McCain's Foreign Policy "Experience" Overblown By MSM

According to the NYT and nearly everyone else in the MSM, Joe Biden adds "foreign policy expertise" to the Democratic ticket. Forget, please, that he adds a great deal more than that as he has been a capable, knowledgeable and productive member of the Senate since 1972. You see, everyone knows that John McCain has much greater expertise in the area of foreign policy than does the top of the Democratic ticket, Barack Obama.

Like almost everything else that "everyone knows," McCain's foreign policy expertise simply does not stand up to scrutiny.

McCain likes to mention his broad foreign policy experience and every time he does the word echoes around the MSM for a few more days gaining with each blow-dried reflection an ever more lustrous patina of reality. But what experience is he talking about?

Well, of course, there was the time he spent in a Vietnamese prison camp -- and we are all, every one of us, in debt to him, and to all of his fellow POWs, for their noble sacrifice. You have to make that obligatory obeisance whenever you talk about this because otherwise you can be accused of being a traitorous weasel who has no right to criticize anything at all about John McCain. But, as much as we are grateful for his sacrifice, it really doesn't count as foreign policy experience.

It's not as though he's going to conduct foreign policy by limiting negotiations to name, rank and serial number. And if he's going to relate to every other head of state as if they are Viet Cong guards, well, how well is that gonna work, really? Dwight Eisenhower had the command rank and administrative experience in the military to bring something of value from that experience to the White House. Hell, maybe even Doug MacArthur did. Maybe Colin Powell does too. One can make arguments, if perhaps not very sound ones, for their experiences being relevant in foreign policy. But not everyone who ever served gets to claim policy making expertise. Being a hero doesn't qualify you as an expert. By that logic we missed our best chance with Audie Murphy.

McCain has served in the US Senate since 1987 (fifteen years less "experience" than Biden). His first big "experience" there was as a member of the "Keating Five," which had, as you will recall, not so much to do with foreign affairs (for that experience the Senate Ethics Committee rebuked McCain for his "bad judgment"). Eventually, he not only served on but admittedly exerted admirable influence on the Senate's POW/MIA committee. Yet again, this concerns a fairly limited swath of foreign policy, to say the least.

Let's see, he served on the Commerce Committee, not much foreign policy there... then there's the Indian Affairs Committee, he chaired that twice, but again, not much foreign policy there (although W does think Indian tribes are "sovereign nations"). He served on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which does deal with foreign affairs, but which has no role in any policy issues not involving military matters. Obama, by contrast, during his shorter tenure in office has not only managed to avoid being rebuked on his ethics, he has even served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

As far as any foreign policy "expertise" that McCain has gained from this vast experience: where is the evidence? He thinks Iran supports Sunni extremists. He thinks Iraq and Pakistan share a common border. And his lack of fundamental knowledge on at least one important foreign policy area is appalling; his judgment on the Iraq war has been completely off from the beginning. This fact has been demonstrated by, amongst other things, his prediction that we'd be greeted as liberators and his recent asinine comparison of our prolonged occupation of that hostile area to the occupations after the allied victory in WW II.

One of his main advisors is a lobbyist for Georgia's government. That'll give him a real clear view of Russia's aims and concerns in the Caucasus and Caspian areas (does he even know that it was Georgia that initiated military action in Ossetia?).

And still we hear from the MSM that McCain's foreign policy experience is undeniable. What kind of Kool Aid are they drinking? As a result it seems they'll view Biden in the same myopic manner and try to pigeonhole him as the foreign policy fix-up that Obama's campaign somehow needs to keep up. This will further cement in the public's mind the idea that McCain is therefore more experienced and better prepared to be president.

I like it better when the MSM focuses on candidates' sex lives. They're way less out of their depth there.

Comments

[Skua]

It was funny when Wesley Clark was trying to make this general point ("WHAT foreign policy experience?") and Joe Scarborough was talking about it the next day in this completely shocked and even dazed tone, as if somebody had committed an indecent act on the Constitution or something. He just kept going, "THEY BEAT HIM UP OVER THERE......!!"