Matt Yglesias writes on Charles Krauthammer’s “Hail Mary” Theory today.
Krauthammer writes:
Krauthammer’s Hail Mary Rule: You get only two per game. John McCain, unfortunately, has already thrown three. The first was his bet on the surge, a deep pass to David Petraeus who miraculously ran it all the way into the end zone.
Then, seeking a game-changer after the Democratic convention, McCain threw blind into the end zone to a waiting Sarah Palin. She caught the ball. Her subsequent fumbles have taken the sheen off of that play, but she nonetheless invaluably solidifies his Republican base.
When the financial crisis hit, McCain went razzle-dazzle again, suspending his campaign and declaring that he’d stay away from the first presidential debate until the financial crisis was solved.
Yglesias writes:
Some things in life are like that. Notably, many games. But also US Presidential elections. Significantly, though, prolonged wars of choice aren’t like that at all. Iraq is the kind of situation where a whole range of possible outcomes is possible, it involves more than two players, and the interactions between the players aren’t zero sum. It’s not, in other words, at all the kind of situation in which it’s appropriate to throw a metaphorical hail Mary. Unless, that is, you’re thinking of Iraq policy primarily as an electioneering gambit.
I want to note two things. First, and most important, did you see that hail mary that my former school, MTSU threw on ESPN Tuesday night football?!? It was there second completed hail mary pass to end the game THIS season (sadly they were tackled at the one yard line to lose against Kentucky on the first play).
Second, does anyone else feel like the political discussion about “the surge” is ignoring the fact that our government is deploying some secret innovation in warfare?
The inability to openly discuss this technology is being exploited by both sides against one another. It seems disingenuous to think that someone(named Barack Obama, in this case) was misguided in opposing the surge because he did not foresee the successful deployment of a military technology that he was either unaware of or had never been used before in combat. On the other hand, I have a suspicion that when McCain talks about using “Surge principles” in Afghanistan, he means deploying this technology, but can’t say it. So Obama and Biden are beating him over the head with his “one size fits all” approach to Afghanistan when McCain really just means bringing over the advanced combat tactics that are working in Iraq because of whatever it is we have invented.
Whatever it is, Bob Woodward, the only person who has seen it that can talk to us about it, considers it a critical reason that the surge is working, and I’m not sure how much credit for that John McCain can really claim in earnest.
