(I thought I’d share some of my notes from Barack Obama’s last California visit… as I head off to D.C. on the redeye tonight)
I serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-authored the Lugar-Obama nuclear non-proliferation bill. I have lived abroad. I have more foreign policy experience than Reagan, Clinton or Bush did when they ran for office. But don’t get me wrong; being the Commander in Chief is a position of awesome responsibility, and nothing prepares you for it.
More experience is not always better. It can lead to “conventional wisdom” and group-think in some. It depends on how you process experience.
While we may agree on many foreign policy points, if we look at the areas where my opponent and I disagree, I was right and she was wrong. And it’s not just the Iraq war.
Clinton, McCain and Bush gave me no end of grief for saying that I would consider speaking with our enemies. But as time has passed, people realize that I was right. This is a long-standing bipartisan tradition. Kennedy famously stated “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” Nixon met with Chairman Mao. FDR met with Stalin. JFK met with Khrushchev. Reagan met with Gorbachev. If U.S. Presidents met with two genocidal heads of state – Stalin and Mao – how can they say I shouldn’t meet with Hugo Chavez!?
This conventional wisdom of not communicating is relatively new in Washington. It came after 9/11, when Bush declared the Axis of Evil, and the government went along out of patriotism and fear of looking soft on terrorism.
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“Desegregate
Mediate
Alleviate
Try not to hate
Love your mate
Don’t suffocate on your own hate
Designate your love as fate
A one world state
A white black state
A gentle trait
Or just too late
The youth irate
Deliberate
Fascinate
Deviate
Reinstate
Liberate
To moderate
Recreate
Clear the state
Activate
Now radiate
A perfect state”
► Mediate, INXS ♫ ♪
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