Barack Obama might not make it to November.

Republican presidential nominee presumptive John McCain may not have entirely solidified his base as of yet, but he is doing the next best thing by making his presumptive general election opponent, Barack Obama, look like an idiot. An example of this came just this week when McCain invited Obama for a joint trip to Iraq this summer:

Republican John McCain on Monday sharply criticized Democratic rival Barack Obama for not having been to Iraq since 2006, and said they should visit the war zone together.

"Look at what happened in the last two years since Senator Obama visited and declared the war lost," the GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting told The Associated Press in an interview, noting that the Illinois senator's last trip to Iraq came before the military buildup that is credited with curbing violence.

"He really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time," the Arizona senator added. "If there was any other issue before the American people, and you hadn't had anything to do with it in a couple of years, I think the American people would judge that very harshly."

This attack on Obama is absolutely devastating. The accusation here is that Obama is not only completely wrong on Iraq, and not only deliberately misleading the American people about Iraq, but that he is deliberately misleading himself(!!!) about the conditions in Iraq by refusing to visit. McCain's position, on the other hand, is entirely enviable. Essentialy, McCain is saying that conditions in Iraq have improved in the last two years, that anyone who can be bothered to care about his own country's actions would have to be a total fool not to recognize it, and, as is well known, that it was McCain's visible and staunch leadership that contributed greatly to the success.

There is another reason for the joint trip, of course. McCain is suggesting that if Obama visits Iraq on his own with nothing but his sycophantic Democratic allies, Obama will just lie about what he sees there. You can't trust Obama to tell the truth unless McCain comes along to keep him honest.

As you might have expected, Obama is at least smart enough to realize that all of this is true, which is why he might visit Iraq this summer, but not with McCain:

Barack Obama is considering a visit to Iraq this summer, his first since becoming a presidential candidate.

Obama revealed his plans to The New York Times. He has been under criticism from Republican rival John McCain for failing to visit Iraq since 2006. Obama also declined McCain's invitation for a joint trip, saying he didn't want "to be involved in a political stunt," according to a report Wednesday on the newspaper's Web site.

It should be no surprise that Hillary Clinton is not quitting the presidential nominating process given that her chief opponent, if elected, would likely be the single most-inept foreign-policy president since Franklin Pierce.