The International Candidate

“There is, in world affairs, a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that is cowardly” – Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States.

As I write Senator Barack Obama has arrived in Afghanistan on the first leg of a trip that will see him visit a string of international capital cities, spend time at American overseas military bases and meet with foreign leaders in six countries. Even though Obama can point to a personal biography that includes bi-racial parents and extensive international travel in his youth, he is still perceived by many to have no real understanding of foreign affairs. The argument that John McCain’s campaign is making is that their candidate’s military service in Vietnam and twenty plus years in the United States congress would make him the more qualified president. Obama’s argument is that longevity in Washington and fighting for your country doesn’t necessarily equate to sound policy making and reasoned judgment in international affairs.

Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz were all Beltway veterans going back to the Nixon administration and we all know where their collective foreign policy credentials got us. McCain’s problem in the upcoming election is that he has tied himself to the Bush/Cheney Pax-Americana brand of U.S. foreign policy. The debacle that is the Iraq war and America’s standing in the world community will cause great difficulty for McCain in the upcoming presidential debates with Senator Obama.

Obama’s overseas trip is unprecedented in an election year. International leaders have already moved on from George Bush and are looking towards 2009 and a new president. By meeting with leaders in London, Berlin and Paris, Obama is sending a message to the American people that he can work with America’s allies to heal the wounds created by the “my way or the highway” brand of foreign policy that was the hallmark of the Bush administration. American voters who are unsure of whether or not to vote for Obama may have their concerns erased when they see that he can be leader of vision and sound judgment. Even though we are still four months away from the general election, Obama’s appeal internationally has taken on Kennedyesqe qualities. In a throwback to Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in Berlin in 1963, Obama has planned a similar address at the foot of the city’s Victory Column, built between 1865 and 1873 to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian war.

Senator Obama is laying the international groundwork for his presidency before he has been officially nominated by his party for president. In doing so he is underlining the generational and policy differences between himself and John McCain and is asking the American people to discard the old and embrace the new. I think he has a very good chance of pulling it off.