What can the Clinton haters say now?
source: Wall Street Journal.com
Obama Tones Foreign-Policy Muscle
To Beef Up Platform, Candidate Lures
Clinton Alumni Seeking Fresh Approach
By NEIL KING JR.
September 5, 2007; Page A10
WASHINGTON -- What Democratic Sen. Barack Obama may lack in foreign-policy experience, he is trying to make up for in sheer numbers of advisers -- enough, says one of the team, for "his own virtual State Department."
Since launching his presidential bid in February, the freshman senator from Illinois has used the burgeoning brain trust -- now over 150 advisers and counting -- to help flesh out an almost wonkishly detailed set of statements, on the Iraq war, on Iran, U.S. counterterrorism strategy, the future of the U.S. military, even Cuba. Coming up next, his advisers say, will be more on China, U.S. energy security, the plight of Iraqi refugees, and how much to reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
But the makeup of Mr. Obama's team -- heavy on onetime aides to President Clinton -- also speaks to an internecine feud between Mr. Obama and his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, over which of them represents the future of their party.
For crafting his counterinsurgency strategy, Mr. Obama has Harvard University's Sarah Sewall, who worked in the Pentagon under President Clinton. For overall security issues he leans on Mr. Clinton's former national security adviser, Anthony Lake. What about fighting AIDS or boosting U.S. trade in Africa? For that and more, he has former Clinton administration diplomat Susan Rice.
Mr. Obama has racked up a slew of converts from the Clinton camp, especially among a younger crowd of ex-Clintonites who say they want a fresher approach to new challenges than those offered by Mrs. Clinton. Many of these advisers, like Mr. Obama himself, are in their 40s. (Mrs. Clinton is 59 years old).
Acolytes such as Ms. Sewall, Ms. Rice, or former Clinton White House adviser Ivo Daalder, have found themselves in the midst of what one Obama aide calls "a generational tussle within the Democratic Party."
Even if there is a tussle, so far it hasn't taken the form of substantial policy differences. Both candidates support a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq and the need to turn security over to Iraqi forces. Both favor a more robust emphasis on diplomacy and multilateral engagement, even with archfoes such as Iran. Both say they are willing to use force unilaterally, if need be, to protect U.S. interests.
Instead, the big difference between the two is mainly in style and tone.
While Mr. Obama's camp is working to give heft to a freshman senator just three years removed from the Illinois state legislature, Mrs. Clinton considers her foreign views largely set -- one reason why she has such a small squad of advisers. The core of her team includes several staunch loyalists from her husband's time in power, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and Samuel "Sandy" Berger, who succeeded Mr. Lake as national security adviser during Mr. Clinton's second term. The first two have been outspoken critics of President Bush's foreign policy and his handling of the Iraq war, and strong defenders of the Clinton legacy.
Mrs. Clinton's aides point out that her main adviser is President Clinton himself.
While Mrs. Clinton's team emphasizes tactical edge over sweeping solutions, Mr. Obama's camp is consciously in search of big concepts and grand strategies.
Mr. Lake, an academic and former diplomat, has been working alongside Mr. Obama off and on since 2003. He says he shares the senator's view that the U.S. needs to engage in a sweeping reassessment of its stance in the world -- "a grand strategy," as Mr. Obama put it in his recent book, "The Audacity of Hope."
"We're at a point in the history of our foreign policy where we need to step back and think things through to figure out what fits and doesn't fit with the world today," Mr. Lake says.
Mr. Daalder, who worked in the Clinton White House in the mid-1990s and is now at the Brookings Institution, describes the difference between Sens. Clinton and Obama as "the difference between what do we do about Iran and its nuclear program now versus how do we deal with nuclear proliferation writ large."
Mr. Obama's eagerness to lay out a comprehensive foreign policy -- unusual for a candidate at this stage in a campaign -- has made him in some ways the prime mover in the Democratic debates. But it has also opened him to attack from Sen. Clinton and others who are hoping to make a point of Mr. Obama's lack of experience.
Mrs. Clinton called him "naive" for saying he would meet with a short list of despotic leaders without preconditions during his first year as president. She also blasted him for telling an interviewer that he would never use tactical nuclear weapons against a terrorist group. The Clinton campaign also criticized Mr. Obama's statement in a speech in Washington that he would attack terrorist camps in Pakistan if they posed a threat, even without the approval of Pakistan's government.
But these barbs have also given Mr. Obama the chance to paint Mrs. Clinton as a conventional thinker who "lacked the good judgment" to oppose the Iraq war from the outset. "My call for a new foreign policy is based on the same thing that informed my opposition to the war in Iraq: common sense, not conventional Washington thinking," he said during a recent swing through Iowa.
Clinton advisers point to Mr. Obama's slumping national poll numbers as evidence that Mrs. Clinton has emerged much stronger from some of the recent dust-ups over foreign policy.
Mr. Obama did get a well-timed boost recently from one of his party's foreign-policy eminences, Zbigniew Brzezinski. The 79-year-old former Carter national security adviser not only backed Mr. Obama but panned Mrs. Clinton's views as "very conventional" and merely a continuation of "what we had eight years ago."
Mrs. Clinton is the lead Democratic candidate in national polls, but she's still had a rocky time getting her own foreign-policy team in place.
Plenty of notables are in her corner, ranging from Middle East specialist Martin Indyk to John Podesta, President Clinton's former White House chief of staff. Yet the Clinton campaign struggled for months to land a chief foreign-policy coordinator. Lee Feinstein, a former Albright adviser who originally flirted with the Obama camp, signed on with Sen. Clinton in late July.
Obama advisers often describe the Clinton camp as a closed shop, an assertion that Mr. Feinstein disputes. "The senator obviously has very deep foreign-policy experience," he says. "At the same time, she seeks out the best foreign-policy minds, and we are able to draw on a wide and diverse group, from former cabinet officials and diplomats to rising stars in the think tanks."
The Clinton/Obama divide has created some curious fissures in Washington. Mona Sunthep, one of Mr. Berger's top aides at the White House, now serves as a corporate vice-president at Mr. Berger's consulting firm, Stonebridge International. Both Mr. Berger and Ms. Sunthep's husband, Clyde Williams, are big in the Clinton camp. Yet the 39-year-old has gone over to Sen. Obama.
"I am more of his generation," she says.
Write to Neil King Jr. at neil.king@wsj.com
source: Wall Street Journal.com
Obama Tones Foreign-Policy Muscle
To Beef Up Platform, Candidate Lures
Clinton Alumni Seeking Fresh Approach
By NEIL KING JR.
September 5, 2007; Page A10
WASHINGTON -- What Democratic Sen. Barack Obama may lack in foreign-policy experience, he is trying to make up for in sheer numbers of advisers -- enough, says one of the team, for "his own virtual State Department."
Since launching his presidential bid in February, the freshman senator from Illinois has used the burgeoning brain trust -- now over 150 advisers and counting -- to help flesh out an almost wonkishly detailed set of statements, on the Iraq war, on Iran, U.S. counterterrorism strategy, the future of the U.S. military, even Cuba. Coming up next, his advisers say, will be more on China, U.S. energy security, the plight of Iraqi refugees, and how much to reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
But the makeup of Mr. Obama's team -- heavy on onetime aides to President Clinton -- also speaks to an internecine feud between Mr. Obama and his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, over which of them represents the future of their party.
For crafting his counterinsurgency strategy, Mr. Obama has Harvard University's Sarah Sewall, who worked in the Pentagon under President Clinton. For overall security issues he leans on Mr. Clinton's former national security adviser, Anthony Lake. What about fighting AIDS or boosting U.S. trade in Africa? For that and more, he has former Clinton administration diplomat Susan Rice.
Mr. Obama has racked up a slew of converts from the Clinton camp, especially among a younger crowd of ex-Clintonites who say they want a fresher approach to new challenges than those offered by Mrs. Clinton. Many of these advisers, like Mr. Obama himself, are in their 40s. (Mrs. Clinton is 59 years old).
Acolytes such as Ms. Sewall, Ms. Rice, or former Clinton White House adviser Ivo Daalder, have found themselves in the midst of what one Obama aide calls "a generational tussle within the Democratic Party."
Even if there is a tussle, so far it hasn't taken the form of substantial policy differences. Both candidates support a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq and the need to turn security over to Iraqi forces. Both favor a more robust emphasis on diplomacy and multilateral engagement, even with archfoes such as Iran. Both say they are willing to use force unilaterally, if need be, to protect U.S. interests.
Instead, the big difference between the two is mainly in style and tone.
While Mr. Obama's camp is working to give heft to a freshman senator just three years removed from the Illinois state legislature, Mrs. Clinton considers her foreign views largely set -- one reason why she has such a small squad of advisers. The core of her team includes several staunch loyalists from her husband's time in power, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and Samuel "Sandy" Berger, who succeeded Mr. Lake as national security adviser during Mr. Clinton's second term. The first two have been outspoken critics of President Bush's foreign policy and his handling of the Iraq war, and strong defenders of the Clinton legacy.
Mrs. Clinton's aides point out that her main adviser is President Clinton himself.
While Mrs. Clinton's team emphasizes tactical edge over sweeping solutions, Mr. Obama's camp is consciously in search of big concepts and grand strategies.
Mr. Lake, an academic and former diplomat, has been working alongside Mr. Obama off and on since 2003. He says he shares the senator's view that the U.S. needs to engage in a sweeping reassessment of its stance in the world -- "a grand strategy," as Mr. Obama put it in his recent book, "The Audacity of Hope."
"We're at a point in the history of our foreign policy where we need to step back and think things through to figure out what fits and doesn't fit with the world today," Mr. Lake says.
Mr. Daalder, who worked in the Clinton White House in the mid-1990s and is now at the Brookings Institution, describes the difference between Sens. Clinton and Obama as "the difference between what do we do about Iran and its nuclear program now versus how do we deal with nuclear proliferation writ large."
Mr. Obama's eagerness to lay out a comprehensive foreign policy -- unusual for a candidate at this stage in a campaign -- has made him in some ways the prime mover in the Democratic debates. But it has also opened him to attack from Sen. Clinton and others who are hoping to make a point of Mr. Obama's lack of experience.
Mrs. Clinton called him "naive" for saying he would meet with a short list of despotic leaders without preconditions during his first year as president. She also blasted him for telling an interviewer that he would never use tactical nuclear weapons against a terrorist group. The Clinton campaign also criticized Mr. Obama's statement in a speech in Washington that he would attack terrorist camps in Pakistan if they posed a threat, even without the approval of Pakistan's government.
But these barbs have also given Mr. Obama the chance to paint Mrs. Clinton as a conventional thinker who "lacked the good judgment" to oppose the Iraq war from the outset. "My call for a new foreign policy is based on the same thing that informed my opposition to the war in Iraq: common sense, not conventional Washington thinking," he said during a recent swing through Iowa.
Clinton advisers point to Mr. Obama's slumping national poll numbers as evidence that Mrs. Clinton has emerged much stronger from some of the recent dust-ups over foreign policy.
Mr. Obama did get a well-timed boost recently from one of his party's foreign-policy eminences, Zbigniew Brzezinski. The 79-year-old former Carter national security adviser not only backed Mr. Obama but panned Mrs. Clinton's views as "very conventional" and merely a continuation of "what we had eight years ago."
Mrs. Clinton is the lead Democratic candidate in national polls, but she's still had a rocky time getting her own foreign-policy team in place.
Plenty of notables are in her corner, ranging from Middle East specialist Martin Indyk to John Podesta, President Clinton's former White House chief of staff. Yet the Clinton campaign struggled for months to land a chief foreign-policy coordinator. Lee Feinstein, a former Albright adviser who originally flirted with the Obama camp, signed on with Sen. Clinton in late July.
Obama advisers often describe the Clinton camp as a closed shop, an assertion that Mr. Feinstein disputes. "The senator obviously has very deep foreign-policy experience," he says. "At the same time, she seeks out the best foreign-policy minds, and we are able to draw on a wide and diverse group, from former cabinet officials and diplomats to rising stars in the think tanks."
The Clinton/Obama divide has created some curious fissures in Washington. Mona Sunthep, one of Mr. Berger's top aides at the White House, now serves as a corporate vice-president at Mr. Berger's consulting firm, Stonebridge International. Both Mr. Berger and Ms. Sunthep's husband, Clyde Williams, are big in the Clinton camp. Yet the 39-year-old has gone over to Sen. Obama.
"I am more of his generation," she says.
Write to Neil King Jr. at neil.king@wsj.com
@this shit
Might work in creating more focused discussion.
