Monday, July 21, 2008 at 10:02 am
Withdrawal Methods
Both John McCain and Barack Obama are now framing the discussion in Iraq around the idea of withdrawal. That's not new for Obama, but it is a shift for McCain, who spent much of last year dodging conversations about an end game in favor of focusing on the surge. The differences in strategy, however, are still striking. McCain says he will only withdraw when conditions on the ground allow, though he hopes to have most troops out by 2013. Obama says he will pre-set a date for withdrawal, 16 months after taking office, and then make adjustments based on conditions on the ground. I have a new Time.com story about this here, along with a quote from Grover Norquist, in June of 2007, who was one of several to predict the eventual shift in rhetoric.
Republican political strategists have long said privately what Republican candidates for President only hinted at publicly. No one can win the White House in 2008 by campaigning to continue an unending war in Iraq. "The sentence has to have the word 'leaving' in it," said Grover Norquist, the influential Republican operative, at a breakfast meeting in June of 2007. "Doesn't mean you have to leave tomorrow, doesn't mean you have to surrender, doesn't mean you have to cut and run, but the articulation of the policy needs to be clear to the American people that we are not staying there indefinitely, and that there is a 'doing something' and a 'leaving.'"
About Swampland
Joe Klein is TIME's political columnist and author of six books, most recently Politics Lost. His weekly TIME column, "In the Arena," covers national and international affairs. In 2004 he won the National Headliner Award for best magazine column. Read more
Senior Writer Karen Tumulty has been TIME's National Political Correspondent since 2001, and has also covered the White House and Congress for the magazine. A native of San Antonio, she is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard Business School, where her career choice has significantly lowered the average salary of her graduating class. But she gets lots of free magazines. Read more
Jay Newton-Small Jay Newton-Small covers politics for TIME. She has covered the Bush 43 White House and also Congress from the DeLay era to the present. And, yes, despite the misleading name SHE is a she. Read more
Michael Scherer is a correspondent in TIME's Washington bureau covering the 2008 presidential campaign. He has worked national assignments for Mother Jones magazine and Salon.com. Read more
Amy Sullivan is a senior editor at TIME magazine, and author of the book The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap (Scribner, 2008). A Michigan native, she holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Harvard Divinity School. She writes about religion and politics for TIME, but no longer answers to the name "Bible Girl." Read more
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