Slight disagreement. While Kerry's speech was splendid, if four years too late, Clinton's was momentous. This is a guy who, as a Commander in Chief for eight years which included military action in Europe, the Caribbean, and Iraq, counts when he says Obama is ready.

...Add these results of overconfidence to Obama's Berlin speech (which made an otherwise serious foreign trip look like a political stunt to impress the rubes back home) and his flip-flop response to Russia's invasion of Georgia (he went from apportioning blame equally to calling for NATO to admit Georgia, which would likely commit the U.S. to military intervention on its behalf), and you have some of the reasons why Obama has faltered this summer...

John Judis.

Plus

I'm with Orr, et al.: Kerry's was better, and not  only because expectations for him were bathymetrically low. He served up the best kind of red meat, a nice juicy steak broiled medium rare over flames of righteous indignation, but marinated in fact as well as in rhetoric, in details about McCain's record rather than the more subjective adjectives upon which both Clinton and Biden too heavily relied. And Kerry of all people was the best messenger to serve that indignation up after what the Rove machine did to him in 2004, and after his own misguided choice to play nice at his own convention. I never imagined he had so good a speech in him. The Obama campaign needs to take Kerry's pitch-perfect formulation--Senator McCain vs. Candidate McCain--and make it a centerpiece of the fight this fall.

basman--

In fairness, Obama never said that. He called for "restraint on both sides" which, given the situation at the time of Georgian troops in full, chaotic retreat with Russian armored units closing in on the pipeline and Tiblisi, was a reasonable call.

Within hours he had issued statements of condemnation fully as robust as Bush or McCain, but at the time Job One was to get a ceasefire, and his language was appropriate to the task.

Bob

Nippers, your post made me want to go to Smith & Wollensky for lunch.

Bob you know more about such things than I do. And I don't want to split hairs.

Obama initially said:

“I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis.”

Here's McCain's first statement:

"[T]he news reports indicate that Russian military forces crossed an internationally recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia. Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory. What is most critical now is to avoid further confrontation between Russian and Georgian military forces. The consequences of Euro-Atlantic stability and security are grave. The government of Georgia has called for a ceasefire and for a resumption of direct talks on South Ossetia with international mediators. The U.S. should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course. The U.S. should immediately work with the EU and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this perilous course that it has chosen.

"I repeat, the government of Georgia has called for a ceasefire and for a resumption of direct talks on South Ossetia with international mediators. The United States should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council and to call on Russia to reverse course. The U.S. should immediately work with the EU and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this perilous course that it has chosen. We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to asses Georgia's security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation. Finally, the international community needs to establish a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force in South Ossetia."

I guess the argument is that the call for all sides to show restraint when Russia  was the (perhaps provoked) aggressor suggests an implicit equivalence not shown in McCain's comment. After all, as you note, it was "at the time of Georgian troops in full, chaotic retreat with Russian armored units closing in on the pipeline and Tiblisi,..."

But what seems more questionable is your notion that we can distinguish between Obama's first and subsequent  statements--were they indeed hours apart--on the basis that "job One was to get a ceasefire". Obama nor McCain had anything to do with getting anything officiial done. Their statements were political, for political consumption, a chance to walk down runway modeling their foreign policy garments. My sense is that Obama perceived that his first comments were too tepid and comprised bad politics for him such that politics drove him a few hours later to show more leg.

Finally, I kind of side with Judis that it may not be the heights of wisdom to plump for Georgia's entry into NATO, which, as Judis says,  "would likely commit the U.S. to military intervention on its behalf".

I find it concerning that politics might have driven Obama to make this statement. Which is different from McCain being (even if wrongly) principled about his position.

Nice talking to you again in any event.

Itzik

Itzik-

There's no substantive difference between McCain and Obama on Georgia. McCain's statements are politically more compelling in the short term, Obama's probably more predictive of likely policy going forward. We need a pragmatic, non-partisan policy on Russia, as on most other important foreign policy subjects.

Regards        Bob