Biden Has Done More Than Look At Russia Across The Horizon

The difference in experience between Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin is astounding. It has been generally assumed that Biden has more experience but the depth of that experience is surprising even to those who follow politics closely.

Senator Biden has met and discussed policies with 3 UN Secretaries General, one queen (Her Majesty Elizabeth II), several kings, plus a few tough guys like Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and Serbian president Sloban Milosevic. He has, after all, been in the Senate for 36 years.

The next Vice President must be experienced at something more international than moose butchering and aerial slaughter of wolves, and dealing with Putin, for example, requires a bit more than looking at Big Diomede Island in the Bering Strait from Little Diomede Island and thus, according to Cindy McCain, becoming an "expert on Russia."

You don't have to be a Hegelian or Marxist or even an amateur student of World History to recognize the downward spiral of the US after 8 years of Neocons, Blackwater, and Halliburton. We are in real trouble internationally, not just in terms of finance and balance of payments, but in term of esteem and respect. It will take several major internationalists and experienced diplomats at the top levels of government to repair all the damage that has been done by Bush/Cheney et. al.

I have posited for some time that my New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson would make the best Secretary of State in the Obama Cabinet, and that Howard Dean III, M.D., would be an outstanding Secretary of Health (or even FDA Commissioner, a very consequential job that oversees 25% of the US Economy). I know part of the solution must come from leaders who are oriented toward real consumer protection and not just panderers to corporate demands, as we have grown so accustomed to over the past 8 years.

No response yet from Dean on that, since, after all, he is kind of busy with campaigning for an inevitable massive Democratic victory at all levels in 40 more days. However, Governor Richardson has told me several times at press conferences that he very much appreciates such advance planning and commentary. I personally want to see the creation of a new United Nations Undersecretary General for Nutrition, but that is of course a whole other set of articles.

Senator Biden's stunning list of heads of state he has met with was just brought to my attention today, and this is only a partial list (courtesy of Office of Senator Joe Biden):

Iraq: Allawi, al-Jaafari, al-Maliki, Talabani, Massoud Barzani, Nechirvan Barzani;

Israel: Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni;

Palestinian Territories: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, Salam Fayyad, Ahmed Qurei;

Jordan: King Hussein, King Abdullah;

Egypt: Hosni Mubarak, Anwar Sadat;

Libya: Muammar Qaddafi;

Lebanon: Prime Minister Rafiq Haririm, Najib Mikati;

Bahrain: Crown Prince Shaikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa;

Syria: President Bashar al-Assad;

Turkey: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ahmet Sezer, Abdullah Gul, Bulent Ecevit, Demirel;

Greece: Kostis Stephanopoulos, Kostas Karamanlis, Kostantinos Mitsotakis, Andreas Papandreou;

Cyprus: George Vassiliou, Glafcos Clerides;

Afghanistan: Hamid Karzai;

Pakistan: Asaf Ali Zardari, Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani, Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif;

India: Manmohan Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee;

Sri Lanka: Ranil Wickremasinghe;

Russia: Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Andrei Gromyko, Alexey Kosygin, Leonid Brezhnev;

France: Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin, Fracois Mitterrand;

U.K.: Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair, John Major, Margaret Thatcher;

Ireland: Bertie Ahern, John Bruton, Albert Reynolds, Charles Haughey;

Germany: Angela Merkel, Gerhard Schroeder, Helmut Kohl, Helmut Schmidt;

Italy: Silvio Berlusconi, Romani Prodi, Cossiga Serbia Boris Tadic, Vojislav Kostunica, Zoran Djindjic, Slobodan Milosevic;

Yugoslavia: Josip Broz Tito;

Croatia: Franjo Tudjman Slovenia Janez Drnovsek, Ibrahim Rugova, Milan Kucan;

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Haris Silajdzic, Sulejman Tihiae, Alija Izetbegovic;

Kosovo (as an independent nation): Fatmir Sejdiu, Hashim Thaci;

Poland: Lech Walesa, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz;

Czech Republic: Vaclav Havel;

Hungary: Gyula Horn, Arpad Goncz, Viktor Orban;

Finland: Paavo Lipponen;

Romania: Ion Iliescu;

Georgia: Mikheil Saakashvili, Eduard Shevardnadze;

Kazakhstan: Nursultan Nazarbayev;

Ukraine: Viktor Yushchenko;

Canada: Paul Martin, Brian Mulroney;

NATO: George Robertson, Javier Solana, Manfred Woerner, Peter Carrington;

China: Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji;

Hong Kong: Tung Chee Hwa;

Taiwan: Chen Shui-Bian;

Korea: Kim Dae Jung;

Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Chok Tong, Lee Hsien Loong;

Indonesia: Megawati Sukarnoputri, Bambang Yudhoyono;

Australia: John Howard, Paul Keating;

Philippines: Gloria Arroyo, Fidel Ramos;

Vietnam: Phan Van Kai;

East Timor: Ramos Horta;

Tibet: The Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso;

Colombia: Alvaro Uribe, Andres Pastrana, Cesar Gaviria;

Mexico: Vincente Fox, Ernesto Zedillo;

Bolivia: Jaime Paz Zamora;

South Africa: Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela;

Liberia: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf;

Lesotho: Leabua Jonathan;

United Nations: Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan, Boutros Boutros Ghali;

Vatican City: Pope John Paul II;

Slovakia: Rudolf Schuster; and

Turkmenistan: Saparmurat Niyazov.

Comments

[independent4obama2]

I'm forwarding this article to the editor of the local paper here in Florence, Oregon.
Great information and insight into what type of EXPERIENCE we will finally have in Washington.
It really is going to be an exciting CHANGE!!!!!

As far as the debate, there really isnt one as to who will win.
This is the one McCain should have canceled!!!!

Robyn
PS.. Im reading your articles everyday!!
Great writing!!!

[StephenFox]

Thanks very much. Do you read them in mailings to Oregonians for Obama? You ought to try the Oregonian and the papers in Eugene and Salem, too. By choice, I actually missed the so-called "debate," but I did something interesting, to take the comments as they flowed in from the 580 Obama Groups of which I am a member, and slammed them all unedited into a kind of artilce, which I published at OpEdNews today.

It was fascinating: the most commenting groups during the debate were Oregonians, SanFrancis­coforObama­, and a yahoo group, Secular Humanist, easily the most interesting group on the web, in my humble opinion. I posted this at mybarackobama.com on my weblog page as well as in today's OpEdNews. Check it out: it is really a fascinating something like cinema verite of that debate, as seen through the comments which came fast and furious, but they are all there in this 7 pages article, mispellings, crudities, quotes from Jefferson, rage at Palin, and all....

[Starline213]

I have admired Senator Biden for such a long time--and wanted him as the VP since February. I truly feel he is the BEST VP candidate in a very, very long time. Reading this very valuable post only confirms what the entire country already knows: that we are in VERY safe hands with Senator Biden helping President Obama restore our image at home and abroad. We do not (and should not ask) perfection of our elected officials--but we must insist on experience, intelligence and the ability to lead. Thank you so much for this list and your excellent reporting!

All the best to you!

[StephenFox]

Thanks, yall, especially LizM for the keen insights, and LIz: couldn't you send this to all of the editorial page editors in 13 battleground states? There is a way to do that, which takes about 6 hours, that's all..i would be so glad to tell you more, as this material is so virtually unknown, in the setting of all of this lipstick/pig blather..I have just published a major article on a Vancouver site, NowPublic.com:

http://www.nowpublic.com/health/obama-presidency-will-galvanize-30-million-american-idealists-and-reformers-and-personal-memory-paul-newman

I am hopeful that Huffington Post will publish it in due course, as I sent it in last night. Please be so kind as to comment, and you can post the entire Biden comment there too. The more the merrier, I say. If that fails for whatever reason, here is a tinyurl for the nowpublic.com site:
http://tinyurl.com/Pnewman-memory-obamaidealists

[LizM]

Stephen,

Senator Biden’s record over the last thirty years is an extensive one, to say the least. I had not imagined that attempting to describe for you the many parts of this record that I find appealing would prove to be so overwhelming but there is just so much to talk about and the stakes are too high to leave anything out.

But, frankly, since Senator Obama has demonstrated his superior judgement in selecting Joe Biden as his running mate, I am confident that the Biden record will be known well enough, before too long. I would just point out that Senator Biden is the leader among Democrats on foreign policy, national security and the judiciary with impeccable and unimpeachable credentials that are second to none and which were wholly unmatched by any of his presidential rivals.

[LizM]

...continued...

Senator Biden is the only candidate - only person on the face of the planet, actually - who has developed and honed a comprehensive and viable strategy to promote a sustainable political settlement in Iraq based on federalism and Iraq’s constitution that offers the only hope there is of ending the civil war there and of withdrawing US forces without leaving a failed state in their wake.

It is not hyperbole to suggest that the next ten years will be a critical decade for America's future. It is clear that eight years of a unique and unprecedented blend of neoconserv­ative-insp­ired hubris and incompetence have ensured that the next President of the United States will have virtually no margin for error as he is confronted with any number of critical foreign policy challenges along side the exciting opportunities that they will present. By 2009, we will all be in very desperate need of having someone in the White House with a finely tuned foreign policy prowess and comprehensive world view if the US hopes to protect Americans at home and begin to regain its credibility throughout the world and reclaim its global leadership role.

...continued...

[LizM]

...continued...

Senator Biden has stood alone during this presidential campaign, head and shoulders above all of his rivals, in having the most relevant experience along side an unmatched depth and breadth of knowledge, with a demonstrated capacity for building bipartisan consensus by attracting the support of Republicans and independents and, most importantly, a proven track record for action, consistently resisting the status-quo conventional wisdom and working against the grain to make change happen.

The reality is that Senator Biden is uniquely qualified to provide the kind of leadership that will be required to deal with the pressing issues of the day and to help define the role of the US in our post-9/11 world and radically change the course of the ship of state, at home and abroad. In a very real sense, he has spent his entire senate career learning about, preparing for, and acting to meet the critical challenges that face us all during this crucial time in history and restore honor to the promise of America.

[StephenFox]

Thanks so much, to all of you, for your comments. I am cogitating now on the next wave of articles I will publish, what an Obama Presidency might mean to all of our pet causes, mine being Consumer Protection, FDA Reform vs. Corporate Manipulation, and especially rescinding FDA approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic and carcinogenic artificial sweetener metabolized as methanol and formaldehyde, yet still found in 9000 products, Diet Cokes, Sugarless Gum, ad nauseum.

I am interested in the similar long and deeper projects of others, and hope you might shed some light on them in this scintillating forum and dialogue at Huff Po. Obama's Presidency could galvanize a new era of Vitality and Idealism, and what that might mean specifically is of great interest to me, and I hope to you as well....

If it weren't for people like Rachel Carson, the unsung victims of asbestos, thalidomide, Vioxx, etc., and yes, even Ralph Nader in his best days as author of the Chemical Feast, we would still be in the Consumer Dark Ages. I like to channel my idealism into achieving specific goals, and at the top of my list is getting aspartame off the market. Please Google and read this: RUMSFELD'S BIOWEAPON LEGACY.

[pshn8boutpolitix]

Thanks Stephen,

Finally, a truthful article, with facts backing up the knowledge of just how good Biden is. Having been raised in the Philadelphia area, I've known about him for a long time. Yes, he's a scrapper and makes gaffes. At least he's not afraid to be honest and open about his opinions and feelings. Biden is not afraid of changing his mind when it needs to be changed. I know I've completely changed mine politically, starting eight years ago. He is my "next door neighbor".

Biden won't have to do much more than allow Palin to talk. That alone will continue to prove her incompetency and ignorance. I truly hope her religious beliefs are questioned; the only people I know who don't disagree with, and aren't terrified of, them are other evangelicals (sadly, I know too many of them - I used to be part of that "wolf pack:...I guess Satan shot me down from an airplane!).

This is a portion of an LTE I sent out last night:

"1st Debate

... If McCain should win the election, my greatest fear
is that something awful would happen to him. Which means that Palin
would be the president. That possibility should give even the most
dedicated Republican pause."

BTW, please stop banging on Aspartame. I know it's bad for me, but it's part of how I lost 90 pounds!

[StephenFox]

Thanks so much. Your candor reminds me of another a retired televangelist's son's excoriation of Republican Neocons which I read on this site in a brilliant article/compilation of URLs by Chuck Lasker, whom I believe to be Founder or at least Administrator, of Republicans for Obama. Have you read it yet?

As to Aspartame and your weight loss, you did that yourself with your own will power. It wasn't the methanol, the formaldehyde, or the proven cause of brain tumors that comes from ingesting aspartame: DIKETOPIPERAZINE.
Google RUMSFELD'S BIOWEAPON LEGACY to learn how it was approved.

To improve your health, and repair some of the biochemical damage done by Aspartame, please google and read Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock's What to do if you have used aspartame. This is a biochemical regimen which really works although it can be expensive.

You might enjoy another treatise, if I may be so bold as to submit just one more: Internist H.J. Roberts' Aspartame Disease, an FDA Approved Epidemic.

If reading such scholarly articles seems too much, I am really not sorry. No one wanted to sue Big Tobacco back in the 90's but a few state AG's perservered, resulting in $235 Billion judgments. Aspartame is no different.

[schreinon]

Stephen Fox has nailed it! Great article. I still find it hard to believe that there is actually a contest going on out there for BEST PRESIDENTIAL PICK. But if you still need convincing about who to vote for, start looking at the VP picks. Biden is SUCH a good pick!

[jitsusoji]

It's pretty obvious why McCain was trying to stall the VP debate. Palin is just too shallow.

[united for change]

Too true. Biden shows his experience but also his grounded ability to take some risks and call it like he sees it. Great article!

[puzzle49]

Great article !

Biden has an impressive list of foreign heads of state that he has met with. He must not be as much of a bulldog as we think he is. Sen. Obama made a great choice and obviously put a great deal of thought into his decision. However, as we are learning, Sen. Obama puts a great deal of thought into everything. Thank God ! A president who thinks before acting !

[pjburns11]

But then again, Palin has met the leader of Iceland. Oh, but wait... then she forgot about it. Did she even know who she was talking to? Unfortunately, we might lose a blunderbabe for Vice President, but Alaska might gain a perfect news anchor. Or maybe Miss Alaska (over 40)? The possibilities are endless!

Great cabinet list, too!

[ConcernedMilf]

This one was so important, I'm posting an excerpt--
COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more, and put more money into the economy, instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it's got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade -- we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation. (see CBS News Video -- http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4477318n)
'nuff said
ConcernedMilf -- www.TheSarahPalinPortal.com

[ConcernedMilf]

Hey, Palin is in with this guy!
Times Now (video) -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHU_gRWFV2g
Pakistan President Zardari calls Sarah Palin"Gorgeous"
One down, millions of other foreign earth citizens to go.
ConcernedMilf
www.TheSaraPalinPortal.com

[barindersharma]

Great article! This is extremely useful information! I almost feel bad for Palin. Almost.

Sarah Barracuda... meet Joey the Shark!