Josh Marshall has a great piece on Talking Points Memo about how the Georgian/Russian conflict plays into the presidential election. Key paragraph:

"Meanwhile, there are players (largely, though not perfectly, overlapping with the folks who got us into Iraq) in the US who want to use this period of relative (though diminishing) Russian weakness to push American security guarantees (primarily NATO) not just to the borders of the old Soviet Union (which we've largely already done) but actually within the borders of the old Soviet Union. John McCain has been a supporter of inducting Georgia into NATO. And it is worth noting that had we done that we would currently be in effect in a state of war with Russia since we would be obligated to see the treat the attack on Georgia as an attack on us. Indeed, McCain is saying now we should move ahead quickly and bring them into NATO."