Why Krauthammer is voting for McCain

On "McCain the Stalwart"

The inimitable Charles Krauthammer with a litany of reasons to vote for John McCain.

After dismissing several phony reasons not to vote for him, Krauthammer asks:

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the last year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Good point! If the world "stood as one" then why was there any conflict? Who was on the other side of the wall?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts, but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

Obama was against the war in Iraq, even though he has said he would take action in Darfur to stop genocide, though he has never made a distinction as to what actions he would take unilaterally and how they would be any different from what Bush did in Iraq, other than there would be no strategic interest of the United States involved in an incursion into Darfur!

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Well, after McCain made his statement, Obama did say "Me, too!" That counts in global high stakes diplomacy, yes? Krauthammer concludes:

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

Cross posted at Say Anything