John McCain staked everything on success in Iraq. He advocated the surge publicly and made the case for it privately. He defended it passionately and intelligently, and was indispensable in beating back critics, shoring up nervous supporters, and keeping enough public support for the surge so the Democratic party’s repeated efforts to abort it failed. And as a result of the remarkable progress in Iraq over the past two years–progress whose possibility was scoffed at and whose reality was then denied by all leading Democrats except Joe Lieberman–Iraq faded as an issue in the presidential race. And with it, the critical question of who should be commander in chief also receded. By the fall of 2008, McCain got no credit for one of the great acts of statesmanship by a senator–let alone a senator who was also a presidential candidate–in American history. John McCain said repeatedly that he’d rather lose an election than lose a war. We ended up winning a war, and he ended up losing the election.
