Obama is Supported by the Vast Majority of Democratic Foreign Policy Advisers
James Traub had a very interesting article about Barack Obama’s foreign policy credentials in the New York Times on Sunday. While the media and many Americans — according to polls — question his experience, the experts apparently prefer Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton:
There are maybe 200 people on the Democratic side who think about foreign policy for a living,†as one such figure, himself unaffiliated with a campaign, estimates. “The vast majority have thrown in their lot with Obama.†Hillary Clinton’s inner circle consists of the senior-most figures from her husband’s second term in office — the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the former national security adviser Sandy Berger and the former United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke. But drill down into one of Washington’s foreign-policy hives, whether the Carnegie Endowment or the Brookings Institution or Georgetown University, and you’re bound to hit Obama supporters. Most of them served in the Clinton administration, too, and thus might be expected to support Hillary Clinton. But many of these younger and generally more liberal figures have decamped to Obama. And they are ardent. As Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council official under President Clinton who now heads up a team advising Obama on nonproliferation issues, puts it, “There’s a feeling that this is a guy who’s going to help us transform the way America deals with the world.â€
Obama got a bit frustrated at the end of an interview with James Traub, because of the constant criticism of his lack of foreign experience:
He wanted to know what kind of experience Clinton supposedly had that he didn’t, and what kind of crisis she was supposedly better suited to than he, and why “toughness†had become a stand-in for experience, and how Clinton could get credit for it when she failed to stand up to Bush on the Iraq vote. We batted all this around. Finally he said, “Ask Nye why Hillary’s paint-by-the-numbers foreign policy makes her more qualified to handle a crisis when for most of our history our crises have come from using force when we shouldn’t, not by failing to use force.â€
I find it very difficult to form an opinion on the foreign policy positions and attitudes of the leading presidential candidates based on their statements so far. While I consider Barack Obama very impressive (incl. the quotes in this article), I found his Foreign Affairs essay rather superficial.
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14 Responses to “Obama is Supported by the Vast Majority of Democratic Foreign Policy Advisers”
He’s lightweight and disfavored against Clinton even though the young and naive crowd adores him and thinks he’s refreshing change (he’s a typical old-fashioned Democratic politician with grounds for criticism about his time in Illinois.
Obama fans, enjoy the photo at top of page.
I’ll beat defenders of Obama’s essay in Foreign Affairs to this infamous essay.
“Mission Accomplished,” Sam.
Here are two more supporters of Obama’s plan
http://fpwatch.blogspot.com/2007/11/logic-of-obama-plan.html
http://theglitteringeye.com/?p=3266
And here: http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2007/11/post_112.html
[...] post by Joerg Wolf This was written by . Posted on Tuesday, November 6, 2007, at 4:57 pm. Filed under [...]
wont pledge to the flag and probably wont want to put his hand on the bible neither……in other words cant be sworn in as president..
hellinahandbasket
@ hellinahandbasket (#7)
Very funny indeed.
@DLS
“the young and naive crowd adores him”
Well, the NYT reporter did not ask college students, but foreign policy analysts.
The foreign policy of the current administration has got us nothing but trouble.The Us is at its lowest and weakest point.
Hillary Clinton;s statements make her sound like Bush lite.
The other democrats sound too vague and idealistic, offering few specifics.
All the Republicans just want another war to fingt; it’s all they seem to know.
Ron Paaul wnats to shut the borders and forget there is a world out there. (Shhh, don’t wake him up)
OBama is the only one wide awake and thinking innovatively. He is the only one with fresh, vigorous ideas. IIf anyone can get us out the mess we’re in, it’s him.
@ domajot (#9)
“Hillary Clinton;s statements make her sound like Bush lite.”
Perhaps she feels that she has to sound tough in order to appeal to the conservatives and those who don’t think a woman can handle national security.
She needs those votes more than the votes from the progressive crowd.
Nevertheless, I am only willing to make that many excuses for her. Not more. She is calculated. Her record on voting for Iraq is no good. I have not heard new ideas that were not polled beforehand. She says and votes for nearly anything that advances her career. In 2002 she thought, she had to sound tough and voted for Iraq.
Thus, I am with Obama, when he said that “toughness†had become a stand-in for experience.
“He is the only one with fresh, vigorous ideas.”
Well, the Neocons had fresh and vigorous ideas as well. Perhaps, it is time to go back to old and boring policies…?
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Jeorg,
“Well, the Neocons had fresh and vigorous ideas ”
The difference is that Obama does not advocate implementing his ideas by rorced regime change.
In fact, his new idea for calming down Iran is to guarantee that we would not do so.
That is an extremely important point. Our regime changes of the past (notably the Shah of Iran) have ended in disaster, causing repercussions we will be dealing with for some time to come..
In the present atmosphere, if the US is to regain its power to influence for the good, it must stop making every public appearance while waving its guns. The military might has to be there, but it doesn’t need to be always center stage.
@ domajot
Yes, but Obama is quite hawkish re Pakistan…
Anyway, I mainly agree with you on Obama and Clinton.
Well I think we should have been more hawkish on Pakistan, look what we have now. Another blunder, the US backing a not so subtle tyrant, who has nukes, and islamic fundies coming out of the woodwork. So now that we’ve cuddled up to him for the last 6 years we are once again associated with a thug whose sole recommending feature is he’s not a terrorist. I feel like we’ve been down this road before.