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McCain's Real Running Mate

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By JACKSON DIEHL Special To The Washington Post

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 13, 2008

Never mind Sarah Palin. John McCain has another running mate: Gen. David H. Petraeus.

McCain didn't mention Palin once by name during his first debate with Barack Obama. He brought up Petraeus seven times. He's been invoking the Iraq commander in speeches around the country - in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida. He's even been carrying around a biography of the general. And he has schooled Palin, who in Thursday's debate called Petraeus "a great American hero."

For McCain, Petraeus is the icon of the turnaround in Iraq brought about by the surge of troops that McCain vociferously supported. "Thanks to this great general, David Petraeus, and the troops who serve under him, they have succeeded, and we are winning in Iraq," he said in the Oxford, Miss., debate.

Petraeus is also McCain's battering ram against Obama. "Obama didn't go to Iraq for 900 days, and never asked for a meeting with General Petraeus," McCain charges. Petraeus, he says, thinks the Democrat's plan to withdraw U.S. combat forces is "dangerous." Petraeus says that progress in Iraq is fragile, so "we can't do what Senator Obama wants to do." And the general says Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism - not Afghanistan, as Obama would have it.

When was the last time a serving U.S. military officer was made to play such a large role in a presidential campaign, even if involuntarily? There may be no modern precedent. Colin Powell had retired from the Army by the time presidential candidates came courting him. Robert Taft tried to use Douglas MacArthur in the 1952 campaign but only after Harry Truman had fired MacArthur.

Petraeus is preparing to take over his biggest assignment yet - chief of U.S. Central Command, with responsibility for the entire Near East, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Lebanon. He will be at the center of the next administration's decisions about how to manage two wars, not to mention the gravest threats of terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Yet Petraeus is being employed by one candidate to prove his worth, and discredit his opponent, in a contest to determine which of them will become the general's next commander in chief.

The irony is that McCain pushed for Petraeus' appointment to Central Command in part to constrain the next president. As Bob Woodward reports in his new book, McCain was swayed by retired Gen. Jack Keane, a backstage author of the surge, who argued that once Petraeus "took over the command, the U.S. strategy in the Middle East would be locked in, no matter who won the 2008 presidential race."

McCain's use of Petraeus in the campaign could very well undo that lock, if the general comes to be tainted as a Republican tool. Advisers to Obama tell me that his opinion of Petraeus hasn't been affected by McCain's campaign tactics. But the fact is that by employing the general so heavily in his rhetoric, McCain is doing a disservice to a commander whose skills the next president will sorely need - especially if he is Obama.

Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor for The Washington Post.

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