The political game of “gotcha” quotes is unhelpful, especially when they are slips of the tongue. Take, for example, John McCain’s recent reference to the Iraq-Afghanistan border.  Iraq doesn’t have a border with Afghanistan. McCain clearly meant the Pakistan-Afghan border.

The McCain gaffe-watchers really worked overtime to take the words “it's a pretty good timetable” out of context to infer that McCain had changed his position on withdrawal from Iraq.   He clearly specified that a timetable is fine, as long as it’s based on conditions on the ground, which is pretty much what he’s been saying all along. It isn’t necessary to willfully misunderstand McCain to dispute his long-standing position.

But this post is about a much more surprising 2004 McCain statement that I think can’t be dismissed as a mere slip of the tongue.

The folks at Talking Points Memo last week put together a very helpful timeline of many McCain statements about Iraq. The timeline was designed to test McCain’s claim that he was an early, ardent critic of the Bush administration’s Iraq war management.

Greg Sargent of TPM seems to think the timeline “casts some doubt” on McCain’s Bush-critic bona fides. I read it all the way through, and I thought it generally supported McCain’s claim, at least on the key point that he was among the first and steadiest of those arguing that Iraq needed more U.S. troops, a claim that has become central to his argument that he was right about what was needed to win the war.

(I leave aside here the very important argument about McCain having been wrong in supporting the war in the first place and echoing the early Bush claims that U.S. troops would be treated as liberators. McCain still believes history will prove him right. Color me skeptical on that one.)

But as I read through the timeline, the McCain quote that caused my jaw to drop was this one, uttered on Fox News’ "Hannity and Colmes" program on April 14, 2004:

"[W]hen I was there in Iraq in August, I talked to [the] British. I talked to sergeant majors. I talked to colonels and captains. And I came back absolutely convinced that we needed more boots on the ground. These people warned me. They said, 'Look, if you don't have more soldiers here, you're going to lose control of this situation and you're going to face an insurgency some months from now.' I begged and pleaded that we send more troops. Secretary Rumsfeld said, 'Well, our commanders on the ground haven't asked for them.' It's not up to the commanders on the ground. It's up to the leadership of the country to make these decisions. That's why we elect them and have civilian supremacy. We're now facing a terrible insurgency. We can prevail, but we've got to have more people over there to get the job done."

This not a slip of the tongue. This is not a remark pulled out of context to change its meaning. It is a well-phrased, apparently passionate statement of a fundamental principle of the U.S. government. Civilian supremacy, usually just called civilian control of the military, means that the president, the secretary of state and the Congress (on legislative matters) outrank the generals and the commanders, even when the latter are “on the ground.”

Apparently, in 2004, McCain agreed with this principle when the commanders on the ground disagreed with him about the need more troops in Iraq.

But Sen. McCain disagrees with the principle if the commanders on the ground say they DO need more troops. Under those circumstances, it is folly, bordering on treason for a president, a senator or a presidential candidate to disobey a general.

What a slippery and flexible principle civilian control of the military turned out to be.