One of the knocks on Barack Obama has been his lack of experience. Hillary Clinton hit hard on this point (as did John Edwards) afterthe following answer by Senator Obama in the YouTube debate last Monday night:
QUESTION: In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since. In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?
OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous. (APPLAUSE) Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward.
And I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them. We’ve been talking about Iraq -- one of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they’re going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses. They have been acting irresponsibly up until this point. But if we tell them that we are not going to be a permanent occupying force, we are in a position to say that they are going to have to carry some weight, in terms of stabilizing the region.
I will leave Senator Clinton’s and former Senator Edwards’ responses to this answer to Democrats to sort out. I would like to compare Senator Obama’s answer to what another President did, a president that Senator Obama’s supporters like to compare him to. First, though, let me say that I understand the race is still in its early stages and it will be almost eighteen months before the new President inaugurated. A person, a candidate, can learn a lot in 18 months, so maybe Senator Obama will get better in time.
The President I am referring to is, of course, Abraham Lincoln. Senator Obama has made the comparison himself by, among other things, traveling to Springfield to declare his candidacy. I assume Senator Obama and his supporters feel the comparison is a helpful one. Lincoln, for example, only served two years in Washington (a single term in the House of Representatives from 1847 to 1849) before being elected President.
But to compare Senator Obama’s answer (which was, pre-spin, that he would talk with anybody anywhere) with Lincoln’s handling of the first months of his presidency is not flattering to Senator Obama. You certainly did not see Lincoln volunteering to meet Jefferson Davis "to find areas where we can potentially move forward". As the Confederates tried to break away from the Union (which Lincoln never agreed or said they could do – another example of his careful thought and wording), Lincoln skillfully maneuvered them into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter, a key factor in Lincoln’s being able to secure support in the North for taking action to preserve the Union in the first months of the Civil War.
One sees in Lincoln’s actions a careful thinking through of how to deal with a difficult situation. One sees in Senator Obama’s answer the fairly unsophisticated response of somebody who either is just saying what he thinks his audience wants to hear or really doesn’t understand foreign policy. (The fact that the audience liked his answer can be seen in the applause he got.*)
Which brings me to my last point: The particularly concerning point of Senator Obama's answer is what it may be telling us about his basic philosophy of foreign affairs. It seems to say that Barack Obama is, underlying everything else, a true member of the liberal left wing of the Democratic Party. While he may learn he should answer specific questions differently, it appears Senator Obama’s default position in foreign policy is that all we need to do is just sit down and talk things through and we can work it out. Whether that is his real position or just naiveté does not matter much. We had a President like that with Jimmy Carter. We do not want another one. It is too dangerous.
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* I am not going to even think about what the applause to this answer says about the audience at the debate. That may be even more depressing than Senator Obama’s answer.
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