02:34 pm
More on “The 300″ and Obama’s Experience
So I’ve gotten some interesting feedback, mainly via email, about last night’s post on The 300. My good friend Steve Clemons at The Washington Note, agrees with me that the Times piece is a misfire. Not sure I agree with him, however, that Obama is “colonizing” the DC foreign policy community. If he were, I doubt he would have only 300 folks in the network. Or consciously exclude people like Richard Holbrooke and Zbigniew Brzezinski even if the former is Tony Lake’s rival and the latter has some outside-the-mainstream ideas on Middle East peace.
I know that to some of you, this may seem like little more than inside baseball. Who really cares how many people are advising Obama? Shouldn’t it matter more what kind of advice he’s getting? To which I can only offer one response:
Exactly.
But the problem is that the mainstream media — and to a lesser degree some of my friends in the blogosphere — seem determined to portray Obama as “inexperienced” on foreign policy. Just today, The Washington Post has a front page story with the following headline and sub-head:
Obama Going Abroad with World Watching Foreign Policy Credentials Are At Stake
Huh? Obama’s future credibility will be determined by what he does on a single week-long trip to Europe and the Middle East? A trip that doesn’t include China, India, Japan, Latin America, Africa, or a whole bunch of other important places? A trip that his opponent kept criticizing him for not taking until he started criticizing him for taking it?
Let’s acknowledge the reality here. The trip is window-dressing. Yes, it is designed to show Americans that Obama knows something about foreign policy. But the only reason it’s getting this kind of coverage is that it’s late July and the media doesn’t have anything better to do than speculate on whether Obama’s entire candidacy will hinge on a few photo-ops.
The real story here is that the media continue to embrace a deeply corrosive — and oh yeah, completely wrong — meme that is, after all, little more than a a set of McCain campaign talking points. “Obama is over his head.” “Obama doesn’t have the experience to be commander in chief.” “Obama doesn’t know anything about foreign policy.” “Obama is a rookie and we can’t have a rookie in charge right now.” “Obama is very very scaaaaary.”
What utter nonsense. On issue after issue — Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and more — Obama has taken positions that have proven to be far more sensible and realistic than those taken by either McCain or Bush. He is more thoughtful, more realistic, more pragmatic, and perhaps most importantly, more often right than John McCain. The only thing he isn’t is more experienced.
But if “experience” were the only prerequisite for the presidency, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney (ARGH! MY EYES!), Joe Biden, and Bill Richardson would be our candidates.
So instead of asking who is more experienced, maybe the media should ask who has the better ideas. Maybe they should look at who has been more adaptive in responding to changing conditions on the ground. And maybe they should stop mislabeling flexibility as flip-flops.
Nah. That would require reporters to think. Wouldn’t want that. Making stuff up is a lot more fun.