Obviously, over the last year, the question of foreign-policy experience has played a fairly significant role in the presidential campaign, most notably among Democrats. As the race began to narrow its focus to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the two key buzz words were repeated ad nauseum — Obama had “judgment”; Clinton had “experience.”
The other day, Josh Marshall had a really terrific item scrutinizing the latter claim with some big-picture analysis, pointing to two broad categories on presidential candidates and the “commander-in-chief threshold.”
One school of thought has it that a potential president needn’t be an expert on military affairs or foreign relations any more than he or she needs to be an experts in economics. They need to be informed and knowledgeable. But what’s most needed is temperament, maturity and judgment. Detailed expertise can come from advisors.
Others think it’s precisely the expertise that’s needed. So someone like a Joe Biden is the kind of person you want — someone who’s deeply schooled in every aspect of foreign relations and has been at it for literally decades. John McCain has some of that and he was also career military which gives him, at least arguably, some special grasp of the military components of the job. Bill Richardson had at least some cred on that scale based on his time in the Congress, UN Ambassador and general ad hoc rogue regime diplomacy.
Hillary Clinton seems to think she’s a strong contender in this latter category. But that’s a joke. She’s starting her second term in the US senate, where, yes, she serves on the Armed Services committee. Beside that she’s never held elective office and she has little executive experience. I think she can argue that she’d make and would make a strong commander-in-chief. But she’s pushing a metric by which she’s little distinguishable from Barack Obama. I’m honestly surprised she’s not drawing chuckles on this one.
In some ways, I think Obama’s early efforts to define himself pushed Clinton in this direction. Recognizing from the outset that his resume on the national stage is thin, he immediately began touting his strengths — temperament, maturity and judgment. Clinton, reluctant to say “Me too!” felt compelled to embrace the “expertise” label, and began pointing to specific moments from her husband’s presidency.
What’s become somewhat problematic, though, is that those claims begin to buckle under scrutiny.
The Chicago Tribune took a close look at Clinton’s claims about her vast foreign-policy background and found that most of the assertions came up short.
The debate over readiness for the global arena is emerging as the flash point in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, crystallized by a dramatic Clinton campaign commercial asking who is best prepared to answer a 3 a.m. phone call to the White House during a crisis.
Clinton says she is the answer, arguing that Obama’s major achievement was his early opposition to the Iraq war in 2002. Indeed, Obama doesn’t have much in the way of experience managing foreign crises, nor does Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, for that matter. In fact, it is rare for any president to have that kind of experience before coming into office.
In Clinton’s case, she may well have exercised influence on foreign policy that is hard to document because she had a unique opportunity to offer private counsel to her husband, President Bill Clinton.
But while Hillary Clinton represented the U.S. on the world stage at important moments while she was first lady, there is scant evidence that she played a pivotal role in major foreign policy decisions or in managing global crises.
The article is actually rather damaging. Clinton’s claims about playing key policy roles in conflicts in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Rawanda appear to have been exaggerated, in some instances, quite a bit.
This is not to say Clinton fails the “commander-in-chief threshold,” but rather, that her campaign strategy is itself flawed. Her team is pushing a line that isn’t consistent with the candidate’s background.
I’d argue that this is wholly unnecessary. Clinton, as far as I’m concerned, is qualified to be commander-in-chief. She’s been a senator for eight years; she’s a bright and creative thinker; she’s served on the Senate Armed Services Committee; and she’s seen various foreign policy failures and successes up close over the last 16 years. If she were president, she’d have my full confidence.
Which is all the more reason that I’m puzzled by the style and substance of her campaign pitch. Clinton simply isn’t a Joe Biden-like candidate. Why pretend that she is? And should she get the nomination, won’t this mistake be magnified by an opponent whose background is more extensive than her own?