Sure, the Straight Talk Express ain't what it used to be. But John McCain is still startlingly candid on occasion. Take today, for example. At an event in Rock River, Ohio, the Arizona senator told the crowd that to win the White House he must convince a war-weary country that U.S. policy in Iraq is succeeding--and if he can't, "then I lose. I lose."

"I don't think there's any doubt that how [voters] judge Iraq will have a direct relation to their judgment of me," he added.

McCain, of course, is right: his fate is tied to Mesopotamia. (If the president thing doesn't work out, Mac, perhaps you should consider a slot with the McLaughlin Group.) But it's not only--or even mostly--what happens on the ground in Baghdad that matters. In truth, McCain's White House chances may have more do with another candid admission, and how strongly it influences voters' judgment--not of Iraq, but of the candidate himself:

"Make it 100."

That's McCain at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Jan. 3, answering a voter who asked whether he agreed with President Bush that U.S. troops might not leave Iraq for 50 years. Democrats have made it clear that they plan to clobber McCain with the quote from now 'til November. The goal: define him as a bloodthirsty warmonger. On the trail, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have given it a starring role in the anti-McCain section of their stump speeches. "He could see having troops in Iraq for 100 years," says Clinton. "I want them to begin to come home in 60 days." The brilliant satirists behind the "John.i.am" video took it even further, positing an "Iraq Withdrawal Date" of 12,008. (McCain recently qualified his original response by claiming that Americans are not "concerned if we're [in Iraq] for 100 years, or a 1,000 years, or 10,000 years." How that's for digging in your heels?) And now VoteVegs.org has a new ad up on Washington, D.C. cable (top) in which a female Iraq veteran cradles her baby and blasts McCain for being "okay" with spending "the next 1,000 years in Iraq"-- demanding "1,000 years of affordable health care" instead. At this rate, we should hit a billion years by May.

There's a good chance that such silliness will work. In 2004, the Republicans mercilessly hammered John Kerry for saying he "actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it"--and McCain's current situation is strikingly similar. Both quotes are catchy emblems of the candidates' biggest perceived weakness. For Kerry, it was his apparent "flip-flopping"; for McCain, his unblinking support of a war that 64 percent of Americans oppose. And taken out of context, both comments are pretty unfair. Kerry voted for a version of the war funding that revoked Bush's tax cuts, then against the final bill in protest. Meanwhile, McCain doesn't mean that Americans troops should be hunting down insurgents on the post-apocalyptic horrorscape of the fertile crescent 10,000 years from now; he's trying to say that once casualties drop to zero, we'll hand over combat duties and keep troops stationed there to help maintain stability (think Bosnia). The problem is, a totemic soundbite swamps a nuanced argument every time. Rhetoric, in these cases, matters more than reality. It's a lesson President Kerry knows all too well.

Out on the trail, the "100 years" quote comes up constantly, so it'll be interesting to see how McCain keeps it from leeching the life out of his bid. Already he's battling back--ineffectively. "My Democrat friends like to distort that comment," he said today in Rock Rapids. "My friends, the war will be over soon... The insurgency will go on for years and years and years, but it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us, and then we decide what kind of security arrangement we want to have with the Iraqis." Hmm, say Dems. So "the war" is almost over, but the "insurgency" will go on? What, exactly, is the difference? Where does one end and the other begin? And why, then, wasn't "the war" over six months ago, or a year ago, or on May 1, 2003? Uninterested in such subtlety, McCain's foes are already honing their response:

John McCain: For the 100-year war in Iraq before he was against it.  

Can't say we didn't warn you.