What Presidents Don't Know (Washington Post - hit job on Obama/Dems)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/20/AR2007082001425.html

What Presidents Don't Know

By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, August 21, 2007; A15

...

Like John Kerry's flip-flops or John Edwards's haircuts, the foreign policy gaffes of Sen. Barack Obama have become a staple source of presidential campaign humor -- so much so that the candidate himself has felt compelled to come up with counter-jokes. "To prepare for this debate I rode in the bumper cars at the state fair," he told an Iowa audience on Sunday.

Yet given that his main rivals for the Democratic nomination include a one-term senator and another senator whose career, at least as an elected official, is only four years longer than Obama's, maybe we should pause before laughing. After all, the barb in the jokes comes from the assumption -- usually unquestioned -- that there really is some specific, specialized, inside knowledge of foreign countries that some candidates have and some don't, that is essential to holding the presidency. Is that true? Or, to put it in late-night talk-show language, do you really have to know the name of the Pakistani president to be a good U.S. president?

Clearly you don't have to know very much of anything about other countries to become U.S. president, this not being a criterion that matters greatly to most voters. Famously, candidate George W. Bush couldn't identify the Pakistani president (and thought Greeks were called Grecians) -- and he'd hardly traveled abroad. Candidate Bill Clinton had traveled abroad and knew the names of lots of international politicians, but he had never been required to use them, the governorship of Arkansas not being a job that involves much interaction with foreign leaders. By contrast, George H.W. Bush had plenty of foreign policy experience -- as CIA director and ambassador to China -- none of which helped him when he sought reelection in 1992.

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Conveniently, no mention of the fact that the top GOP candidate is a former MAYOR, and one of the others is a one term governor.