Jules Crittenden is ticked.

I didn’t really expect Obama to go for a walk with McCain in Baghdad. The fact is, he’ll never walk in McCain’s shoes, there or elsewhere, but who would expect a political rival to accept a rhetorical challenge of that sort? 

The fact is, if Obama does decide it serves his interest to show the American public how clued in he is, and maybe also that he has balls — as much as a United States senator needs them for a shielded stroll through an Iraqi marketplace and a frontup with the troops whose mission and sacrifices he wants to throw away — the likelihood is he will only end up showing exactly how small a shadow he casts in the arena of foreign policy. For that matter, in anything related to our nation’s most pressing current concern, which is not energy policy or global warming or health care or race relations or even the economy, but war. Here’s an Obama spokesman, not even Obama himself, responding to McCain’s challenge: 

“John McCain’s proposal is nothing more than a political stunt, and we don’t need any more ‘Mission Accomplished’ banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq’s leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge. The American people don’t want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military, and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer.”

I’m sorry, but that sounds like sniveling chickenshit for president. Maybe that’s being uncharitable. Maybe, for someone who claims to care so much about the troops but can’t be bothered spending any time with them or finding out firsthand what they are doing, it sounds more like don’t give a shit for president.