The conventional wisdom is that John McCain eats foreign policy chops for breakfast, while Barack Obama is a naif who'd better fatten up his passport if he wants to be taken seriously in the world arena. I've never believed that myself, having read a thing or two that Obama has written, but the average American believes this to be so, since they don't read my blog.
Two articles I read today dispute this, one in the Jerusalem press and the other at Slate magazine. Here's the Jerusalem Post:
In March, on his whirlwind visit to Israel, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, one of whose primary strengths is said to be his intimate grasp of foreign affairs, chose to bring along Sen. Joe Lieberman to the interview our diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon and I conducted with him, looked to Lieberman several times for reassurance on his answers and seemed a little flummoxed by a question relating to the nuances of settlement construction.
On Wednesday evening, toward the end of his packed one-day visit here, Barack Obama, the Democratic senator who is leading the race for the White House and who lacks long years of foreign policy involvement, spoke to The Jerusalem Post with only a single aide in his King David Hotel room, and that aide's sole contribution to the conversation was to suggest that the candidate and I switch seats so that our photographer would get better lighting for his pictures.
Again, this view of Obama doesn't surprise me at all, yet it apparently does surprise many in the mainstream press. Fred Kaplan argues it may be time for a reassessment of the two candidates' foreign policy chops by whoever it is that determines conventional wisdom. (I suspect it's the same Hollywood mogul who financed the latest Batman movie, but that's only conjecture.)
It may be time to reassess this narrative's premise—or to abandon it altogether and simply examine the evidence before us. Quite apart from the gaffes, in formal prepared speeches, McCain has proposed certain actions and policies that raise serious questions about his suitability for the highest office. As president, he has said, he would boot Russia out of the G-8 on the grounds that its leaders don't share the West's values. He would form an international "League of Democracy" as a united front against the forces of autocracy and terror. And though it's not exactly a stated policy, he continues to employ as his foreign-policy adviser an outspoken, second-tier neoconservative named Randy Scheunemann, who coined the term "rogue-state rollback" and still prescribes it as sound policy.
He goes on to state why all McCain's ideas are really bad, worse even than George Bush, who the Jerusalem Post writer takes a dig at as well.
Why is it so difficult to break past this meme? Why are people willing to trust Republicans on foreign policy, even when the last eight years have been a foreign policy disaster and the current Republican candidate doesn't understand basic geography?
My fellow citizens of the world seem to grasp this nuance—they know which candidate understands Europe and the Middle East, and the intracacies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the talking heads—and typing heads—of the American media insist on their pre-agreed narrative despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
This is why I hope Obama doesn't turn to an acknowledged foreign policy chopper like Joe Biden when he makes his VP selection in the next couple of weeks. I hope he stuffs the old narrative into the net the same way he nailed a three-pointer from, as one observer said, "Baghdad", by choosing a second-in-command with no foreign policy experience. He must reject any notion of his own non-existent weaknesses in foreign policy. Choosing Biden or Hagel will only reinforce the stale stereotype of Obama as naif.
It's time for the American media to accept terms of the debate that include the fact that Czechoslovakia is no longer a country, and that a League of Democracies is a really bad idea.
So here's the new narrative: Obama doesn't need foreign policy chops. He already has them. John McCain, on the other hand, really needs to enroll this fall in Foreign Policy 101. Pass it along.
