GOP Fears That Obama Will Get a Boost From Foreign Travel
Republican strategists see Obama looking more knowledgeable and presidential rather than making gaffes
Republican strategists are worried that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will make a very positive impression and burnish his international credentials when he takes his much-ballyhooed foreign trips in the coming weeks.
"It has the potential to be a big plus for Obama," says a senior Republican who has advised several presidents over the years. "The American people know we are not liked overseas anymore, and it bothers them. People feel that Obama could help change that."
To reinforce such an image, Obama is billing himself as a new type of commander in chief who will listen to America's allies far more than George W. Bush has—and that is expected to be a major theme of his sojourns.
GOP candidate John McCain, who is currently on his own trip to Colombia and Mexico, has been needling Obama for his lack of foreign policy experience, and has often pointed out that Obama has not visited Iraq in many months. (Obama was there in January 2006 as part of a congressional delegation.)
Now that's about to change. Obama has announced plans to visit Great Britain, France, Germany, Israel, and Jordan in the coming weeks—and also travel to Iraq and Afghanistan before the Democratic National Convention in August.
When these trips were first disclosed, GOP advisers saw the potential for Obama to make some serious gaffes or otherwise reveal his ignorance of global and national security issues. Now many of them believe that with the kind of excellent advance work and the depth of preparation for which the Obama campaign is known, he will probably look knowledgeable, diplomatic, and presidential.
And that could be bad news for McCain, GOP insiders say.
—Kenneth T. Walsh
Reader Comments
Subjective European Press to Obama's aid
I just spent a year in France studying, and I can tell you that they are going to welcome Obama with open arms, not because he's the better candidate but because he's the only candidate they've heard of.
Le Monde, Le Figaro, BBC ... they are all alike in their lack of objectivity in reporting the actual progress and events of the two campaigns. Walking through the streets of France I would not be surprised to find a French citizen who has no idea who the republican candidate is because the press is so concentrated on Obama and the candidate that is not a "clone" of Bush. If you were to ask this individual why he wanted Obama to win, he would have nothing to say other than "He is not Bush" ... unfortunately this is a horrible answer.
The fact is that Europeans have preconceived notions about Americans being completely ignorant about world issues, but yet they all want Obama to win, not knowing why other than the fact that they've seen him in the newspaper more often than McCain.
Another thing needs to be mentioned. Why do we care so much about who Europe or the rest of world wants to see as the President ? Of course our international image is important, but not as important as electing a quality President WITH experience. They want Obama because he's from the left, like all of Europe. But we are not Socialist Europe. The US did not become the most powerful country in the world acting like Europe or following European ideas or opinions.
Anyone who says we need to act like Europe actually needs to spend time there and not go for a just semester with their parents paying the bill or on a vacation to Italy and then think they know the European ideology because they saw the Coliseum in person.
Bottom line: Obama is a community organizer who has no foreign affairs knowledge. If the US were to be attacked again by a another terrorist organization, I would want a leader who has DECADES of life and military experience before someone who helped create after school programs for some poor kids in Chicago.
- The guy who didn't jump on the liberal bandwagon when things became tough for the US
Sen. John McCain, Phil Gramm, Enron Corp...
Sen. John McCain opposes a farm bill. Phil Gramm, his economic chief, wants it stopped because it would regulate energy futures trading, a market famously abused when Enron Corp. manipulated California’s electricity prices in 2001, thereby closing the “Enron Loophole.”
Clearing the way for that California price gouging, Phil Gramm, as a powerful Texas senator in 2000, slipped an Enron-backed provision into the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that exempted from regulation energy trading on electronic platforms.
Then, over the next year, Enron – with Gramm’s wife Wendy serving on its board of directors – worked to create false electricity shortages in California, bilking consumers out of an estimated $40 billion.
Gramm is not only filling the Arizona senator’s acknowledged void on economic expertise (“I don’t know as much about the economy as I should”) but recognized as one of McCain’s closest friends in politics. The two men talk daily.
A McCain aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee opposes the farm bill because Gramm advised McCain that he should resist it.
Democrats have dubbed that gap in energy futures regulation the “Enron loophole,” but it played a part, too, in the more recent attempt by the Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to corner the national gas market by shifting trades to the unregulated “dark markets” of the Intercontinental Exchange.
The “Enron loophole” also has become part of the debate over the soaring price of oil. Last month, a study sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, concluded that speculative futures markets were partly to blame for the surge in oil prices that have pushed gas at the pump toward $4 a gallon
At a May 15 news conference, Levin said the skyrocketing price of oil is “not the result of supply and demand. Speculators have taken over most of the futures market."
The battle over the “Enron loophole” also could draw attention to McCain’s dependence on Gramm as his chief economic adviser and Gramm’s key role in passing legislation that let Enron trade commodities on electronic platforms without federal oversight.
In 2000, with the Republicans in charge of Congress and Gramm chairing the Senate Banking Committee, the exemption on electronic trading was approved without a Senate hearing.
Internal Enron documents, which were released in 2002, revealed that the Houston-based company helped write the legislation
Freed from regulatory interference, Enron then used manipulative trading practices to game the California electricity market and drive up electricity prices across the state.
While California consumers were getting fleeced, the new Bush administration shielded Enron from early accusations of market manipulation. President Bush personally joined the fight against imposing caps on the soaring price of electricity, buying additional time for Enron.
Gramm began advising the Arizona senator last July.
Obama and the EU
They fit perfectly together in their socialist/communist ways of thinking. If Obama wins and our taxes go through the roof, you'll want a recount.
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