John McCain needs better handlers. That, or longer naps. Just about everything that has fallen out of his politics-hole in the past few weeks has just made his opponent look that much better.

He did it again today during a radio address to the nation, lambasting Obama for advocating an increase in troops deployed to Afghanistan. He accused Obama of being wishy-washy on the current conflict(s):

“My opponent advocates the deployment of two new combat brigades to Afghanistan; in other words, a surge. We’ll have to wonder how he can deny that the surge in Iraq has succeeded, while at the same time announcing that a surge is what we need in Afghanistan.”

This is, McCain said with much gravity, “not the kind of judgment we seek in a commander-in-chief.”

Oh, absolutely, John. We certainly wouldn’t want someone at the helm who thought there might be a difference between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We wouldn’t want to leave the reins of power in the hands of someone who might realize that Afghanistan is completely different—politically, strategically, historically, geographically, culturally and probably a few other -ally’s—from Iraq. And we sure at shit wouldn’t want to trust our nation’s security and perception in the world to someone who seems to realize that, unlike Iraq, the ruling powers in Afghanistan played a quantifiable role in abetting the attacks on American soil that sparked this whole conflict in the first place.

And if we don’t want a leader capable of making those distinctions, imagine the peril we’d be in if we allowed ourselves to be taken in by a person who might actually believe that a strategy that fails in one scenario might be successful in another? If we don’t elect someone utterly committed to stay the course at all costs—someone that simplistic, that ossified, that fucking stupid—to office, how will we ever manufacture the rationale needed to bring more of that good ol’ fashioned War-On-Terror-style peace and freedom to other imperiled nations of the world? Like Iran, say?

I guess that McCain and/or his machinery believes this kind of highly compartmentalized, alligator-brained thinking still resonates with a majority of the American public—or at least the American voting public. He lets this philosophy shine through in phrases like, “he would choose the path of retreat and failure for America over the path of success and victory”. Big, bold statements of conviction. Solid, immovable, slablike declarations, didactic monoliths, drawing a clear dividing line between him and Obama, Self and Other, Good and Evil, Black and Wh—well, Good and Evil.

Maybe he’s right, but I’d like to think that seven years of “You’re either ready to help us stick a boot up the ass of the rest of the world, or you eat aborted babies for breakfast” has left people a little more open to the idea of thinking stuff over before saying it into an Associated Press microphone, much less before mobilizing a few armored divisions to act on it. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

But personally, I appreciate Senator McCain’s candor, his willingness to speak his mind, and think he ought to do so whenever and wherever he feels he should. He’s making our guy’s job a lot easier.