2013 = When Pigs Fly

I love this takedown of John McCain's "dreamcasting" speech in Columbus yesterday, cleverly (and successfully) devised to produce media headlines suggesting that he is some sort of moderate, and in particular that he intends to remove U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2013 (one of many wishful fantasies in his remarks). The piece is written by Matt Welch, the author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, and deserves to be read in its entirety. But as for the gauzy notion that McCain has any plan or intention of getting out of Iraq in four years, here's this:

[T]he 'never surrender' candidate has pledged to stay the course in Iraq until 'the establishment of a generally peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state' -- a perfect recipe for the 100-year occupation he's so furiously back-pedaling from -- while vowing to use force against Iran if the mullahs develop nukes. ... Will President McCain draw down combat troops from Iraq by 2013? Only if Iraq becomes the kind of [democracy] that few if any humans are predicting will happen in the foreseeable future. In other words, when cows fly. Americans who vote for McCain based on that promise will surely get the president they deserve.

As for the rest of McCain's rosy predictions, suffice it to say that McCain has voted for Bush's failed policies 95% of the time, resists helping consumers even in a crisis like the mortgage meltdown, and is generally much more of a neo-con than even George Bush.

UPDATE: Also, he says that a lot of our economic problems "are psychological":