Which is exactly the road John McCain is traveling in his quest for the White House. On Wednesday, his campaign ridiculed Obama as a "celebrity" in a spot featuring Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. (In a redux of the 2006 "Call Me" ad which helped defeat Harold Ford in Tennessee, the clip's association of Obama with the two white women let McCain play the race card.) It's no wonder long-time McCain adviser John Weaver called the ad "childish," a part of a negative strategy which he claimed "diminishes John McCain." With friends like that, who needs enemies?

And that was just Wednesday afternoon. That morning, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Politico all blasted the McCain camp over its blatant lie that Barack Obama skipped a visit to U.S. troops in Germany because "the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras." Even NBC's Andrea Mitchell (a.k.a. Mrs. Alan Greenspan), who happened to have been with Obama in Europe, protested that the McCain ad was "literally not true."

The New York Times, which endorsed John McCain during the Empire State primary, showed buyer's remorse on Wednesday morning. In an editorial simply titled "Low Road Express," the Times denounced McCain's puerile politics. Pointing the finger at the "low-minded and uncivil playbook" adopted from Karl Rove, the editorial criticized McCain's slash and burn strategy:

"In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has been waving the flag of fear (Senator Barack Obama wants to "lose" in Iraq), and issuing attacks that are sophomoric (suggesting that Mr. Obama is a socialist) and false (the presumptive Democratic nominee turned his back on wounded soldiers).

Mr. McCain used to pride himself on being above this ugly brand of politics, which killed his own 2000 presidential bid."

The New York Times is surely correct that John McCain, of all people, knows about being on the receiving end of "this ugly brand of politics." As I've documented before, McCain in the wake of his surprise victory in the 2000 New Hampshire primary was brutalized by the campaign of George W. Bush. The character assassinations, smears and lies the Bush camp dished out in South Carolina included push polls implying McCain was anti-Catholic, his wife Cindy a drug addict, and that he had fathered an illegitimate black child with a prostitute. And all of these slurs came as candidate Bush chastised McCain that he couldn't "take the high horse and then claim the low road."

In January 2000, the future President Bush confided in a friend about John McCain:

"There's a reason all those colleagues of his in the Senate support me and not him. They think he's sanctimonious, and they're right."

As it turns out, George W. Bush, a man who was wrong about virtually everything else, was right about John McCain. And myriad other Republicans, including several Senate colleagues and even VP hopeful Mitt Romney, agree. Hopefully, it's not too late for the American people to learn the truth about the ever-sanctimonious and increasingly dirty-dealing John McCain.

UPDATE: As the New York Times reported on Thusday, McCain has learned from the master and is now trying to ''create a negative narrative about Barack Obama is being coordinated by veterans of President Bush's 2004 bid."

Rule #1 of the vice presidential selection process is akin to the Hippocratic Oath: first, do no harm. And with rumors swirling that Barack Obama is seriously considering first-term Virginia Governor Tim Kaine as his #2, the Democratic nominee risks breaking rule #1.

Which isn't to say that Kaine doesn't score well on some of the half-dozen metrics (such as geography, chemistry, theme, balance, experience and party solidarity) often used to assess vice presidential aspirants.

Kaine, after all, is part of the statewide Democratic wave including Mark Warner and Jim Webb which could help carry his state for Obama. And to be sure, the close relationship between Obama and Kaine - and their families - is an asset on the campaign trail and beyond. Thematically, the 50-year old Kaine like Obama is a new face in national Democratic politics and could bolster Obama's campaign of change ushered in by a new generation of leadership. Obama-Kaine '08 harkens back to the energy and relative youth of Clinton-Gore '92.

But those aren't the primary challenges Obama faces in the veepstakes. In a campaign in which John McCain and the Republican attack machine will paint Barack Obama as an inexperienced neophyte on national security issues, Tim Kaine would be a liability. A man without either military experience or involvement in defense and foreign policy at the national level, the untested Kaine would only magnify the perception Obama must battle until election day.

And then there's matter of abortion and the role of protecting reproductive rights in solidifying Obama's support among former Hillary Clinton backers. A devout Catholic (he served as a missionary in the Honduras), Kaine is personally opposed to abortion and backed so-called partial birth abortion legislation. But while his policy of supporting existing laws on abortion, as with the death penalty, has placated many Democrats, it also creates confusion.

Today, for example, the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato deemed Kaine "is pro-choice in effect while projecting a pro-life image." But last month, University of Richmond political scientist Dan Palazzolo concluded, "he's pro-life, basically." It's no wonder Kaine gets little credit on the issue from some Catholic groups.

The danger for Obama is that Kaine would get even less credit from Hillary's supporters. While the polling data show Obama has come a long way in consolidating his standing among women voters in general and Clinton's backers in particular, John McCain's anti-choice views have played a key role. Bypassing Hillary Clinton as his running mate for Kaine could reopen that wound.

None of this is to suggest that Governor Tim Kaine isn't a solid candidate and a rising star in the Democratic Party. He is both of those things. But Kaine is not the right fit for what Barack Obama and the Democratic Party need now in their vice presidential choice.

There are many reasons to dislike CBS News with Katie Couric. Now you can add ham-handed racial stereotyping to the list.

Just days after editing out John McCain's calamitous gaffe about the Sunni Awakening following the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq, Couric offered a pablum profile of the McCain campaign team. In her behind-the-scenes segment Tuesday (video here), Couric seemed shocked - shocked - to learn that McCain's director of outreach to African-Americans was himself an African-American:

The campaign tries to reach out to various voting blocs like women, Hispanics and African-Americans. The efforts are coordinated by National Coalitions Director Aaron Manaigo.

"You're an African-American man and supporting John McCain obviously. Do your friends give you a hard time at all?" Couric asked him.

"No. Absolutely," Manaigo said. "Most of my friends like John McCain. In any other election year, they would probably be right here working with us."

Couric's dual assumption, of course, is that Manaigo's friends must be black and that they monolithically support Barack Obama for President. Now while Obama consistently polls at or above 90% among African-American voters, Manaigo's circle might include Lynn Swann, J.C. Watts, Kenneth Blackwell, Michael Steele and Shelby Steele. Or, his friends could be as diverse as any other group of Americans. While Manaigo's response seems to suggest that many of his buddies may in fact be black, Couric posed the question in almost euphemistic terms.

Sadly, this isn't the only recent example of Couric's newscast reporting caricatures to the American people. In February, a segment about a study of faith in America parroted the stereotypes of the religious right, with CBS' Wyatt Andrews proclaiming, "the unprecedented survey of religion answers many concerns about a secular, morally void America."

As for Couric, the CBS Evening News on her watch continues its dismal ratings slide, remaining deeply mired in third place. It's not hard to figure out why.

As he faced reelection in 2004, George W. Bush famously committed to cut the deficit in half in five years. But that promise, as the Washington Post, CNN and others noted at the time, was premised upon two parallel frauds.

First, Bush's pompous prediction used as its baseline a wildly inflated White House deficit forecast of $521 billion, well above the CBO's estimate and the actual FY 04 figure of $413 billion. More importantly, President Bush conveniently chose 2009 as his finish line, the year before his tax cuts were set to expire. Making them permanent (which John McCain now endorses) would blow another $2.2 trillion hole in the federal budget by 2014. In addition, other required costs (such as the Medicare prescription drug plan) and likely federal tax code adjustments (most notably fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax) would add hundreds of billions more in red ink to the national ledger. And all of that is before the deluge of Social Security and Medicare expenditures looming with the retirement of the baby boom generation.

Nonetheless, when the budget deficit dipped last year to $163 billion, the Bush administration proclaimed victory and vindication. On its web page titled, "Fiscal Discipline: Managing for Results," the White House crowed:

"The deficit has been cut in half three years ahead of the President's 2009 goal. Historic revenue growth and a continued commitment to spending restraint contributed to this reduction."

As it turns, not so much.

The new numbers from the OMB are grim, reflecting a slowing economy, a dismal housing market and declining corporate income tax collections, all of which have combined to produce a drop in federal revenues from 2007 to 2008. While the White House ratcheted down its estimates for economic growth (1.6% for this year, down from 2.7% in its February forecast and 2.2% for 2009, down from 3.0%), federal spending is slated to jump by 8% this year and 6.5% in 2009 (including the cost of the economic stimulus package). Worse still, as the Washington Post noted, "next year's record figure includes only $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could cost three times that much."

The changing fortunes of Bush's bogus budget boast five years ago are on display on the White House web site. In February 2004, the White House claimed President Bush was committed to "staying on course to cut the deficit in half within 5 years" for FY 2005. The 2006 overview promised to exercise "responsible spending restraint in order to achieve the President’s goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009." As mentioned above, in 2007 the White House prematurely proclaimed mission accomplished in halving the budget deficit, adding that the President's budget will "produce a balanced budget by 2012." Unfortunately, 12 months later the White House web site announced that "the President's FY2008 Budget reduces the deficit each year and reaches a balanced budget within five years." Amazingly, Bush's FY 2009 budget overview stands by his comically irrelevant pledge to "ensure that near-term deficits are overcome and we achieve a surplus in 2012."

In historical terms, at 3.3% of GDP the Bush deficit pales in comparison to Ronald Reagan's record 1983 red ink hemorrhage of 6%. Still, Bush's stage-managed mission to halve the budget deficit was not accomplished.

And that, in so many ways, is the legacy of George W. Bush.

As McCain put it in his address to the American GI Forum Friday, Barack Obama failed the John McCain commander-in-chief test:

"Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed."

Sadly, when it comes to the war in Iraq, it is the Arizona Republican who failed his own commander-in-chief exam. At almost every turn in the run-up to the invasion and the ensuing American occupation, McCain's judgment was almost always wrong, often disastrously so. From his predictions of a short war, claims U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators and that the U.S. would find weapons of mass destruction to his announcements of mission accomplished, his ongoing confusion over friend and foe in Iraq and so much more, John McCain the would-be wartime president gets failing marks.

That F grade is not, as McCain insists, a "job for the historians." As his past statements show, American voters can reach that conclusion right now.

In a report released this morning, the Justice Department concluded that Monica Goodling, the former White House liaison for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, violated federal law and DOJ policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't faithful Republicans or conservative activists. As it turns out, 14 months after Goodling admitted to Congress "I believe I crossed the line, but I didn't mean to," the Bush DOJ determined that she did. More important, the report demolished the knee-jerk "criminalization of politics" defense of her Republican allies.

Among the least surprising developments arising from Monica Goodling's May 2007 appearance before the House Judiciary Committee was the reflexive use of that "criminalization of politics" defense. Not by the witness, that is, but by Republican members of the committee themselves. That was to be expected. After all, whether the scandal involves Tom Delay, the outing of Valerie Plame, Jack Abramoff, or the U.S. attorneys purge, we can always count on the GOP to recast its rampant criminality as mere political disagreement.

On PBS Newhour that night, Republican California Congressman Dan Lundgren was only too happy to offer the criminalization of politics ruse for Monica Goodling and Alberto Gonzales alike. Just moments after acknowledging Goodling's admission of violating civil rules and Hatch Act prohibitions ("she did admit that she made mistakes in that regard"), Lundgren returned the script:

"Let me just say this -- and I think it's an important point -- there is too much of a tendency in this environment to try and criminalize political disputes. That's been the effort here. They have found no basis for criminality, so the suggestion is now a vote of no confidence. Who knows what is next?"

But it was Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) who beat Lundgren to the punch, defending Goodling in the opening moments of her testimony. Pence, who famously compared his March visit to a Baghdad market to shopping in his home state of Indiana, trotted out the tired GOP talking point for her:

"I'm listening very intently. I'm studying this case. And I want to explore this issue of illegal behavior with you. Because it seems to me so much of this -- and even something of what we've heard today in this otherwise cordial hearing -- is about the criminalization of politics. In a very real sense, it seems to be about the attempted criminalization of things that are vital to our constitutional system of government, namely the taking into consideration of politics in the appointment of political officials within the government."

Later that morning, of course, Monica Goodling admitted her own lawbreaking and suggested that Attorney General Gonzales may have obstructed justice in trying to coach her. Acknowledging that "I believe I crossed the line, but I didn't mean to", Goodling clarified for all why she sought immunity in the first place:

"I do acknowledge that I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions, and I regret those mistakes."

So much for the claim of Jim Sensenbrenner that "There ain't no fish in this water."

GonzoGate, however, is far from the first use of the "criminalizing politics" defense by Republicans and their conservative amen corner. Consider the case of Tom Delay. As early as April 2005, a furious Delay declared of the ethic charges swirling around him, "Democrats have made clear that their only agenda is the politics of personal destruction and the criminalization of politics." Amazingly, that comment came before Delay's own October 2005 indictment in Texas for money laundering in association with his Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC).

Unsurprisingly, the conservative echo chamber rushed to Delay's defense and magnified his talking point. Days after Delay's indictment by District Attorney Ronnie Earle, Robert Novak penned a column titled "Criminalizing Politics", concluding:

'Democrats are ecstatic. The criminalization of politics may work, even if the case against DeLay is as threadbare as it looks."

No discussion of Robert Novak and the Republican redefinition of GOP crime as everyday political disagreements could be complete without a look the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. While neither Karl Rove nor others were ever charged with the technical and narrowly defined offense of revealing the identity of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak and others, Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby was convicted by jury on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. But for the familiar goose-steppers of the conservative ascendancy, Libby the felon too was a victim of the criminalization of politics.

The usual cavalcade of apologists for Republican law-breaking swarmed to Libby's defense. With his looming indictment in the fall of 2005, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison compared Libby to Martha Stewart, and offered a new variant of the Delay sound bite, the "perjury technicality." Hutchison said she hoped that:

"That if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

Hutchison, of course, had plenty of company in offering the criminalization of politics canard in the CIA leak case. On October 14, 2005, Bill Kristol complained, "I am worried about what happens to the administration if Rove is indicted," adding, "I think it's the criminalization of politics that's really gotten totally out of hand." In succeeding days, Kristol's Fox News colleagues Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Stuart Varney and Chris Wallace joined the chorus singing from the RNC's criminalization of politics hymnal. On October 24th, Kristol took to the pages of the Weekly Standard to denounce a supposed Democratic strategy of "criminalizing conservatives." When Libby was later convicted, the Wall Street Journal editorial page called for a pardon. The WSJ cited grave dangers if the Libby verdict were to stand: "perhaps the worst precedent would be normalizing the criminalization of policy differences."

And so it goes. Republican wrong-doing and criminality is brushed off by the party's water-carriers as simply politics as usual. But with the report from President Bush's own Justice Department now public, even Attorney General Michael Mukasey will have a tough time defending the likes of Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson as just "enormously dedicated."

Appearing on the Situation Room, John McCain suggested that his record on Iraq and expertise on the geography of the Iraq-Pakistan border region would allow him to succeed where George W. Bush failed in capturing the Al Qaeda chieftain:

"I'm not going to telegraph a lot of the things that I'm going to do because then it might compromise our ability to do so. But, look, I know the area, I have been there, I know wars, I know how to win wars, and I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden -- or put it this way, bring him to justice…We will do it, I know how to do it."

No doubt, McCain hasn't been shy when it comes to explaining how he'll bag Bin Laden. Over the course of the campaign, Senator McCain has repeated his pledge to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and follow him "to the gates of hell."

For example, in May 2007, McCain described himself as the dog that'll hunt:

"We will do whatever is necessary. We will track him down. We will capture him. We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of Hell."

Then in October, McCain told workers at a small weapons factory in New Hampshire:

"I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products."

And in January, McCain reassured suspicious South Carolina voters as well, just in case they had missed his earlier promises on the point:

"My friends, I want to stand before you now and tell you that if I have to follow him to the gates of hell I will get Osama Bin Laden and I will bring him to justice. I will get him!"

In New Jersey last month, McCain pledged, like President Bush before him, that he would get Bin Laden, dead or alive:

"I will look you in the eye and promise you that I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice." McCain said in response to a direct question from one of the 2,000 people in attendance at the college's Pemberton campus gym.

McCain said the key to ending the long search for bin Laden was to increase the number of human spies abroad.

"We need better human intelligence. We need people who can swim in the water," McCain said.

(McCain, of course, was speaking metaphorically. Referring not to aquatically proficient spies who would make their way overland to Waziristan after first swimming across the Indian Ocean, McCain was instead describing agents capable of seamlessly mixing in among the peoples of Afghanistan and Pakistan.)

Meanwhile, rumors continue to swirl that McCain will tap Mitt Romney as his running mate. Their shared commitment to get Bin Laden may have something to do with Romney's appeal to Mr. StraightTalk. After all, in May, Romney also made a promise when it comes to Osama Bin Laden. "He's going to pay," he said, "and he will die."

(This piece originally appeared at Crooks and Liars.)

In the wake of Phil Gramm's disastrous "whiners" remarks three weeks ago, John McCain claimed his close friend and key economic adviser "does not speak for me - I speak for me." Sadly for Mr. Straight Talk, Gramm that very day was in New York meeting with the Wall Street Journal editorial board to explain McCain's economic policies. Now, as it turns out, on issues from the economy and foreign policy to a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, John McCain doesn't speak for John McCain.

That was the clear message from Douglas-Holtz Eakin, the Republican nominee's chief economic adviser. After a study this week from the Tax Policy Center (TPC) showed McCain's public promises would add an additional $2.8 trillion to the sea of red ink already entailed by what his campaign has laid out privately, Holtz-Eakin in essence suggested that what John McCain says simply can't believed. As Slate noted:

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's chief economic adviser, says the numbers he provided to the TPC aren't secret - they're the same ones he provides to anyone who asks. He also disputes the way the study takes suggestions McCain has made on the stump out of context. "This is parsing words out of campaign appearances to an unreasonable degree," Holtz-Eakin said. "He has certainly I'm sure said things in town halls" that don't jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn't mean it's official.

This isn't the first time that Holtz-Eakin has advised that John McCain's words should be taken with a very large grain of salt. On multiple occasions dating back to 2005, for example, McCain admitted his own feeble grasp of economics. In December 2007, McCain acknowledged, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." Two years earlier, he said, "I still need to be educated.

As it turns out, Holtz-Eakin assured voters in March, McCain's dismal understanding of the dismal science is just another example of the famous McCain humor at work:

"He has this wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor and out of his months comes things sometimes like 'yeah, I'm not that good on the economy' in an effort to make a small joke."

McCain's word similarly "cannot be trusted" when it comes to foreign policy. Last November, McCain penned an article in Foreign Affairs in which he announced his intent to expel Russia from the G8. In a March 26th speech, he made his plan crystal clear:

"We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia."

But facing almost universal condemnation from foreign policy analysts who characterized booting Russia from the G8 as logistically impossible and just plain "dumb," the McCain campaign quickly disowned it. On June 25th, Reuters reported that an anonymous McCain adviser claimed the policy towards Russia was no longer operative:

He also dismissed McCain's comment last October on Russia and the G-8 as "a holdover from an earlier period," adding: "It doesn't reflect where he is right now."

Yet one month later, John McCain was back on the trail, calling once again for Moscow to get the heave-ho. Appearing today on ABC This Week with George Stephanopolous, McCain insisted it was back on:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask you about your position to exclude Russia from the G-8. How are you going to get that done? Every other G-8 nation is against it.

MCCAIN: Well, you have to take positions whether other nations agree or not, because you have to do what's best for America...

Sometimes it is John McCain himself who makes clear that John McCain doesn't speak for John McCain. On Meet the Press in January with the late Tim Russert, it was McCain who insisted "I don't know where you got that quote from" when confronted with his 2005 statement about his ignorance of economics. And now, McCain has again said that he didn't say something he said.

This morning, John McCain denied he used the word "timetable" in reference to withdrawing American troops from Iraq. After having previously supported a 100 year U.S. presence in Iraq, McCain in May shortened that to five years. On Friday, facing Prime Minister al-Maliki's endorsement of Barack Obama's proposed 16 month time frame for a U.S. drawdown, McCain acknowledged, "I think it's a pretty good timetable." But just two days later, McCain insisted to George Stephanopolous that those words never crossed his lips:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You shouldn't have used the word timetable.

MCCAIN: I didn't use the word timetable. That I did - if I did...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, it's a pretty good timetable.

MCCAIN: Oh, well, look. Anything is a good timetable that is dictated by conditions on the ground. Anything is good.

One month ago, John McCain blasted his opponent, claiming, "You know, this election is about trust, and trusting people's word, and unfortunately apparently on several items, Senator Obama's word cannot be trusted." As it turns out, John McCain's own campaign staff doesn't trust what John McCain says. Apparently, neither does he.

As President Bush prepared to pull the trigger on the Iraq war in February 2003, John McCain was at the forefront of those browbeating France for its refusal to back the U.S. at the United Nations. On February 10, 2003, McCain declared on MSNBC's Hardball:

"Look, I don't mean to try to be snide, but the Lord said the poor will always be with us. The French will always be with us, too."

Eights days later, Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline program highlighted McCain's antipathy towards France:

Here's how influential Senator John McCain sees the French.

JOHN MCCAIN, REPUBLICAN SENATOR: They remind me of an aging movie actress in the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it.

Five years later in March 2008, presidential candidate McCain traveled to France where he met with Sarkozy. Despite the friendly welcome McCain received in Paris, he couldn't conceal his true feelings regarding his French hosts. In essence, McCain implied, relations with the United States would improve solely due to the deference to the U.S. properly restored by President Sarkozy:

"I think relations with France will continue to improve no matter who is president of the United States because this president is committed to greater cooperation and values our friendship."

McCain's cold shoulder towards France may have something to do with what the Washington Post described as the "royal treatment" Obama received in Paris yesterday. President Sarkozy referred to "my dear Barack Obama" and offered a less-than-neutral assessment of his nation's preference in the November U.S. election:

"If he is chosen, then France will be delighted. And if it's somebody else, then France will be the friend of the United States of America."

For his part, McCain could only fume and fidget back home. Hijacking Armstrong's cancer awareness event, McCain tried Friday to have some fun with Obama's excellent adventure in Europe, only to end up sounding like the candidate scorned:

"You have billed this event as a Presidential Town Hall, and I sincerely hope that the next president is here this evening. My opponent, of course, is traveling in Europe, and tomorrow his tour takes him to France. In a scene Lance would recognize, a throng of adoring fans awaits Senator Obama in Paris -- and that's just the American press."

As the Politico's Jonathan Martin noted, "he punctuated the punch line with something of an awkward laugh." Perhaps John McCain was remembering his previous jokes about France.

That the Republican water carrier and New York Times columnist David Brooks would blast Barack Obama's Berlin speech was utterly predictable. (Kevin Drum even predicted the title of the piece, "Playing Innocent Abroad.") To be sure, by slandering Obama's call to "remake the world" with epithets including "saccharine," "treacle," and "Disney," Brooks did not disappoint. Of course, even less surprising is that back in 2005, David Brooks had only glowing praise for President Bush's democratization agenda and its audacious vision to "imagine new worlds."

On Friday, Brooks wasted little time in excoriating Obama for his optimistic call for a new internationalism in which American global leadership restored could help tackle the challenges of terrorism, sectarian strife, economic prosperity and climate change:

"Obama speeches almost always have the same narrative arc. Some problem threatens. The odds are against the forces of righteousness. But then people of good faith unite and walls come tumbling down. Obama used the word "walls" 16 times in the Berlin speech, and in 11 of those cases, he was talking about walls coming down...

...But substantively, optimism without reality isn't eloquence. It's just Disney."

Ironically, Brooks opened by noting that "radical optimism is America's contribution to the world" and that "Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush preached their own gospels of world democracy." Ironic, because when the optimistic preacher in 2005 was President Bush, David Brooks was all for it.

During his February 2005 State of the Union address, Bush declared that the mission of the United States was nothing less than to end tyranny and dictatorship worldwide:

"The only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror, and replace hatred with hope, is the force of human freedom...And we've declared our own intention: America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

That Republican's radical vision was one David Brooks could get behind. Joining giddy conservatives like Rich Lowry and Charles Krauthammer in premature celebration of the Bush Doctrine, Brooks lauded the Bush agenda for bringing what then seemed like a wave of democracy around the world.

In February 26, 2005 column (titled "Why Not Here?"), Brooks' assessment was a mirror image of today's Obama diatribe. Looking to the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, pro-democracy protests in the Palestinian territories and elections in Iraq, Brooks proclaimed that all across the Middle East - and the world - people were asking "why not here?"

Amazingly, Brooks then cited Ronald Reagan's own 1987 Berlin speech as invoking the world of possibility the visionary George W. Bush had imagined:

It's amazing in retrospect to think of how much psychological resistance there is to asking this breakthrough question: Why not here? We are all stuck in our traditions and have trouble imagining the world beyond. As Claus Christian Malzahn reminded us in Der Spiegel online this week, German politicians ridiculed Ronald Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech in 1987. They "couldn't imagine that there might be an alternative to a divided Germany."

But if there is one soft-power gift America does possess, it is this tendency to imagine new worlds. As Malzahn goes on to note, "In a country of immigrants like the United States, one actually pushes for change…We Europeans always want to have the world from yesterday, whereas the Americans strive for the world of tomorrow."

Apparently, the mere act of changing the speaker's name - and party affiliation - produces a 180-degree turn from David Brooks.

The image of tearing down walls wasn't the only historical device Obama deployed in Berlin on Thursday. He repeatedly harkened back to the 1948 American airlift which saved the city and busted the Soviet blockade. Obama's was not merely a metaphor for a reinvigorated trans-Atlantic partnership, but a call for renewed American global leadership. Alas, David Brooks is comfortable only when American dictates, not when America leads.

Back in 2005, Brooks concluded his piece by exhibiting the same symptoms of conservative hubris which have backfired so tragically for the United States. Just months before Russia's authoritarian swing, carnage in Lebanon and the Hamas triumph in Palestine, Brooks insisted Bush deserved accolades for prompting the cry of "why not here?":

"But this is clearly the question the United States is destined to provoke. For the final thing that we've learned from the papers this week is how thoroughly the Bush agenda is dominating the globe. When Bush meets with Putin, democratization is the center of discussion. When politicians gather in Ramallah, democratization is a central theme. When there's an atrocity in Beirut, the possibility of freedom leaps to people's minds."

But that was then and this is now. Barack Obama speaks of a "new dawn in the Middle East" or all of Europe choosing "its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday," And that, according to David Brooks is "Disney."

On Thursday, Americans saw the minimum wage jump to $6.55 an hour. Boosted by the second of three 70 cent increases passed by the new Democratic majority in Congress after the 2006 mid-term elections, the minimum wage will move to $7.25 next year. But to be sure, the two million Americans who got a raise today won't have John McCain to thank for it.

McCain's record on the minimum wage isn't a pretty one. In March 2005, McCain opposed Ted Kennedy's bill, instead siding with Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum on a limited measure which would have topped out at $6.25. In November of that year, McCain told NBC's Tim Russert that he would not back changes at either the federal level or his home state of Arizona without protections for small business owners. As the AFL-CIO web site details, the multimillionaire McCain scoffed at the tactics used by minimum wage advocates:

When the Senate was debating a minimum wage increase in 2006 and the Senate's many pay raises over the past decade were brought up, McCain called the comparison "a very clever ploy." He defended his opposition to the minimum wage increase, saying he had foregone Senate pay raises, "...sometimes to the dismay of my family."

But after the Democratic wave captured the House and Senate, McCain joined Republican obstructionists in early 2007 hoping to block the wage boost initiative then favored by 86% of Americans. On January 24, 2007, McCain joined GOP Senators in a filibuster to halt Kennedy's bill. Instead, McCain along with 27 of his Republican colleagues backed an amendment by Wayne Allard (R-KS) which would have effectively gutted the federal minimum wage law. In 56 words, Allard's proviso would have shifted the wage standard to the states:

"Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, an employer shall not be required to pay an employee a wage that is greater than the minimum wage provided for by the law of the State in which the employee is employed and not less than the minimum wage in effect in that State on January 1, 2007."

(Ironically, that would have punished workers in precisely those states that voted for George W. Bush for President.)

Ultimately, John McCain caved to public pressure and voted for the compromise package that included $5 billion in business tax breaks demanded by Congressional Republicans.

As it turns out, John McCain's opposition to fair pay for American workers doesn't end with the minimum wage. McCain has opposed protections for workers' overtime rights and repeatedly sought exceptions to the Davis-Bacon Act rules on prevailing wages. When President Bush and some of his Republican allies in Congress sought to wave prevailing wage requirements in the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, John McCain supported the move to allow federal contractors in the disaster area to pay wages below market rates.

In 1989, McCain's economic brain Phil Gramm declared, "The plain truth is there should be no minimum wage law in this great land of free enterprise." (Apparently, the minimum wage is for whiners.) No doubt, as some Americans pocket their 70 cent raise today, it's no thanks to John McCain.

On Tuesday, Time columnist Joe Klein labeled as "shockingly unpresidential" John McCain's accusation that Barack Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." But in announcing "I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate," Klein spoke a day too soon. As it turns out, McCain would top himself within 24 hours, charging that Obama would not stand up to genocide - an outrage leveled as the Democrat visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.

To be sure, McCain's desperation over the events on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan shifting the debate in Obama's favor was on display repeatedly Tuesday. In Rochester, New Hampshire, McCain essentially branded Obama's call for a strategic refocus against Al Qaeda along the Afghan border – one backed in Baghdad and at the Pentagon - the equivalent of treachery:

"This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign."

Tuesday night, McCain repeated his slander in an interview with CBS News' Katie Couric. (It was during that same conversation McCain experienced his rude awakening about the timeline of the surge in Iraq.)

"I would much rather lose a campaign than lose a war. Sen. Obama has indicated that by his failure to acknowledge the success of the surge, that he would rather lose a war than lose a campaign."

But for sheer chutzpah, the McCain campaign broke new ground the following day. After Barack Obama reiterated the cry of "never again" after his visit to the Holocaust Memorial, Team McCain put out a press release charging that Obama in July 2007 was only too happy to turn a blind eye to the prospect of genocide in Iraq.

Conveniently excluding Obama's July 20, 2007 statements that "Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously" and that "there are still going to be U.S. forces in the region that could intercede, with an international force, on an emergency basis," the McCain campaign cited only:

"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven't done."

As McCain aide Michael Goldfarb pathetically claimed just after Obama laid a wreath at Yad Vashem, "Today he says 'never again.' A year ago stopping genocide wasn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces in Iraq. Doesn't that strike you as inconsistent?"

Earlier this year, John McCain pledged to run a "respectful campaign." Of course, with McCain's grotesque assertions about Obama's supposed Hamas ties and that Obama's word "cannot be trusted," that promise went out the window long ago.

As did John McCain's political courage, if he ever had any. Battered by his botched recollection of the Sunni awakening and perhaps shamed by the disgusting performance of his campaign team over the past 24 hours, John McCain canceled a press availability session scheduled for earlier today.

To John McCain's dismay, the chorus of voices bolstering Barack Obama's call for a strategic refocus from Iraq to Afganistan just keeps growing. Just one day before Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki indisputably endorsed Obama's time frame for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, General David Petraeus reported that the diminished Al Qaeda threat there was being weakened still further by the group's movement of foreign fighters to Afghanistan. Now, Samir Sumaida'ie, the Iraqi ambassador to Washington, has joined Petraeus in his assessment.

On Wednesday, Sumaida'ie reported that AQI, battered by the Sunni Awakening, the Sons of Iraq program and the recent joint U.S. Iraqi assault on its last urban bastion in Mosul, is shifting resources to its safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border:

"We have heard reports recently that many of the foreign fighters that were in Iraq have left, either back to their homeland or going to fight in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is now seeming to be more suitable for al-Qaida fighters.

There were large tracts that were run by al-Qaida, administered by al-Qaida - they had ministers, administrators, paid salaries and so on. This no longer exists, so they do not have any territory to control (where it) is safe for them to move in and around Iraq," he said. "In whole areas they ceased to operate as effective terrorist networks."

Sumaida'ie's assessment comes just three days after the American commander in Iraq (and incoming CENTCOM chief) General Petraeus acknowledged Al Qaeda may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan:

"We do think that there is some assessment ongoing as to the continued viability of al-Qaida's fight in Iraq. They're not going to abandon Iraq. They're not going to write it off. None of that. But what they certainly may do is start to provide some of those resources that would have come to Iraq to Pakistan, possibly Afghanistan."

Petraeus' statement is consistent with the priorities articulated by his civilian counterpart, U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker. In April, Crocker acknowledged to Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) that the Afghan-Pakistan border region was the higher priority for the United States in its fight against Al Qaeda:

AMB. CROCKER: Well given the progress that has been made again Al Qaeda in Iraq, the significant decrease in its capabilities, the fact that it is solidly on the defensive, and not in a position of -

SEN. BIDEN: Which would you pick, Mr. Ambassador?

AMB. CROCKER: I would therefore pick Al Qaeda in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.

In his press conference Tuesday, Barack Obama voiced his concerns over "the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan," which he deemed "central front in the war against terrorism." Going forward, he argued, the American strategy in the global fight against Al Qaeda must:

"Refocus attention on Afghanistan and to go after the Taliban, including putting more troops on the ground, and to put more pressure on Pakistan to deal with the safe havens of terrorists."

Appearing on PBS Newshour, Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen concurred with Obama's take that the situation in Afghanistan is "precarious and urgent," but warned again that 10,000 additional troops needed there would not be available "in any significant manner" unless there are withdrawals from Iraq.

With the threat from Al Qaeda in his country markedly reduced, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. provided more support to do just that.

It's been a very busy week for war crimes and war criminals. In some good news for the cause of justice and the upholding of international law, Bosnian Serb mass murder Radavan Karadzic was finally captured in Belgrade, just days after the International Criminal Court charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity in Darfur. But for Americans, those positive developments were offset by news that the Bush administration's own war crimes trials - and potential pre-emptive pardons - put the United States in the same discussion with Sudan and the Republica Serbska.

To be sure, the long-overdue capture of Karadzic is a cause for celebration. On the run from peace-keeping forces in Bosnia since 1996, Karadzic had been hiding in plain sight in Serbia's capital. Between 1992 and 1995, the butcher of Srebrenica was responsible for ethnic cleaning and massacres in the Balkans that claimed at least 100,000 lives.

Which puts him in the same class as the killer in Khartoum, Sudan's al-Bashir. A week ago Monday, the ICC charged the Sudanese president on three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes for his campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing that has killed as many as 300,000 people in Darfur.

As ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo acknowledged, the strategy risks ending any prospect of cooperation between the government in Khartoum and the international community for bringing peace-keeping forces and humanitarian relief to Darfur. But as its ambassador to the UN Abdalmahoud Abdalhaleem Mohamad made clear to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, Sudan - like the United States - will not subject its officials to the jurisdiction of the Court:

ZAKARIA: But of course, you know that other governments that did not recognize the Criminal Court were still forced to extradite their leaders. I'm thinking of Yugoslavia.

MOHAMAD: No. I don't care about them.

As far as we are concerned, we are not members. We have been told these days repeatedly that the ICC is an independent body. And so, OK, if it's an independent body, I am not a U.N. organ.

We have full right to be part of it or not. And we choose not to be part of it, like the United States.

Sadly, Mohamad is right about the company Sudan keeps. In May 2001, President Bush renounced the ICC treaty signed by Bill Clinton the previous December, claiming "This is a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors could pull our troops, our diplomats up for trial." During a 2004 debate with John Kerry, Bush taunted American allies supporting the Court, arguing, "You don't want to join the International Criminal Court just because it's popular in certain capitals in Europe." By that November, the Republican Congress was threatening to cut off economic aid to governments who refused to sign immunity agreements which would shield U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the Court.

Insistent on avoiding accountability for potential crimes abroad, the Bush administration may now be acting to prevent it at home as well. As the New York Times reported on Saturday, key conservative figures are urging the White House to "grant pre-emptive pardons to officials involved in controversial counterterrorism programs." The President, they argue, can and should move proactively to shield wrong-doers in his administration:

Such a pardon would reduce the risk that a future administration might undertake a criminal investigation of operatives or policy makers involved in programs that administration lawyers have said were legal but that critics say violated laws regarding torture and surveillance...

...Several members of the conservative legal community in Washington said in interviews that they hoped Mr. Bush would issue such pardons - whether or not anyone made a specific request for one. They said people who carried out the president's orders should not be exposed even to the risk of an investigation and expensive legal bills.

"The president should pre-empt any long-term investigations," said Victoria Toensing, who was a Justice Department counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration. "If we don't protect these people who are proceeding in good faith, no one will ever take chances."

Which brings us to America's first war crimes trial against terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay. This week, prosecutors opened their case against Osama Bin Laden;s driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose 2006 Supreme Court case overturned the Bush administration's previous regime of military tribunals. But in what be the first challenge to President Bush's regime of torture and so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," the presiding judge Monday barred evidence obtained from Hamdan under "highly coercive" conditions during his detention in Afghanistan.

No doubt, the indictment of Sudan's al-Bashir and the apprehension of Karadzic are victories against the forces of what Jane Mayer deemed The Dark Side. It is one of the tragic legacies of President George W. Bush, one few Americans could have imagined, that the United States government would join them there.

But you'd never know from the ads ("Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" and "My Eyes Adored You"). Mocking reporters and pundits including Matthews and NBC's Chris Cowan, CNN's Lou Dobbs and Fox News' Steve Doocy complain that the press corps is "in the tank" for Obama. Matthews, who sang Obama's praises on the Jay Leno show just last night, is ridiculed in the McCain ads for his February 12th primary night reaction to Obama's speech:

"I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."

As it turns out, Barack Obama may send a thrill up Chris Matthews' leg, but John McCain already won his heart.

Siegelman, sentenced to 7 years in prison on trumped-up bribery charges brought by the Rove-directed DOJ, came to Netroots Nation with a simple message. Just days after Bush's Brain was a no-show before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the matter, Siegelman insisted Congress must hold Rove in contempt:

"If you believe all roads lead to Rove, this is the shortest route to get there."

On Friday, I had the opportunity to catch up with Governor Siegelman after his main-stage interview with Air America Radio host Sam Seder. Throughout our conversation, Siegelman was clear about the stakes:

"This is not about Don Siegelman. It's about restoring justice and protecting our democracy."

No doubt, Siegelman's tale is a horror story. Seder detailed the ten-year war waged by Karl Rove and the Alabama Republican Party against the Democratic Governor dating back to the mid-1990s. After denying his 2002 reelection courtesy of election night ballot counting irregularities, the U.S. attorney's office in Alabama finally succeeded in prosecuting Siegelman in 2006. (Back in February, CBS 60 Minutes detailed the case, involving businessman Richard Scrushy's appointment to a state board after his contribution to a state education lottery fund.) His legal fees have already reached a staggering $2.5 million

For his part, Siegelman believes the issue in his case is "the preservation of our democracy" which "cannot exist if the government can prosecute people they don't like." And one of his greatest challenges is getting the American people to come to grips with a seeming nightmare scenario:

"No one wants to believe the President lied to get into war, that elections can be manipulated or stolen, and that the Department of Justice was used as a political weapon. People just don't want to believe it."

But with growing outcry over his case, revulsion over Rove's snubbing of Congress and the launch of his new web site ContemptforRove.com, Siegelman sees a tipping point at hand. "We're getting really close to getting this cracked open," he said. Thanks in part to "pressure coming from the blogs", Siegelman added, "the balloon is about to burst."

Surprisingly, Siegelman showed a grudging admiration for Karl Rove in much the same way one might respect a master thief. Bush's consigliere, Siegelman claimed, learned two critical lessons from Richard Nixon's experience during Watergate. First, "you don't need a secret unit in the White House" when you have the DOJ at your disposal. And second, as the missing Bush administration emails suggest, "you don't leave evidence around like Nixon did with the tapes."

Moving on from Rove's modus operandi, Siegelman insisted Congress needs to act and act now. Failing to hold Karl Rove in contempt immediately risks sending the "wrong message that some people are above the law." If people see that "Rove did it and he didn't get caught," the Governor warned, "it could become part of American political culture likely to happen again." And to get to the bottom of Rove's involvement in this episode and the broader prosecutor purge of Alberto Gonzales, Siegelman sees just one path:

"Congress is the only hope. It's the only place people can turn to give them the truth. They deserve to know what happened."

Last week, Rep. John Conyers' House Judiciary Committee rejected Karl Rove's assertion of executive privilege by a 7-1 vote. As Sam Seder suggested, to make that claim, Rove necessarily must have discussed the issues at the heart of the Committee inquiry with President Bush. When I pressed him on that point, Siegelman said simply, "only Karl Rove can answer the question."

Despite his conviction, his prison sentence and being initially branded on appeal as a "special prisoner" barred from out-of-state travel (a designation usually reserved for organized crime figures or potential terrorists) – despite it all - Don Siegelman sees signs of hope for his case and his country. "John Conyers has reaffirmed my faith," he said. He also praised House members Robert Wexler (D-FL), Linda Sanchez (D-CA) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Republican Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) for their efforts to hold Rove and the Bush administration accountable. A bipartisan group of 54 state attorneys general signed a letter in his defense. Looking ahead, Siegelman believes not only that the "DOJ must be sacrosanct," but that it will be, provided we have "an attorney general and U.S. attorneys who see their duty to this country first, not a political party."

Still, time is running out. "The longer we wait, the less important" getting to the truth about the hijacking of the Justice Department will be to the American people consumed by the fall election, the slowing economy and the dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Siegelman's liberty rests with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, he says ours depends on Capitol Hill. Sensing his own fierce urgency of now, Governor Don Siegelman issued a final call to action to pressure Congress:

"We've got Rove against the ropes. It's time to deliver the knockout punch. Bring him in and put him in a chair."

(This piece was originally posted at Crooks and Liars.)

Back in the 1980's and 1990's, millions of American children learned the basics of global geography with the software and later TV show, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? As his latest geographic blunder suggests - this time regarding the "Iraq/Pakistan border" - John McCain would have done well to tune in to the program.

McCain's map reading woes couldn't have come at a worse time. Barack Obama's tour of Afghanistan and Iraq is drawing rave reviews, including from the Maliki government in Baghdad. Asked by ABC's Diane Sawyer about Obama's assertion that "the situation in Afghanistan in precarious and urgent," McCain answered:

"I think it's serious...It's a serious situation, but there's a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I'm afraid it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border."

Now, McCain could be forgiven an isolated slip of the tongue that placed Iraq's eastern frontier alongside Pakistan, and not Iran. But given McCain's growing list of geographic gaffes this past month alone, American voters also could be forgiven for worrying that the man who claims to "know how to win wars" isn't sure where they're being fought.

Last week, for example, McCain for the third time in a year referenced Czechoslovakia, a nation which has not existed since 1992. Having repeatedly described the basing of the U.S. missile defense system in "Poland and Czechoslovakia," McCain days ago fretted over Russian pressure being applied to Prague:

"I was concerned about a couple of steps that the Russian government took in the last several days. One was reducing the energy supplies to Czechoslovakia."

As it turns out, McCain is an equal opportunity geographic bungler, getting lost in Africa as well as Europe and Asia. As ThinkProgress noted, McCain on June 30 got tripped up discussing the Darfur crisis in Sudan:

John McCain misspoke and confused his African countries while talking to reporters on the Straight Talk Express today. This time, he was bailed out not by Joe Lieberman, but by his close aide Mark Salter. "How can we bring pressure on the government of Somalia?" McCain asked, which prompted Mark Salter to correct him. "Sudan," Salter said. "Sudan."

(Of course, more disturbing that John McCain's struggles to remember who lives where is his confusion over who is aligned with whom. Four times in a matter of just days, McCain confused Sunni and Shiite, claiming that Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq were being trained by their arch-enemies in Iran.)

Last week, John McCain announced to great fanfare he was working to overcome his computer illiteracy, "I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself." Given his latest geographic gut-buster, that milestone can't come soon enough. McCain might start by clicking over to Google to look at some maps, or maybe just booting up an old copy of Carmen Sandiego.

UPDATE: The Politico on Tuesday documented other pages in John McCain's atlas of errors. As the video shows, McCain referred to "President Putin of Germany. And in an more bizarre example of American geographic confusion, McCain exchanged Pittsburgh for Green Bay in his tale of duping his captors in Vietnam.

On Thursday, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama will cap his European tour with an address in Berlin to an audience whose numbers may approach one million. But while the media will focus on Obama's call to strengthen America's trans-Atlantic alliance with France and Germany, lost no doubt will be John McCain's essential role in undermining it. As it turns out, back in 2003 John McCain stood shoulder to shoulder with the Berlin-bashers and Paris-hating purveyors of "freedom fries" and "old Europe."

As President Bush prepared to pull the trigger on the Iraq war in February 2003, John McCain was at the forefront of those browbeating the Chirac government for France's refusal to back the U.S. at the United Nations. On February 10, 2003, McCain declared on MSNBC's Hardball:

"Look, I don't mean to try to be snide, but the Lord said the poor will always be with us. The French will always be with us, too."

The next day on February 11, 2003, McCain co-sponsored a Senate resolution praising 18 European nations backing U.S. enforcement of UN demands for Saddam's disarmament. In his press release, McCain echoed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in thundering at the France and Germany of "old Europe:"

"The majority of Europe's democracies have spoken, and their message could not be clearer: France and Germany do not speak for Europe...most European governments behave like allies that are willing to meet their responsibilities to uphold international peace and security in defense of our common values. We thank this European majority for standing with us."

McCain's venom towards the French was on full display two days later during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. On February 13, 2003, McCain warned of "new threats to civilization [which] again defy our imagination in scale and potency" portrayed Iraq as "threat of the first order." He proclaimed that "the United States does not have reliable allies to implement a policy to contain Iraq" and pointed the finger squarely at France:

"Compare our great power allies in the Cold War with those with whom we act today in dealing with Iraq.

France has unashamedly pursued a concerted policy to dismantle the UN sanctions regime, placing its commercial interests above international law, world peace and the political ideals of Western civilization. Remember them? Liberte, egalite, fraternite...

...Gerhard Schroeder's Germany looks little like the ally that anchored our presence in Europe throughout the Cold War. A German Rip Van Winkle from the 1960s would not understand the lack of political courage and cooperation with its allies on the question of Iraq exhibited in Berlin today."

Just days later on February 18, 2003, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline program showed a furious McCain foaming at the mouth over France:

Here's how influential Senator John McCain sees the French.

JOHN MCCAIN, REPUBLICAN SENATOR: They remind me of an aging movie actress in the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it.

NORMAN HERMANT: Many in Washington are now saying relations with France have been a problem going all the way back to the end of World War II.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Perhaps Churchill and Roosevelt made a very serious mistake when they decided to give France a veto in the Security Council when the United Nations was organized.

McCain's feud with the French continued even after the start of hostilities and President Bush's May 1 declaration of "mission accomplished" in Iraq. But in a cynical July 2003 keynote address to the Atlantic Partnership (which promotes "the benefits of a strong and stable Atlantic community of nations"), Senator McCain acted as if he had never uttered his seething words of condemnation. Even in papering over the schism he helped foster, McCain couldn't resist taking a potshot at France:

"France and Germany shared the goals of our campaign to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime. We obviously disagreed over the means. Now that we have achieved our common objective of ending the threat posed by Saddam's Iraq, it's time to stop quarreling over the way we did so and move on. European nations that opposed the war must resist the tendency to say "I told you so," sit on the sidelines as the United States and our partners attempt to transform Iraq, and hope we find ourselves in a sandy quagmire that, in the eyes of some war opponents, would give us our just due...

...The United States must resist the tendency to punish our friends who did not support how we went to war, because things could have turned out differently. By the admission of Germany's leading opposition figures, who lost a close election to the current chancellor's coalition, a government in Berlin led by them would have stood with the United States in the diplomatic campaign preceding the war. France would have been isolated in its opposition, unable to claim to speak for Europe."

But that was five years ago. The United States, humbled by its humiliating fiasco in Iraq, is in no position to say "I told you so" to anyone. French President Chirac and German Chancellor Shroeder, persistent thorns in the side of the Bush administration, are gone, replaced by the more complaint conservative cheerleaders in Paris and Berlin, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, respectively. And most importantly, John McCain is now running for the White House and needing to project a presidential image during his European tour. So it's no surprise why John McCain reversed course and discovered his "friendship" with France during a March visit to Paris.

In the New York Times Monday, Republican water carrier Bill Kristol mocked Barack Obama's looming address in Berlin and its "anodyne message his campaign advertised Sunday - a discussion of the 'historic U.S.-German partnership' and strengthening trans-Atlantic relations."

Given the frayed state of the U.S. relationship with Europe, that is a vitally important message for the next American president - whoever it may be - to deliver. As Barack Obama clearly understands, it's not too soon to begin to repairing the Atlantic partnership that was so weakened by George W. Bush and John McCain.

Neocon godfather Irving Kristol once famously said that "a neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality." By that standard, the political right will need to coin an altogether new term to describe John McCain in the wake of the beating he has taken over the past several days. In the span of just two weeks, McCain has seen Barack Obama's call for a strategic refocus from Iraq to Afghanistan validated by the Pentagon and in Baghdad. And now, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has come out in favor of Obama's approach to drawing down U.S. forces in his country.

In an interview published Saturday in the German publication Der Spiegel, Maliki announced his idea of a "time horizon" for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq very much resembles that of Senator Obama:

"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

While Maliki's statement is part posturing aimed to gain leverage in the troubled talks over the watered-down status of forces agreement with the Bush administration, it is clear rejection of the perpetual American presence along the lines of South Korea or Germany that John McCain has repeatedly trumpeted.

Despite the indisputable security progress of the Iraq surge he endorsed, McCain has seen events on the ground rapidly alter the political landscape in Obama's favor. At almost every tur