The Independent View

This post is repris­ing and updat­ing a post I orig­i­nally wrote April 8, 2008 at my blog The Prob­lem With Obama and at Talk­ing Points Memo.

“I know more and under­stand the world bet­ter than Sen­a­tor Clin­ton or Sen­a­tor McCain” — Obama

“For­eign pol­icy is the area where I am prob­a­bly most con­fi­dent that I know more and under­stand the world bet­ter than Sen­a­tor Clin­ton or Sen­a­tor McCain” — Obama.

Yes! Obama claimed more for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence than either Clin­ton or McCain! Is this audac­ity, arro­gance, or hope­ful state­ment in look for a believ­ing sucker?

Clin­ton offered a telling response:

“I’m some­what shocked by that since I don’t see any evi­dence of it,” Clin­ton said, chuck­ling. “This is, you know, kind of hard to square with his fail­ure ever to have a sin­gle pol­icy hear­ing on the only respon­si­bil­ity he was given, chair­ing the Euro­pean and NATO sub­com­mit­tee on the For­eign Rela­tions Committee.

“And as he admit­ted in the last debate, he was too busy run­ning for pres­i­dent to pay atten­tion to what we needed to do to improve our chances in Afghanistan and get NATO more involved. So, you know, I, I ‚I don’t, I don’t know, I’m speech­less. I mean, you know, mak­ing an asser­tion like that belies the facts and the record.”

Obama’s for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence: a newly dis­closed three week trip to Pak­istan in 1981 as a col­lege stu­dent, travel and liv­ing in Indone­sia, and vis­its to Kenya. Wow! I know I’m sup­posed to be impressed but hav­ing trav­eled to more than 46 coun­tries myself – includ­ing Pak­istan, Dubai, Yemen, Indone­sia, China, Viet­nam, and more — I’m left speech­less by Obama’s hol­low claim. While I might offer that I have vis­ited these coun­tries for busi­ness, plea­sure, and, in some cases, while in the U.S. Navy, thus giv­ing me some lim­ited level of cul­tural aware­ness, and a def­i­nite level of com­fort in these trav­els and in my con­tact and rela­tion­ship with peo­ples from around the world, I would never ven­ture to sug­gest that this gives me more for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence than either Sen­a­tor Clin­ton or Sen­a­tor McCain. That Obama would sug­gest his even more lim­ited travel, his lack of mil­i­tary ser­vice, and his appar­ent lack of work over­seas, is com­pa­ra­ble and bet­ter is both laugh­able and offensive.

What has tran­spired since April?

• We’ve learned absolutely noth­ing fur­ther about Barack Obama’s three week visit to Pakistan.
• Barack Obama stated he’d sit down with­out pre-​conditions with the lead­ers of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea dur­ing his first year in office.
• As for Barack Obama’s lack of mil­i­tary ser­vice, he has recently offered that he con­sid­ered enlist­ing but since there was no war under­way, he didn’t see value in the effort.
• Obama com­mu­ni­cated with the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment to dis­count his cam­paign rhetoric regard­ing NAFTA wherein he told Amer­ica he would uni­lat­er­ally change NAFTA and to Canada that he would not.
• Barack Obama did under­take a celebrity world tour early in the summer.
• Barack Obama did engage in diplo­matic dis­cus­sions with Iraqi lead­ers wherein he asked them to hold off on sign­ing any agree­ments with the U.S., thus to delay with­draw of Amer­i­can troops.
• When Rus­sia invaded Geor­gia Obama dis­missed con­cerns and sim­ply asked Rus­sia to show restraint.

The elec­tion is now under­way and the choice is between Barack “I know more” Obama and John McCain. Sen­a­tor McCain is every­thing that Barack Obama is not. Experienced.

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