John McCain has wasted no time in demonstrating his presidential credentials as the US election candidates respond to the conflict between Georgia and Russia in South Ossetia.

Barack Obama may rue his bad luck in being on holiday as the conflict escalated over the weekend – allowing McCain to portray himself as the better candidate on US foreign policy while Obama could only comment from a beach-front villa.

McCain has consistently tried to show Obama to be too naïve and inexperienced to be Commander-in-Chief of the American armed forces, and instantly responded to Russia’s action in South Ossetia with what Reuters called “a lengthy discourse on the crisis in the Caucasus for reporters and cameras”.

The Republican candidate said he thought Russia was intent on regime change in Georgia, whose pro-Western government is a close ally of the USA. He also warned Russian leaders that their armed intervention in the region would have “severe, long-term consequences” for Russia’s relations with Europe and the US.

And he urged NATO to convene an emergency session to demand a ceasefire and begin planning the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in South Ossetia.

Meanwhile Obama “made a brief appearance in Hawaii, where he is on a family holiday”.

McCain has been criticised by opponents of current US president George W Bush, who feel that a McCain presidency would effectively mean a Bush third term. Bush has become deeply unpopular with sections of the American public over his handling of the Iraq war, and voters may be concerned that McCain could drag America’s already-overstretched forces into another conflict with questionable benefits to the US.

But McCain was an early opponent of the Iraq war, which has allowed him to position himself as a hardline defender of US interests abroad without seeming to be unnecessarily hawkish.

He will almost certainly try to point out to voters that US relations with Russia will more directly affect America than those with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and will attempt to raise doubts as to whether Obama can be trusted to manage situations like those unfolding in Georgia this week.

Being forced to respond through written statements and from the beach will put Obama at a clear, if only fortuitous, disadvantage.

Posted in The Grandstand View