home

Tag: 2006

Obama on Foreign Policy Experience

Barack Obama explained to a fundraising crowd in California this week why his VP nominee would not need extensive foreign policy experience. It's because he has it. Was he joking? No.

Not only that, here's how he described and differentiated his experience from Hillary's to conclude he's more experienced than Hillary or 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. . . ."

[More...]

(195 comments, 838 words in story) There's More :: Permalink :: Comments