Americans like smash mouth competition - be it "three yards and a cloud of dust!" type football, or a high fastball down the middle in the bottom of the ninth, "two men enter, one man leaves" Thunderdome-style cage matches. It's simple, it's primal, it's fundamentally American.
This fundamental premise is why Karl Rove and the GOP have been so successful. Take the fight to the enemy. In a way, it's the political doctrine of preemption. Use "shock and awe" to immediately decapitate the opponent's perceived strength: Al Gore's wonkiness, John Kerry's heroic service in Vietnam, and now, Barack Obama's popularity and judgment.
McCain's strength is his Foreign Policy Judgment. McCain is running on The Surge.
Obama needs to hit McCain hard on The Surge, or risk losing independents. Right now, McCain is running ads showing three veterans declaring, "I am the surge." McCain is turning Obama's opposition to the surge into opposition to the troops. McCain is arguing that Obama wants to lose the war.
Obama is dancing around The Surge - focusing on the Economy, focusing on McCain's temper, focusing on anything but Iraq.
Obama needs a game-changing theme, and that theme, in a word, is "Victory."
Obama must define Victory in a way that McCain cannot. Obama must say that we will win the war on terror only when our last troop comes home. REPEAT FOR EMPHASIS: We cannot win in Iraq while we are still occupying Iraq. The Surge is not Victory. The Surge is a short-term band-aid. Obama msut ask McCain: if The Surge is so great, why do we have to keep "surging" there for 100 years?
Then, Obama can pivot to Maliki's demand that U.S. troops withdraw by 2011. Obama needs to reframe The Surge as permanent occupation of Iraq, a blank check.
Also, Obama needs to put up ads immediately showing that General Petraeus disagrees with John McCain about the effectiveness of The Surge.
On a final, related note: I cringed last night whenever I heard anyone say that Barack Obama will "change" America. That theme worked in the primaries because Democrats overwhelmingly and strongly want a "change" from the Bush Administration. However, independents and conservatives, as sick of the Bush Administration as they might be, do not necessarily want "change."
I wish the theme would have been that Obama would "renew" America, both at home and in the eyes of the world. This would work with their running theme that McCain is an old, out-of-date, clueless hothead. New vs. Old. Not Change.