Obama's Unprecedented Trip
By Dan Balz
AMMAN -- Toward the end of his interview on CBS's "Face The Nation" on Sunday, Barack Obama was asked by correspondent Lara Logan how much his foreign trip is aimed at allaying doubts about his readiness "to lead a country at war as commander in chief from day one."
The candidate quickly brushed aside the question. The foreign policy experts and U.S. soldiers he had encountered in Afghanistan seemed not to have any doubts, he said. And then he added something far more revealing about how he sees his trip and his own prospects of winning the presidency.
"The objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like [Afghan] President Karzai or [Iraqi] Prime Minister Maliki or [French] President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years [italics added]. And it's important for me to have a relationship with them early, that I start listening to them now, getting a sense of what their interests and concerns are."
For a politician just four years out of the Illinois state Senate and a presidential candidate who has not yet officially accepted his party's nomination, it was a telling moment. Others may see foreign policy as a potential weakness in his candidacy, particularly in a contest against John McCain. Obama is not among them. That was revealed even more clearly when Obama expanded on the value of his trip.
"One of the shifts in foreign policy that I want to execute as president is giving the world a clear message that America intends to continue to show leadership, but our style of leadership is going to be less unilateral, that we're going to see our role as building partnerships around the world that are of mutual interest to the parties involved," he said. "And I think this gives me a head start in that process."
"Do you have any doubts," Logan asked him
"Never," the candidate replied.
A veteran of former president Clinton's administration, someone who understands both politics and foreign policy, described this week's seven-nation trip as one of the four most important events for Obama between now and Election Day -- the others being his selection of a vice presidential running mate, his convention and his debates with McCain.
What struck this person was the boldness of Obama's decision to spend more than a week abroad in the middle of a campaign. Not, of course, for the reasons Obama outlined, but no less an example of Obama's self-confidence. "This is a big-league move to directly address a concern that the American people are going to have" about his candidacy, he said.
What is striking is how Obama's campaign differs from past Democratic campaigns. In earlier years, Democratic candidates couldn't wait to move off of foreign policy and onto domestic issues, aware that their party more or less owned the domestic debate, while Republicans generally held the high ground on national security. The more time they could spend focusing the contest on domestic issues, the better their chances of winning.
That was true certainly for John F. Kerry against President Bush four years ago, and it's clear that the polls currently show that national security issues are McCain's one key area of strength against Obama. Obama's advisers believe the economy will dominate the fall campaign, but the candidate shows no indication that he will try to avoid engagement with McCain over foreign policy.
The journey Obama began when he left Washington last Thursday is one wholly unique in the annals of presidential politics. Everything smacks of a presidential trip. The credentials issued to the traveling press corps on Sunday in Chicago -- reporters will catch up with Obama in Jordan later this week -- say "The visit of Senator Obama to the Middle East and Europe," mimicking the language of a presidential sojourn.
Once he is out of Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama will join up with the press and travel on his newly configured campaign charter, a Boeing 757 that carries the words "Change We Can Believe In" along the fuselage and the distinctive Obama logo on the tail. Never has a presidential candidate been overseas with such visibility.
It long has been said that Karl Rove looked for ways to go directly at the strengths of an opposing candidate, believing that was more effective than concentrating on his or her weaknesses. Obama has turned that around by dealing directly with his own perceived weaknesses is part of his modus operandi.
One of his foreign policy advisers -- he has a stable of nearly 300 -- said the explicit message for the American audience back home will be: "I can be president. I can talk to world leaders. They won't eat me up." The implicit message is equally important: "When President Bush goes abroad, there are big crowds protesting. When I go abroad, there are big crowds cheering."
Whether by the end of this week he will be seen as presumptuous or overly cocky, or ready enough to sit in the Oval Office to satisfy the doubters, is the overriding political question.
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker, is watching with some fascination as Obama travels this week. He may disagree with Obama but nonetheless called him "one of the smartest people we've ever seen run for president." Obama may have "huge structural challenges on cultural and other issues," he added, "but I think he's very smart ... very formidable."
But for Gingrich, who is no less lacking in self confidence than Obama, two questions arise about Obama -- one short-term and the other longer term. First, to Gingrich, one measure of the trip will be the degree to which Obama is willing to acknowledge that what he has seen has changed his thinking.
In Gingrich's formulation, no one as bright as Obama can spend 10 days overseas and not come away with insights he didn't have when he started. "If he encounters realities different than he expected, is he willing to actually share that with the American people?" Gingrich wondered.
The second measure for Gingrich is any hint of how Obama would react upon discovering that what he has been talking about won't work. From Pakistan to Iran to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Gingrich said, Obama may well discover that the ideas he enunciated during the campaign fall short. "The core principle is, 'so what do you do if the world's harder than you think it is?'" he said.
This is not a matter of projecting humility so much as acknowledging the possibility of errors in judgment or the intractability of problems that have eluded resolution for decades. When Obama says "never" about doubts as to his capacity to handle these problems, he projects the same confidence that has carried him through a difficult campaign. But voters may be looking to see what else he reveals about himself and the world during his week abroad.
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