McCain foresight

You can argue with McCain and several issues he holds but it would be hard to argue with his foresight. One might say that he was wrong on the war (history may yet vindicate it) but his judgement has been stellar since.

He wanted far more troops in the beginning of the conflict in Iraq. For all intensive purposes Al Qaeda would have been far less effective with boots on the ground and the Shiite death squads far less effective, if they even had existed.

Secondly, he stuck by the surge when it was rejected by nearly every other politician and most of the country. Not only was he brave to do this he was right on its effect. By the way, the surge was a strategy, far more than just more troops, put together by Petraeus and company with McCain part of the whole support process. The met and discussed stategy for its success.

He has been right about Putin. Dead right. While President Bush was giving him the benefit of the doubt, and our left and continental Europe (the UK is on a cold war footing with Russia after the hit on former Russians) enjoying muscle pics of him, McCain stated that when he looked in Putin's eyes he saw KGB.

These are not trivial and will come into the campaign. We will see these on display at the convention and after. Already this has come to affect the race and we will see more incidents that are going to cause a pause in those that might otherwise jump at Obama.

World events like the Georgian conflict will make a dent in this election and the greatly help McCain in the eyes of most independents and fire up the conservative base.