ABC reports tonight that McCain is 0-for-6 when it comes to Afghanistan:
ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports from Capitol Hill: The McCain campaign criticism of Sen. Barack Obama's hearing record on Capitol Hill led us to put the shoe on the other foot.
It turns out that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, has attended even fewer Afghanistan-related Senate hearings over the past two years than Obama's one. Which is a nice way of saying, McCain, R-Ariz., the top Republican on the Senate Armed Service Committee, has attended zero of his committee's six hearings on Afghanistan over the last two years.
By the McCain campaign's logic, Barack Obama is unserious and untrustworthy when it comes to Iraq because he hasn't yet visited the country. Leave aside for a moment the question of whether or not actually visiting the country somehow qualifies him better to make the right decisions -- was FDR ever at the front in France during WWII? With foreign policy discussions starting to turn towards an increasingly dangerous and hostile Afghanistan, it looks like McCain, by his own reasoning, may have a serious political problem emerging.
McCain surrogate Sen Jim DeMint busted open a can of worms this week when he sent Obama a letter chiding him for failing to hold a single hearing as ranking member of the Subcommittee on European Affairs. Perhaps Obama didn't hold a hearing, but he did attend the "full Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan in March, 2007." The same cannot be said for absentee Senator John McCain. I wonder if his media will make these connections. Doubtful.
