Pitching American Primacy for 2016

March 5, 2015

Basketball fan-politicians like President Barack Obama often use sports metaphors when talking politics. As 2014 came to a close and his last electoral cycle passed, he pointed out “my presidency is entering the fourth quarter.”

The fourth quarter of a presidency is the foreign policy quarter. During most presidencies, it is when his leverage over Congress is at its ebb, his political considerations minimized and the time used to crystallize a legacy. For all presidents, this is the time to set the geopolitical gears in motion.

While his team plays the fourth quarter and the clock ticks down, the new 2016 presidential teams are positioning themselves for an electoral shootout. Each team – and there are many – needs to prepare to enter the Oval Office ready not only with a solid and popularly supported domestic agenda, but also be able adjust to what is left behind at the buzzer and to articulate a clear foreign policy plan and vision.

So far, of the multiple presidential hopefuls in both parties, only Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have worked on foreign policy in the executive branch. While some of the others have been on congressional committees or in statehouses that deal with other countries, Clinton and Biden have deep, long established, and very real global experience, knowledge and networks.

Presidential contenders will question their judgment and record. They will have media surrogates, party activists and former colleagues attack their policy roles and decisions – relying on damning words from people like former Defense Secretary Bob Gates and his book “Duty.” Gates wrote that Biden was “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Clinton critics will repeat their Benghazi mantra.

Lacking foreign policy experience is not a deal killer for 2016 presidential candidates not named Biden or Clinton. After all, the last three presidents did not take office with vast personal foreign policy expertise. What they lacked in experience, however, they made up for with foreign policy bench strength.

George W. Bush gave America comfort in his candidacy during the 2000 campaign, for example, by preemptively and very publicly presenting an A-team of seasoned foreign policy hands like Colin Powell, who gave Bush street cred. The current crop of 2016 candidates all have a large crop of experts to cull for advice and support, like Stanford’s Condoleezza Rice or Brookings Institution’s Strobe Talbott. But advisers are not there to formulate a worldview for a candidate – they are there to help analyze conditions, strategize action, present options and articulate the president’s foreign policy perspective.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article10722152.html#stor...

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