As President, McCain or Obama Will Face Significant National Security Threats

The next president will face challenges in dealing with Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, al Qaeda, and anti-American sentiment around the world.

McCain and Obama have also repeatedly vowed to rebuild America's image abroad and rejuvenate public diplomacy. Either one will certainly have his work cut out for him. The University of Maryland's Telhami has been polling in the Arab world for years, and he says the image of America has never been worse. In his most recent poll, 88 percent of Arabs named the United States as the second-biggest threat to them personally, after only Israel. "I believe that is the biggest challenge for the next president—restoring our credibility," says Telhami. "It's not about getting them to like America, but it's a question of whether people think you can get things done."

When it comes to changing foreign views of the United States, Obama's aides play up two themes. First, he makes a very clear break from Bush in both substance and style. Then they emphasize his biography. Not only would he be the first African-American president; he was born to a Kenyan father and lived in Indonesia as a child. "Barack Obama is this singularly American story in terms of the different strands of his background," says Richard Danzig, a key Obama adviser and former secretary of the Navy. "The fact that he has roots in Africa and Asia—that in itself is a very powerful image."

McCain's team touts the senator's reputation as a maverick and his long experience in foreign affairs, including as a Navy pilot and POW during Vietnam. "He started his national security career at age 17, and he has been learning and studying and reading and living that world ever since," says John Lehman, a McCain national security adviser and Navy secretary under President Reagan.

But with McCain echoing Bush's rhetoric on Iraq and Pakistan, the campaign is working hard to refute Obama's assertion that McCain is running for Bush's third term. This means that McCain finds himself running not only against Obama but against Bush as well. Remarkably, in trying to distance the Arizona senator from Bush whenever possible, McCain's aides even go into counterterrorism, the one area where being associated with Bush could most help his chances. Lehman says that by using the term "war on terror," Bush was glossing over the root causes of terrorism. "The president doesn't get it, so there is no coherence or integration to their overall policy," he says, citing the administration's reluctance to pressure Saudi Arabia as an example. "The administration has been blind to the role that the Saudi government and its Ministry of Religious Affairs has played in sowing the seeds of terror with its extremist missionary work around the world, creating all these mosques and schools that are preaching this hatred."

Diplomacy. McCain has also signaled a return to diplomacy, after an administration famous for its strong-arm tactics and opposition to treaties. "Senator McCain's whole approach is going to be much more international," says Lehman. "That doesn't mean he is going to let diplomacy paralyze American politics, but he knows how to make diplomacy work, and that's a huge difference from the Bush administration." When it comes to Russia, for example, McCain has said he is willing to negotiate new arms control treaties, a sharp break from Bush. He would also count on the Kremlin to pressure Iran on nuclear issues.

Yet at the same time, McCain suggested kicking Russia out of the Group of Eight industrialized nations to protest its increasingly undemocratic policies in the Vladimir Putin era. Obama adviser Rice calls these ideas contradictory, saying, "I don't know how you press the reset button with our allies when you are committing to intensifying the policies and approaches they have found so difficult to digest under President Bush, whether you are talking about staying indefinitely in Iraq or kicking Russia out of the G-8." McCain's advisers, though, see no contradiction. "It is not unheard of in the realm of diplomacy to have differences with countries and also work together on areas where you have common interests," says Scheunemann.