me left who hold the military in the highest esteem. And that would make it hard for a general to get elected even if the war in Afghanistan was a popular one.

As for McChrystal, his image took a nosedive when, once the shit hit the fan, he made those groveling apologies to everyone but Osama bin Laden in an obvious attempt to save his ass.
 
My friend also wrote: I strongly suspect that Barry will face as much, or more, opposition from within than from the Republicans.
 
I think he is right there. Some time ago I predicted that Hillary Clinton would resign her position as Secretary of State by the end of 2011 in order to take another shot at the presidency, Barack Obama notwithstanding.

Actually though, the McChrystal affair should end up giving Obama a boost in the polls where he has been tanking steadily over the past few months. His firing of McChrystal and his immediate replacement by Gen. Petraeus will have the public seeing Obama as a decisive leader, a perception that has been severely lacking all along.

1 comment:

Centurion said...

I would vote for him....