Barack Obama on the situation in Iraq

There was an interview with Barack Obama. In it, he was asked about General Petraeus' requests and his disagreement with them. Bruce Schneier makes a good point about his response. General Petraeus' job is to handle Iraq. The President's job is to handle the world. It's a lot like a company. Each department is responsible for getting what it needs to do the best it can. But the CEO of the company has to look at all the things the company needs to do, and sometimes that means he has to tell Engineering "You've got a point, we do need to put money into new product development or we won't have anything to sell next year. But right now our marketing campaigns aren't working and our market share's dropping, so unless you've got a brilliant new product we can bring to market next week we need the money more over in Marketing for a new campaign or we won't be around next year to worry about what we'll be selling.". Obama grasps this concept, and clearly explains it. And he clearly explains why he can say he wouldn't give Petraeus what he wants while still agreeing that Petraeus is entirely right to ask for it and in fact does need it.

I haven't seen anything that reasonable out of the McCain side of things.