Obama's national-security chops

National security is supposed to be the Republicans' strength. That has not been the case in recent years as the Republicans have stumbled into one mess after another. These missteps have provided Sen. Barack Obama an opportunity to make national security his issue.

Public polling shows that Democrats have suffered from a "national-security deficit" for decades. The two basic Democratic approaches to this deficit — pivot to domestic policy or parrot GOP toughness — have failed to reassure the American people.

But eight years of George W. Bush's foreign policy have weakened the Republicans' claim to national-security competence. Obama seems to recognize this and has not shied away from a vigorous debate about foreign affairs.

Coming from the party less trusted on security and unable to rely on meaty foreign-policy credentials, Obama's policies have to be twice as smart. Ironically, it is this supposed foreign-policy lightweight whose ideas are gaining the most traction around the world.

Calling the Iraq invasion a strategic blunder in 2002 was prescient, but it is Obama's 2008 strategy to end the war in Iraq that should matter most to voters.

Having spent 15 months in Iraq and seeing the failed policies there firsthand, it certainly matters to me. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has essentially endorsed Obama's plan, President Bush now supports bringing home U.S. troops under a euphemistic "general time horizon," and even the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, promises to have American forces out of Iraq by 2013. Indeed, when it comes to Iraq, Obama has been ahead of everybody else.

Long ridiculed by Republicans for his willingness to meet with leaders from Iran, Obama's approach has been partially adopted by the Bush administration. Sending the State Department's top ambassador to meet with the Iranians signals that diplomacy, rather than the saber-rattling, is a better bet to halt the Iranian nuclear program.

Finally, Obama's long-standing emphasis on renewing the "forgotten war" against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan is now being echoed by the secretary of defense and even McCain, both calling for more troops to be deployed there.

Obama must continue to press the fact that his foreign-policy ideas — not McCain's — are gaining traction in the real world. He should continue to challenge McCain on national security and resist any temptation to focus exclusively on the Democrat's bread-and-butter domestic issues.

Finally, he should use this opportunity to develop a progressive vision for national security and convince voters that his worldview is superior to the proven failures of the Bush-McCain vision.

By taking the national-security fight to McCain, Obama can help expose how overreliant McCain is on his impressive biography. Five years as a POW in North Vietnam and two decades as a U.S. senator have certainly insulated McCain from much of the media scrutiny that Washington newcomer Obama faces on national-security issues. And for much of the American public, it is taken as a matter of fact that McCain is "solid" on national security.

However, McCain has collected a pileup of public gaffes on foreign affairs, an area in which he is supposed to be the expert. Confusing Shia for Sunni, mistaking Somalia for Sudan, referring to the Iraq-Pakistan border, which are 1,500 miles apart, all seem to suggest that when it comes to mastering foreign-policy details, McCain may be resting on his well-earned laurels instead of actively striving to understand the world around us.

McCain's challenge is to move beyond the past and explain more clearly to the American people his vision for the U.S. in the world. Presumably, McCain has such a vision, having been in the national-security arena for so long. But you wouldn't know it in looking at his campaign Web site, which rather conspicuously lacks a foreign-policy issues section.

Obama can use the rest of the campaign to reframe and promote a strong national-security vision that voters will respond to in November. Adding an articulate foreign-policy expert in Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., to the ticket demonstrates that Obama is gearing up to go head-to-head with McCain.

This unique opportunity to break the stranglehold of GOP electoral dominance on national security should be grasped by Obama and embraced by American voters if the U.S. is to recover from the foreign policy failures of the Bush administration.