Sen. John McCain, 71, who’s been in Washington forever, characterized Sen. Barack Obama as “representing the politics of the past.” That takes almost as much chutzpah as claiming that he is a campaign finance reformer when the reality is that he is in bed with lobbyists figuratively and possibly literally. The so-called straight-talker has placed lobbyists in key positions in his presidential campaign.

McCain needs a new speechwriter; he is as old as Methuselah, and it’s ludicrous for him to claim that someone who is young enough to be his grandson represents the past.

“In his back-and-forth with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., over Iraq, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Thursday morning sought to portray the Democratic front-runner as representing the Iraq politics of the past by focusing on the decision to invade in 2003 rather than what to do now.

‘That’s history, that’s the past,’ McCain told attendees at a town hall meeting at Rice University. ‘That’s talking about what happened before. What we should be talking about is what we’re going to do now. And what we’re going to do now is continue this strategy which is succeeding in Iraq and we are carrying out the goals of the surge, the Iraqi military are taking over more and more of the responsibilities.’” — Quotation from ABCNews.Com

To borrow Obama’s phrase it was Bush and McCain who drove the bus into the ditch; the pro-war Republicans are the last ones anyone should ask for advice on how to free the bus from the ditch.

Bush’s immoral, unethical and insane decision to invade a country that didn’t pose a threat to us isn’t ancient history; Obama has every right to hold accountable every senator who voted for the war.

McCain believes that we may be in Iraq for another hundred years — a grand view to take for a senior citizen who may not survive the next hundred days, and won’t live to see the death and devastation that will be the inevitable result of a prolonged occupation of Iraq.

Who would you rather have as commander-in-chief: A Barack Obama who won’t let our troops stay in Iraq one day longer than necessary or someone who is content to let them be butchered for the next hundred years?