Obama: No Need For Foreign Policy Help From V.P.

[no name 1]

Posted April 7, 2008 | 07:52 AM (EST)

Last night at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Barack Obama took a question on what he's looking for in a running mate. "I would like somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I'm not as expert on," he said, and then he was off and running. "I think a lot of people assume that might be some sort of military thing to make me look more Commander-in-Chief-like. Ironically, this is an area--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."

"It's ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags 'I've met leaders from eighty countries'--I know what those trips are like! I've been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There's a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then--you go."

"You do that in eighty countries--you don't know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa--knowing the leaders is not important--what I know is the people. . . ."

"I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college--I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . ."

"Nobody is entirely prepared for being Commander-in-Chief. The question is when the 3 AM phone call comes do you have somebody who has the judgment, the temperament to ask the right questions, to weigh the costs and benefits of military action, who insists on good intelligence, who is not going to be swayed by the short-term politics. By most criteria, I've passed those tests and my two opponents have not."

There are a number of interesting things about Senator Obama's remarks. If Senators Clinton and McCain have not passed "those tests," likely they will be surprised to hear it. Secondly, even though I've researched and written on Hillary Clinton's trips abroad and consequently been critical of her claims, my estimation of her foreign travels is that they were sometimes quite a bit more than a dance, a briefing and a tour. What Barack Obama's remarks last night in San Francisco reveal, however, is his self-confidence--to the point of cockiness--right now. This is exactly the same demeanor on display last week in Pennsylvania.

So Bill Richardson and Joe Biden--to name two with foreign policy experience--should put aside any transient veep thoughts.

Another area--and this one is policy--in which Obama is not an expert is energy. Case in point is his ode to ethanol, which he delivered last week on his Pennsylvania bus tour at Molly's Amerigreen gas station in Manheim. This does not mean that he's going to give Al Gore the veep call--and by the by, Obama never said at the Wallingford, PA town hall meeting that he might offer Gore a cabinet position. He was very careful not to reply in the affirmative when he took the question about whether he would consider Gore. Obama said, "I will make a commitment that Al Gore will be at the table in figuring out these [global warming] problems." Well, at the table is one of Obama's favorite locutions. I've heard him say on several occasions that all Americans will be at the table one time or another. Obama's table is going to be a long one.

Last night Senator Obama had a few more words on the subject of choosing a vice president. "That last thing I'd say about a vice president is--obviously, you want someone who can be president and who shares a broad vision of where I want to take the country; don't have to agree with me on every particular, but shares with me a bias for opening up government, adding a rational discourse about how we're gonna solve problems, a bias towards empowering individual citizens." Those seats at the table again.

Note Obama's delicate sentence constructions. Never a gender pronoun--a he or a she--anywhere.

The San Francisco fundraiser was Senator Obama's fourth and final of the day. He had made appearances earlier in Atherton, Marin and around the corner at another Pacific Heights mansion. Even the Obama Campaign, I suppose, can never have too much money. The folks who came out on Sunday were not the very rich, even though these events were for people who have "maxed out" their donations. The very rich have long since given. The fact that so many middle class Californians are giving $2300 to Obama shows both the depth of prosperity in the state and the allure of the scent of victory.

Video here

[no name 1]

Obama Says Real-Life Experience Trumps Rivals’ Foreign Policy Credits

By LARRY ROHTER Published: April 10, 2008

To counter opponents’ accusations that he lacks experience in foreign policy, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois often cites his ties to relatives in poor villages in Kenya and the years he spent growing up in Indonesia. Now he has added a new personal detail to that résumé: a trip to Pakistan while a college student.

Mr. Obama, the front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, made the disclosure Sunday night while speaking to supporters at a fund-raiser in San Francisco. His remarks, in which he poked fun at the utility of traditional foreign policy qualifications like government officials traveling abroad on fact-finding missions, were recorded and were quickly placed on the Web.

With the war in Iraq and Islamic terrorism among the top issues in the campaign, all three of the presidential contenders have sought to emphasize the value of their very different foreign policy credentials. Senator <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_mccain/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about John McCain.">John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has often pointed to his military and combat experience, while Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has emphasized her involvement in international and national security issues as both first lady and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

But Mr. Obama has argued that his rivals’ longer official record is no substitute for his real-life grass-roots experience. “Foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton and Senator McCain,” he said in his remarks in San Francisco.

“Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world,” he continued, provoking laughter among those present. “This I know. When Senator Clinton brags, ‘I’ve met leaders from 80 countries,’ I know what those trips are like. I’ve been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There’s a group of children who do a native dance. You meet with the C.I.A. station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of plant that” with “the assistance of Usaid has started something. And then, you go.”

During the speech, Mr. Obama also spoke about having traveled to Pakistan in the early 1980s. Because of that trip, which he did not mention in either of his autobiographical books, “I knew what Sunni and Shia was before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” he said.

Over all, Mr. Obama’s remarks seemed directed primarily at his Democratic rival, Mrs. Clinton. But some of his digs, including the one about distinguishing Shias from Sunnis, also apply to Mr. McCain, whose campaign offered a sharp, mocking response to Mr. Obama’s claim to expertise.

“When John McCain travels on official business, he meets with presidents, prime ministers, foreign and defense ministers, members of parliament, human rights leaders, N.G.O.’s, business leaders and journalists so that he acquires a full understanding of the country he visits and the issues at stake in our relations,” said Mark Salter, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain. “Oh, and as Senator Obama may know, he has actually spent some time living abroad as well.”

Even more than a gap on specific policies, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain’s respective positions represent a fundamental philosophical difference. Mr. Obama’s advisers argue that “there are multiple aspects to experience, each of which can be relevant.” Mr. Obama’s experience “provides a different kind of insight” than the traditional résumé, said Susan E. Rice, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs and a National Security Council official who is one of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy advisers.

“At a time when our foreign policy and national security have so obviously suffered from a simplistic, black-and-white interpretation,” Ms. Rice added, having “an American president who spent part of his formative years and young adulthood living in a poor country under a dictatorship brings an understanding of the complexity of things that others may not have. I’m not saying that official travels and Congressional delegations are without value, but there are limits to what you can glean from that.”

Mr. Obama’s advisers acknowledge that there are gaps in his experience — he has never traveled to Latin America, for instance — but they maintain that the sound judgment they say he has demonstrated on foreign policy issues, like Iraq and Pakistan, where he wants the United States to distance itself from Gen. Pervez Musharraf, more than compensates for any such shortcomings.

According to his campaign staff, Mr. Obama visited Pakistan in 1981, on the way back from Indonesia, where his mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, were living. He spent “about three weeks” there, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, said, staying in Karachi with the family of a college friend, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, but also traveling to Hyderabad, in India.

Mr. Obama appears not to have previously cited his travel in Pakistan in speeches during the campaign. In “Dreams from My Father,” he talks of having a Pakistani roommate when he moved to New York, a man he calls Sadik who “had overstayed his tourist visa and now made a living in New York’s high-turnover, illegal immigrant work force, waiting on tables.”

Mr. Obama, the campaign and his publisher have not provided any details about the identity of Sadik.

During his years at Occidental College, Mr. Obama also befriended Wahid Hamid, a fellow student who was an immigrant from Pakistan and traveled with Mr. Obama there, the Obama campaign said. Mr. Hamid is now a vice president at Pepsico in New York, and according to public records, has donated the maximum $2,300 to the Obama campaign and is listed as a fund-raiser for it.

Mr. Chandoo is now a self-employed financial consultant, living in Armonk, N.Y. He has also donated the maximum, $2,300, to Mr. Obama’s primary campaign and an additional $309 for the general election, campaign finance records show.

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