It would make “a big mistake even bigger,” Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack said last week, in announcing his own candidacy for the presidency and criticizing John McCain’s plan to put more troops on the ground in Iraq.

At a time when most Americans have turned against the war, what is the Republican frontrunner doing proposing MORE troops for Iraq?

Does this man really want to be president? Does he have the respect for the American people that a would-be president and commander in chief must have?

Imagine, if you are old enough, running for president in 1968 or 1972 on a plan to INCREASE American troop presence in Vietnam. Even Richard Nixon used to promise that he had a “secret plan” for peace in Vietnam that would bring home the troops, not require more of them.

Now we have a candidate with a public plan for more combat.

If there is any merit at all to McCain’s approach – and I’m surely not the one to accord it – it is in its recognition that we did not have the troop strength in the first instance to accomplish our mission, not so much winning the war, but winning the peace. But if that is and was the case, then why did McCain go along with an effort that was doomed by its inadequacy, dare we say timidity, in the first instance?

If Bush was wrong, then so was McCain.

If Bush mishandled the war – and is there any doubt that he did? – then the blame must be shared between the commander in chief and his chief cheerleaders, McCain number one among them.

In his efforts to prove his loyalty to Bush and to the conservative base of the Republican Party, John McCain picked the Iraq war. In a word, he picked the wrong issue. It is not simply a matter of mistaken politics, but of seriously mistaken judgment.

If national security is supposed to be his strongest suit, what is his second strongest suit?

Across the country, Republicans who stood with Bush on the war may soon find themselves, or their staff members, standing in the unemployment lines. The lesson of the Vietnam War, at least the one most of us thought we learned, is that you cannot maintain a war abroad without support at home. It is not an act of courage to ignore popular sentiment, but an exercise of the worst sort of arrogance.

One campaign adviser to McCain has told reporters (not for attribution, of course) that they hope to sell McCain’s support for increased troops as “a long-term stand based on principle.” But just what principle is that? That wars don’t require democratic support? That it’s time we re-fought Vietnam once and for all?

There are, to be sure, occasions where leadership requires that one NOT bend to popular will; situations where a president must be willing to stand up, even to the majority, especially to the majority, to do what he or she believes is right. That is often the case, by definition, where the rights of minorities are at stake, or where civil liberties questions are posed; when the nation is moving forward in terms of nondiscrimination, for instance, or even on such broader policy issues as foreign aid, where doing the right thing may not be the popular thing.

But war is a different matter. The job of a president in deciding to go to war is to lead, not to ignore, the country, to educate, yes, but not to insult the intelligence of the electorate. If Mr. Bush is guilty of crossing that line, Mr. McCain, if he had his way, appears determined to trample it altogether. Were it not so obviously inappropriate, one might ask: Didn’t he learn the lessons of Vietnam? Where was he? The answer, of course, is that John McCain was serving his country, but he did so in isolation. You cannot run a country that way.