Too inexperienced to be president

“I was speaking with one of these business owners who owns a couple of restaurants in town,” Romney said. “And he said ‘You know I’d like to change the Constitution, I’m not sure I can do it,’ he said. ‘I’d like to have a provision in the Constitution that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president and the birthplace of the president being set by the Constitution, I’d like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he could become president of the United States.‘”

Romney continued: “You see then he or she would understand that the policies they’re putting in place have to encourage small business, make it easier for business to grow.

Watch it:

Romney’s amendment would come as quite a shock to the last person to earn the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958 and served more than two decades in the United States Navy, including more than five years as an prisoner of war. After retiring from the Navy at the rank of captain, McCain turned to politics and was elected to the House in 1983 and to the Senate in 1987. Because McCain devoted his life to serving his country, rather than to working in business, the Romney amendment would disqualify him from the White House.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower would likely suffer a similar fate. Like McCain, Eisenhower was a career officer before entering politics, graduating from West Point in 1915 and eventually commanding the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. It’s not clear whether Romney’s amendment would count the time Eisenhower spent as President of Columbia University as “working in business,” and Eisenhower did work two years supervising the night shift at a creamery before entering college. Unless Romney would allow Eisenhower to count his time in academia as business experience, however, Eisenhower lacked the three years required to become president under the Romney amendment. Saving human civilization from Adolf Hitler is not a sufficient qualification.

President Theodore Roosevelt also could not have been president under the Romney amendment. Roosevelt graduated from Harvard college in 1880 and entered Columbia Law School, but eventually dropped out to mount a successful bid for the state legislature. After serving two terms, he left New York to grieve the deaths of his wife and mother and worked as a law enforcement officer in the Dakota Territory. After two years in exile he returned to New York to continue a sweeping career that would include an unsuccessful bid for New York City mayor, two years as head of the city’s police commission, an appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, service in the United States Army as a cavalry colonel, a successful election as governor of New York and brief service as Vice President of the United States. Roosevelt was also a prolific author and historian who wrote a history of the role of the burgeoning U.S. Navy in the War of 1812 that is still studied by scholars today. None of these experiences, however, are work in business, so Roosevelt does not appear to be qualified for the presidency under the Romney amendment.

Republican icon Ronald Reagan is a borderline case. Reagan worked as a radio announcer, an actor and as the president of a trade union before entering politics. Reagan spent eight years working for General Electric, but as host of GE’s television show General Electric Theater. It’s not clear whether this qualifies as business experience under Romney’s amendment, and it certainly does not qualify as “small business” experience.

One person who almost certainly would qualify for the presidency under the Romney amendment: Barack Obama. President Obama spent twelve years as an attorney with a small private law firm, in addition to spending two summers working for corporate law firms as a law student.

“I’ve been having discussions with Sen. [Sheldon] Whitehouse [D-R.I.] and a couple others on the issue,” the one-time campaign finance reform advocate said, noting talks have been ongoing for a couple of months and that he wants any legislation to be “balanced and address the issue of union contributions as well as other outside contributions.”

McCain, who famously co-authored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 with then-Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), has been noticeably AWOL on these issues since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.

In 2010, after the high court ruled, McCain declared campaign finance reform dead and essentially washed his hands of the cause, telling CBS’s Bob Schieffer, “I don’t think there’s much that can be done.”

Without McCain’s help, Democrats created the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act. The bill — which sought to ban campaign expenditures by foreign-owned corporations and to require disclosure of the true sources of the money behind independent expenditures and electioneering communications — passed the House in June of 2010. When the bill came to the Senate, McCain refused to back the measure. Decrying provisions in it as “a bailout for the unions,” McCain attacked the bill as tougher on corporations than unions.

McCain joined a filibuster and the bill failed to achieve cloture by a single vote. Rather than offering amendments to the bill or working behind the scenes with sponsors to reach an agreement, McCain was the deciding vote to kill the bill without even allowing an up-or-down vote.

Now, with an even more closely-divided Senate and Speaker John Boehner running the House, the climb for any disclosure legislation will be steep.

If McCain is serious about rejoining the campaign finance reform fight, it is welcome news. But thanks to his earlier obstruction, he may find his efforts to be too little, too late.

Osama Bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan

Since the ad appeared, Romney, his surrogates, and so-called independent groups like the nouvelle swift-boaters have all rehashed the same dubious line in Romney’s defense: That any American president (or “any thinking American“) would have ordered the bin Laden raid. Just last night on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show, Romney yet again issued this defense:

ROMNEY: But if the president wants to remind people of his decision, well, that’s entirely appropriate. But I think it was a big mistake for the president to try to make in this a political event by suggesting that I would not have done the same thing. I mean, frankly, Sean, almost any American in the position of presidency hearing that Osama bin Laden could have been taken out would have certainly pressed the button and said: get rid of the guy.

HANNITY: Oh, absolutely.

ROMNEY: And of course I would have.

Watch the video:

However, Romney and his allies’ repeated responses to the ad that “any thinking American” would have ordered the raid don’t account for the actual events surrounding Obama’s call.

In an analogous choice in 2005, George W. Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided not to strike at senior Al Qaeda commanders in Pakistan because of the potential risk to relations with the notoriously sensitive country. When Obama said in his first presidential campaign that he would strike in Pakistan to get bin Laden, McCain criticized him as irresponsible. Romney echoed this concern when he said in August 2007, “I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours.”

This is surprising to a lot of people, including, apparently, one of Romney’s chief surrogates — Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee, who has been campaigning for Romney. “Romney said that he was responsible for the auto bailout?” Mccain asked TPM’s Brian Beutler today when asked about Romney’s comments. He went to criticize the deal that Romney is now trying to take credit for: “I know that if the auto companies had gone into bankruptcy like thousands of small businesses had to do across America, they could’ve emerged without the sweetheart deal for the unions like was orchestrated by the Obama administration.”

But Inhofe’s blatantly political shot is being undermined by members of his own party and their ideological allies, who have either praised Obama or stuck to criticizing the strategy. Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash before the speech if he viewed the trip as “spiking the football” for the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has been a critic of Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, said, “No, I don’t view it as that.” He also lauded the trip and the strategic agreement:

MCCAIN: I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s always good when the president goes to where young men and women are in harm’s way.

And I think that many of us who have been involved in Afghanistan are very supportive of the strategic partnership agreement, which I’m sure he’ll be talking about, and we think the agreement is good. We obviously would like to know the details.

BASH: …Do you think that this trip is also part of his political campaign?

MCCAIN: No, I can’t accuse the president of that.

Appearing separately on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Homeland Security Committee chair Rep. Peter King (R-NY) also supported the trip, though he reserved judgement on the agreement until he could view it in detail. King said, “(H)is visit to Afghanistan is perfectly right. I applaud him for doing it.” The Congressman went on:

KING: Well, as president and commander-in-chief, I applaud him being in Afghanistan. I think it’s important for the troops to see the president and certainly after all of these years of fighting where the troops have done such heroic work and did such an outstanding job. I think it’s important for the president to be there and signing the agreement with President Karzai.

…I think it is always very good when the president of the United States can visit a war zone, especially on such a key moment as this.

Watch clips of the interviews with McCain and King:

McCain and King aren’t the only Republicans praising Obama’s trip. Romney foreign policy adviser Max Boot wrote that “substance of the speech” was “somber and serious and largely free of election-year politicking.” Romney himself released a statement that said: “I am pleased that President Obama has returned to Afghanistan. Our troops and the American people deserve to hear from our President about what is at stake in this war.”

The Daily Show's puppet version of Sen. John McCain

Romney’s push back is that anyone would have made the same decision that Obama made in ordering the raid on bin Laden’s compound last year. “Any thinking American would have ordered exactly the same thing,” Romney said today. One problem with that argument is that Vice President Biden and then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates advised Obama against taking the course he chose on the bin Laden raid.

Top Romney surrogate John McCain (R-AZ) used a similar line last night on Fox News. “I say any president, Jimmy Carter, anybody, any president would have obviously under those circumstances done the same thing,” McCain said. When host Bill O’Reilly pointed out that Biden would not have, McCain’s response was basically, “eh, anybody but Biden”:

MCCAIN: Biden is the same one that said we should divide Iraq into three countries. Biden is the same one that said Desert Storm would be another Vietnam. Biden has — has been consistently wrong on every national security issue that I’ve been involved in in the last 20 years or so. So, I wouldn’t use Biden as a bellwether.

Watch the clip:

So Biden should not be brought into this debate because he may have gotten some things wrong. If that’s the measure, than McCain has been irrelevant for many, many years.

McCain’s remarks, typical of GOP rhetoric on the issue, sweep aside the reality of the last few months. ThinkProgress compiled this video report:

The latest example, and the context for McCain’s remarks, was today’s vote on the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The bill passed 68-31, with every “nay” vote coming from a Republican man. The five female GOP senators voted for the re-authorization.

But before that, there was, of course, the overwhelming Republican opposition to the White House’s attempt to improve women’s access to contraception, Rush Limbaugh’s misogynistic rants against Sandra Fluke, the Republican amendment to allow employers to deny women contraception for any moral reason, Herman Cain’s suggestion that women have an inferior understanding of policy, Republican governors’ support for mandating medically unnecessary ultrasounds for women seeking abortions, Mitt Romney’s silence on the Lilly Ledbetter Act, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s repeal of that state’s equal pay laws, and the general denigration within both Republican political ranks and the right-wing media-sphere of women’s ability to ably serve in the military.

“I think it should be Sarah Palin,” McCain told CBS’ This Morning, laughing. He then listed other possible picks — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R). Watch it:

If McCain was joking, it’s both an admission of his own error in judgment for picking Palin in 2008, and a sleight against the former Alaska Governor-turned-TV-celebrity.

ABC News described the Senators’ bill:

The resolution supports calls by Arab leaders to provide the Syrian people with weapons and other material support and calls on President Obama to work closely with regional partners to “implement these efforts effectively.”

At a press conference, Lieberman said:

We in the United States have both a moral and strategic reason to support their efforts by at least giving them the means with which to defend themselves.

The Hill reports that the McCain-Graham-Lieberman resolution is likely to be merged with another by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) calling for a U.S. government report examining the rebels and gleaning information about its different factions. Other aspects of the resolutions also overlap. The Hill went on to expand on the call to support the Syrian opposition’s self-defense:

That support would likely come in the form of weapons and ammunition for anti-Assad forces. McCain declined to comment on what specific weapons could shipped to rebel troops in the country.

But the Arizona Republicans said those arms could be funneled through the same lines that the “non-lethal” supplies being sent to Syria by the U.S. and Turkey.

The Hill also noted that McCain, Lieberman and Graham did not call in their resolution for airstrikes against Syria. Earlier this month, McCain voiced support for U.S. air strikes against Assad’s regime aimed at helping the rebels topple it. Lieberman and Graham almost immediately followed McCain’s lead.

But those sorts of actions are deeply unpopular among Americans. A Fox News poll released on March 15 said 68 percent of those surveyed opposed air strikes aimed at overthrowing the country, and only 19 percent supported such a strategy. A slim majority opposed and 37 supported air strikes narrowly limited to protecting anti-government rebels. Even the U.S. arming the rebels was unpopular: 64 percent of respondents opposed it, with a quarter of them supporting it.

According to the Hill, “Lieberman said it was decided to exclude the airstrikes demand from the resolution, fearing it would sap bipartisan support for the legislation among rank-and-file senators.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — who attacked then-senator Obama for political gain while he was abroad during the 2008 presidential campaign — is choosing to ignore the Republican House Speaker on national security grounds. “I respectfully disagree with Speaker Boehner,” McCain said on Fox News this morning, because, he said, “this is a very serious issue.” And when asked if he thinks, as Romney does, that Russia is America’s “number one foe,” the Arizona senator wouldn’t go that far: “I think in many respects”:

MCCAIN: I understand John Boehner’s point and I respect that but this is a very serious issue. No matter where the president is, if he makes a statement that I think could endanger the United States national security interests, I have to respond no matter where the president of the United States is. [...] All I can say is I respectfully disagree with Speaker Boehner. [...]

KILMEADE: Do you think they [Russia] are our geopolitical foe?

MCCAIN: I think in many respects, look at what they’re doing in Syria right now, they’re supplying arms and equipment to Bashar Assad while he slaughters and massacres his own people. Look at — they continue to prop up North Korea…and obviously now there is a president for life.

Watch the clip:

This isn’t the first time McCain has differed with Romney on a foreign policy issue. The former Massachusetts governor said that under no condition should the United States negotiate with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan. However, McCain recently disagreed. “I think it’s important to have talks wherever you can,” he said.

Medvedev also criticized Romney yesterday. “I always get very cautious when I see a country resort to phrasings such as ‘No. 1 enemy.’ It is very reminiscent of Hollywood in a certain period of history,” the Russian president said, adding, “My other advice is to check their clocks from time to time. It is 2012, not the mid-1970s.”

McCain saw Medvedev’s comment as meaning that Russia is in the tank for Obama. “They obviously want president Obama reelected, that’s pretty clear,” McCain told the Hill newspaper.

McCain: I promise you this. I promise you there will be huge scandals… because there’s too much money washing around, too much of it… we don’t know who, who contributed it, and there is too much corruption associated with that kind of money. There will be major scanadals.
Moderator: John McCain never gives up. That’s the legend. Are you gonna give up on this?
McCain: No. But I’ve got to wait until we think that can pass legislation. And I’m not sure right now, frankly, that we could get it passed.

Watch the video:

With a Republican House largely unconcerned about the issue and a Republican minority able to block legislation through filibuster, McCain is probably correct in his assessment of the prospects of a legislative fix in the current Congress.

But McCain deserves a large share of the blame for the secret money in our political system.

In 2010, after the high court ruled, McCain declared campaign finance reform dead and essentially washed his hands of the cause, telling CBS’s Bob Schieffer, “I don’t think there’s much that can be done.”

Without McCain’s help, Democrats created the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act. The bill — which sought to ban campaign expenditures by foreign-owned corporations and to require disclosure of the true sources of the money behind independent expenditures and electioneering communications — passed the House in June of 2010.

When the bill came to the Senate, McCain refused to back the measure. Decrying provisions in it as “a bailout for the unions,” McCain attacked the bill as tougher on corporations than unions.

On September 24, Democratic efforts to end a Republican filibuster of the measure failed by a single vote. All 59 Senate Democrats voted to end debate, McCain voted no. Rather than offering amendments to the bill or working behind the scenes with sponsors to reach an agreement, McCain was the deciding vote to kill the bill without even allowing an up-or-down vote.

Perhaps he feared a tough 2010 primary, but when there was a chance to do something about disclosure, McCain opted to stand with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the Chamber of Commerce rather than Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and the campaign finance reform movement. He has not even co-sponsored the disclosure-only DISCLOSE Act of 2012 introduced last week.

McCain’s grumbling comes as too little, too late and should be seen as what it is — little more than grandstanding.

ThinkProgress intern Zach Bernstein contributed to this report.

GREGORY: Are you concerned at all to see the focus, with certain elements of the Republican Party, on social issues? In your own state of Arizona, there’s this contraception bill that even the governor has said would put women in the uncomfortable position where they had to say to their employers why they wanted contraception, and why it should be covered — is that a bad road?

McCAIN: I am confident that that legislation will not reach the governor’s desk and if it did it would be vetoed. . . . It certainly does not reflect, in my view, the majority view of the people of Arizona.

GREGORY: Do you think that there is something of a war on women among Republicans?

McCAIN: I think we have to fix that. I think that there is a perception out there because of how this whole contraception issue played out — ah, we need to get off of that issue, in my view. I think we ought to respect the right of women to make choices in their lives and make that clear, and get back onto what the American people really care about.

Watch it:

McCain’s concern for “the right of women to make choices” is touching, but it is also a very new development. Just this month, McCain backed the Blunt Amendment, a key prong in the GOP war on women that would have allowed employers to veto women’s access to contraception through their health plans.

Nevertheless, McCain’s recent defection from the war on women is both a welcome development and a good political example for his fellow Republicans to follow. More than three-quarters of American agree with McCain’s new view that Republicans should stop forcing contraception into the national political debate.

The Republican Party appeared to be unified in both supporting President Obama’s Afghanistan surge in 2009, and criticizing the withdrawal plan he announced last year. But fractures emerged within the GOP as the presidential candidates sought to get to Obama’s left on Afghanistan. But now the recent events there have split the GOP in three camps. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum appear ready to throw in the towel. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is still attacking the president for wanting to withdraw too soon and now the third wing is openly supporting Obama’s timetable, the AP reports:

Republicans and Democrats alike insist the United States should stay the course in Afghanistan, sticking to President Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawing American troops despite the massacre of Afghan civilians and the burning of Qurans — two offenses blamed on the U.S. military that have stoked anti-American anger.

Key proponents of keeping troops in Afghanistan, like Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., say these tragic incidents shouldn’t diminish the American resolve to finish a job begun more than a decade ago.

Moreover, the Hill reports that Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who appeared to oppose Obama’s withdrawal plan last year, is urging Obama to maintain the current plan:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday backed the Obama administration’s scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan, a conflict that has reached a critical moment following the alleged slaying of 16 Afghan civilians by a U.S. soldier.

McConnell emphasized he was speaking only for himself, and his remarks highlighted a divide in his party, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) slamming the administration’s plans to withdraw the 23,000 remaining “surge” troops from Afghanistan by year’s end.

A new poll out this week found that Americans’ support for the war in Afghanistan at an all time low. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports today that “[a] growing number of Afghans say they have come to see a quick U.S. pullout as the best of bad options.”

Today on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace played a clip of Obama’s warning during an interview with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). The Arizona senator called it “bothersome” and, just moments later, urged the president to demarcate his own “red lines” in which the U.S. will act with Israel:

MCCAIN: It’s a little bothersome that a president of the United States would denigrate the views of other people who feel that they have a right to weigh in on this issue. It’s not casual that some of us in the Senate have become engaged. It’s not casual on the part of Mitt Romney to say that it is unacceptable for the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon. [...]

They continue to develop a nuclear weapon and there has been no change from that course despite the sanctions and all the other efforts that are being made. … and these are the following red lines Mr. Prime Minister, we will act with you if Iran reaches those red lines and those red lines could be drawn. Instead the president has decided to persuade Israel not to attack at least between now and November of 2012. It’s not helpful.

Watch the clip:

Of course the president is not wrong. Right-wing pundits and, indeed, the GOP presidential candidates regularly engage in “loose talk of war” with Iran.

For his part, the president has warned about the dangers of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, including undermining the nonproliferation regime, endangering regional security and risking a bomb falling into the hands of terrorists. But he also stressed just last weekend that “an opportunity still remains for diplomacy — backed by pressure — to succeed.”

And McCain inadvertently highlighted the president’s point when he called for the U.S. to draw so-called “red lines” with which to “act” with Israel on Iran while at the same time, misrepresenting known facts about Iran’s nuclear program. “They continue to develop a nuclear weapon,” McCain said this morning. While the U.S. and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have expressed serious concerns that Iran may be moving toward a nuclear weapons capability, neither the IAEA nor U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Iran has made the decision to build a bomb. As the AP noted in an in-depth article on Iran’s program this weekend, “Iran has the equipment and raw materials to produce the fissile core of a nuclear weapon. … But there is no evidence that the Islamic Republic has taken steps in that direction.”

Faced with aggressive questioning, Panetta warned Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ) — both of whom called this week for bombing Syria — that such options need to be weighed carefully and that grueling diplomatic work needs to be put in to actualize such policies. That work is being done, he said, by the U.S., even as it exhibits caution regarding military options to help resolve the nearly year-old Syrian uprising that has claimed more than 7,000 lives.

Lieberman suggested at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today that the U.S. needs to “get the international community together in a coalition of the willing soon.” Panetta responded sternly, seeming to lecture Lieberman and McCain that deciding on military action is no easy choice:

PANETTA: If the agreement here is that we ought not to just go in unilaterally, then we have to build a multilateral coalition. We’ve got to be able to work at that. It’s not that easy to deal with some of the concerns that are out there. But nevertheless we are working at it. Secretary Clinton is working at it everyday. There are diplomats that are engaged on this issue.…

Can it happen today? Can it happen now? No. It’s gonna take some work; it’s going to take some time. But when we do it, we’ll do it right. We will not do it in a way that will make the situation worse. That’s what we have to be careful of.

Watch a video of the exchange:

Earlier in the hearing, McCain baited Panetta by repeatedly asking him questions along the lines of: “How many more have to die, 10,000 more, 20,000 more? How many more?” Panetta responded:

PANETTA: As secretary of Defense, before I recommend that we put our sons and daughters in uniform in harms way, I’ve got to make very sure that we know what the mission is. I’ve got to — I’ve got to make very sure that we know whether we can achieve that mission? At what price? And whether or not it will make matters better, or worse?

Those are the considerations that I have to engage in.

Like with Iran — as President Obama noted yesterday — those arguing for military force in Syria rarely seem to engage in these considerations at all.

McCain did not reference the apology Limbaugh offered this weekend, but many — including at least two advertisers — have been unsatisfied with it, as the radio host expressed little contrition and used the venue to further his false attacks on Fluke.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who has been the most outspoken religious leader against President Obama’s new contraception mandate, which sparked this whole controversy, spoke out against Limbaugh yesterday, saying the conservative entertainer should not be so “pugnacious.” “Whatever we do, and however strongly we feel, we do it charitably, we do it civilly,” Dolan said. “We don’t judge the motives of other people.”

Meanwhile, Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey and Bush EPA administrator, said Limbaugh’s statement was “hardly an apology,” and also criticized lawmakers in her own party. “What is more to the point, and an issue for Republicans, is holding a hearing on contraceptives without a woman on the panel.”

Candidate Romney (L) and adviser Kagan (R) part ways on Obama's Asia policy

Last week, Romney wrote a Wall Street Journal opinion piece blasting Obama’s Asia policy, particularly on China (albeit while misrepresenting said Obama policy). That afternoon on MSNBC, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who endorsed Romney after dropping his own presidential bid, said Romney’s China policies were “wrongheaded” and that he “would disagree with what some of what Governor Romney said.”

Now, a top Romney foreign policy adviser — not merely a supporter — has come out and praised Obama’s Asia policy, particularly his work on China. Appearing on the Colbert Report to promote his book, neoconservative Brookings scholar Robert Kagan, an Iraq hawk who advises the Romney campaign, said Obama “has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China”:

COLBERT: How can you advise Romney and like anything the President does?

KAGAN: I think that when the president does the right thing, it doesn’t matter what party you’re in, you should be supportive.

COLBERT: Killing bin laden doesn’t count. Killing Awlaki doesn’t count. Killing Qaddafi doesn’t count. Supporting the Arab Spring doesn’t count. So what else has he done?

KAGAN: Well, I think he’s done some things wrong. I think he has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China. I think he’s strengthened our position in Asia with our allies. On some issues I think he’s been a lot weaker.

Watch the video, starting at the four-minute mark:

Kagan’s assessment that Obama has “strengthened our position in Asia with our allies” flies in the face of what Romney said in his Wall Street Journal piece. The GOP candidate wrote:

[Obama] has only encouraged Chinese assertiveness and made our allies question our staying power in East Asia… The supposed pivot has been oversold and carries with it an unintended consequence: It has left our allies with the worrying impression that we left the region and might do so again.

But maybe no one should be surprised that Kagan is a fan of some Obama policies. After all, the feeling seems to be mutual. Last month, Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin and the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote that Obama spoke effusively about Kagan’s essay in the New Republic (also here) about “the myth of American decline.”

While of course there’s expertise that comes with covering the campaign trail, and the jobs of embeds are really hard, it’s also a setting that benefits from someone parachuting in occasionally and pointing out that hey, all of this is utterly ridiculous, and exhausting, and a spectacle. Wallace writes:

If this all seems really static and dull, by the way, then understand that you’re getting a bona fide look at the reality of media life on the Trail, much of which consists of wandering around killing time on Bullshit 1 while you wait for the slight meaningful look from Travis that means he’s gotten the word from his immediate superior, Todd (28 and so obviously a Harvard alum it wasn’t ever worth asking), that after the next stop you’re getting rotated up into the big leagues on the Express to sit squished and paralyzed on the crammed red press-couch in back and listen to John S. McCain and Mike Murphy answer the Twelve Monkeys’ questions, and to look up-close and personal at McCain and the way he puts his legs way out on the salon’s floor and crosses them at the ankle and sucks absently at his right bicuspid and swirls the coffee in his McCain2000.com mug, and to try to penetrate the innermost box of this man’s thoughts on the enormous hope and enthusiasm he’s generating in press and voters alike … which you should be told up front does not and cannot happen.

In any case, you’ll get told to read a lot of things by David Foster Wallace today. But this would be my vote for which one you should pick. It’s a fantastic piece. But it’s also a terrific reminder of how marvelous it would be to have him around for a presidential election that’s many magnitudes weirder than South Carolina in 2000. What a loss.

Dempsey, the highest ranking military officer in the U.S., went on to emphasize that while all options remain on the table, U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon:

MARTIN DEMPSEY: We also know, or believe we know, that the Iranian regime has not decided that they will embark on the [...] effort to weaponize their nuclear capability.

FAREED ZAKARIA: You think that is still unclear? [...]

DEMPSEY: It is. I believe it is unclear and on that basis I think it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us.

Watch the interview:

Dempsey’s conclusion that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon reflects the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community and the IAEA. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Service Committee on Thursday that Iran’s leadership had not yet decided to develop a nuclear weapon but were “keeping themselves in a position to make that decision.”

The November IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program found that while there were possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, the nuclear watchdog agency couldn’t confirm that Tehran was pursuing a nuclear weapon. The IAEA’s findings were upheld by CIA Director David Petraeus last month. Petraeus told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the IAEA report is “the authoritative document” on Iran’s nuclear program.

Indeed, a nuclear weapons possessing Iran would be destabilizing but while hawks on Capitol Hill are eager to portray Iran as a “martyr state” hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons, senior intelligence and military officials take a very different view. “We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor,” said Dempsey. “And it’s for that reason that we think the current path we’re on is the most prudent path at this point.”