[BayBuck]

Originally Posted by sandgk

You can also surely see how this diminishes the strength of any declarative position he would have otherwise taken in the future Presidential debates - even if the conversation goes beyond the Kerryesque parallel (and it surely must)...

Interestingly, Christopher Beam at Slate suggests that McCain's new stance is not a Kerryesque flip-flop but a sign of moderation and flexibility:

It?s purely hypothetical - McCain says it's "what I would hope to have achieved" after his first term - but it's still a rhetorical shift for McCain.
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Even hinting at a withdrawal date brings McCain way over from his hawkish "100 years" stance to a more palatable middle. (Even though "100 years" got twisted to sound more hawkish than it was.) In the past, McCain has called a withdrawal date tantamount to "chaos, genocide" that would cede Iraq to al-Qaida. But today's comments will reassure voters that he's not as excited about keeping troops in Mesopotamia as his opponents claim. No doubt McCain would say that nothing has changed - that he has always "hoped" to be out as soon as possible, but that we'll only exit once we've "won." But in the ears of voters, a date - however vague - sounds a lot more moderate than no date.
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Barack Obama, meanwhile, remains tethered to his pledge to have troops out within 16 months - a promise that seems extremely dubious to many experts.
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The difference now is that McCain has wiggle room where Obama does not. If Obama suggests he might stick around in Iraq for a few more years, he'll be accused of breaking his pledge. If McCain suggests he'd pull out troops earlier than expected, no one will hold it against him. Obama still has his "I opposed the war" trump card, but McCain's flexibility in the future could be as strong a weapon as Obama's correctness in the past.