Well, What Do You Know?
The Clinton-Obama dustup wasn't just the usual campaign sparring. It raised key questions about what 'experience' means when it comes to being president.
By Richard Wolffe
Newsweek
Aug. 6, 2007 issue - Does Barack Obama have have enough experience to be president? This is the question Hillary Clinton would like to spend the next seven months debating. Her slogan is that she's "ready to lead"; she cites her extensive foreign travel and sessions with world leaders. For his part, Obama prefers to talk about living overseas and the good judgment he displayed in opposing the Iraq War from the start. For months, Clinton and Obama have taken subtle digs at each other's résumés. But there's nothing subtle about it now.
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At last week's contentious presidential debate, Obama was asked if he would meet with hostile foreign leaders like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions in the first year of his presidency. Obama said he would. He said George W. Bush's policy of shunning those leaders had failed, and he would bring about change. Clinton turned the answer against Obama. She said she would not meet with the hostile leaders without preconditions, and suggested that anyone who did would be "used for propaganda purposes." The fight didn't end there. In the days that followed, Clinton called Obama "irresponsible" and "naive"; Obama labeled her "Bush-Cheney lite."
On one level, the dustup was just the usual campaign tit for tat, and it showed that both sides have skilled professionals on staff readying their sound bites. But beyond the nasty one-liners, there still remains the real question that neither candidate has seriously addressed: when it comes to being president, what does "experience" mean—and how important is it in picking a commander in chief?
Both Clinton and Obama have called on foreign-policy heavyweights to educate them on the issues and help shape their approach to world affairs. But neither candidate would bring much in the way of hands-on foreign-policy experience to the Oval Office. Their efforts to promote their credentials can seem strained. Clinton's aides point to her extensive travel to more than 80 countries as First Lady and her 1995 speech at a U.N. conference on women in Beijing. "She helped represent the United States abroad throughout the '90s," says Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director. "Obviously, that's an important qualification. She went to China and gave a very famous and important address when she declared that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights. That electrified the world." But these sanitized, ceremonial trips abroad are hardly preparation for the middle-of-the-night call from the Situation Room. After all, Laura Bush has also traveled extensively as First Lady, taking in 68 countries either with her husband or on her own. No one is saying she has the experience to be commander in chief.
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