Grading Obama, Clinton and McCain on Their Qualifying Exams

Modern presidential-campaign contests have had a way of transcending the merely silly and achieving absolute absurdity. I give you, as the only proof needed of this proposition, the winner of the last two. 

But it didn't take us long to lower even that bar of the absurd; and here, I offer as proof the recently introduced notion, which seems to have been almost universally embraced, of there being some kind of "commander-in-chief test" that every candidate can and should take -- some sort of essay contest or oral exam or resumé presentation that can demonstrate with definitive power a candidate's worthiness to grab the martial reins.

What perfect nonsense, especially if history is any guide. No one would have expected, for example, an itinerant prairie lawyer and one-term congressman to successfully navigate the nation through its greatest internal strife and bloodiest war; or a former professor and politician of only two years to soon see us through the first of the next century's world wars. Both were rolls of the dice, both would have unmitigatingly failed any such "test" -- and both, on the job, performed brilliantly.

Yet now we're told that our preelection doubts can be subdued and our confidence confirmed through prepackaged tests of, say, how many countries one has visited. One candidate claims 80, although Zbigniew Brzezinski notes that his travel agent claims 150. So oh my, what to do, what to do.

But perhaps the silliest, or most absurd, was the test taken of late by all three candidates on the same testing day -- the Petraeus/Crocker Senate hearings -- and peddled by the press as an authentic "Chance to ... Audition as Commander in Chief." At a hearing. In seven minutes. With prescripted, rehearsed questions. As senator-cum-commander in chief.

That's some test, the kind usually reserved only for members of a junior-high debate club as a sign of true leadership promise. Nevertheless we must ask ourselves, since everyone else has: How did they do?

And the one word that precisely springs to mind is -- unremarkably. But that's not so bad. After all, what did we expect? Even after all the hype that the Senate hearings were indeed some sort of "audition as commander in chief," the reality-based audience understood that the candidates' principal objective was simply not to make a fool of him- or herself. And this, they mostly achieved. Mostly.

Barack Obama performed credibly, even though he hasn't visited 80 countries. He was polite, studied, and as hopelessly bewildered and immensely unanticipating as the rest of us.

I don't blame you two guys for all this crap, he said, in effect, and "I'm not suggesting that we yank all our troops out all the way," but I am "trying to get to an endpoint" -- something no one else asked quite as directly. The forthcoming answer, of course, was as unforthcoming and murky and endless as all the others.

Hillary Clinton performed credibly as well, asking a good question about the run-up to the almost comically executed Basra campaign. In addition she asked, "What conditions would have to exist for you to recommend to the president that the current strategy is not working?" We all know the answer to that one: a different president.

When I noted above that each candidate's principle objective was not to make a fool of him- or herself and that this was achieved, I did, however, as you'll recall, add the qualifier, "mostly." And for good reason. For we always have John McCain, he of vast foreign policy and direct military experience, as well as the seeming inability to remember who's who.

I do give Senator McCain credit for at least trying to appear somewhat open-minded and subject to existential reality in asking why "1,000 Iraqi Army and police" turned tail in Basra and ran, which he described as "a disappointment." 

But dang it, John, you've simply got to get straight and then keep straight your Sunnis and your Shiites and your Qaeda bad guys and your Iranians, as evidenced by your "slip" -- for what, the fifth, sixth time? -- about there being any question whatsoever about al Qaeda as "an obscure sect of the Shiites."

Jesus, John, you might not always have Joe Lieberman of the Likud Party around to explain this to you. Al Qaeda is Sunni. Got it? Now get it straight for good and sin no more.

Please. Or before long you'll have even me wondering if there isn't, in fact, some sort of test for future commanders in chief.