Bill Clinton Tells Iowans He Opposed Iraq From Start

SUPERMAN DIPLOMACY

Obama Camp Takes On Foreign Policy Concerns

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- There was no mistaking the purpose of a foreign policy wonkfest that Barack Obama's campaign convened here Tuesday for the benefit of 120 New Hampshire voters and the attendant television cameras. Amid stepped-up attacks by Hillary Clinton asserting that Obama lacks the experience to take on a dangerous world, the Obama camp turned loose a half-dozen of the foreign policy experts in his fold to show the world the kind of high-caliber minds advising the first-term senator, who joined the panel of experts after nearly two hours of their deep ruminations.

Noticeable among all the chin-tugging foreign policy talk was the unlikely tack that the experts took in making their case that Obama possesses the necessary experience for the job. One might expect that campaign advisers in their shoes would try to play down the risks that the country faces at this moment in time, to make voters more comfortable about handing the reins to someone who only three years ago was serving in the Illinois General Assembly. Instead, the panelists went in the exact opposite direction.

They talked about what a perilous position the country now finds itself in on multiple fronts -- from the threat of anti-American extremism to nuclear proliferation to global warming -- and concluded that only Obama could save the day.

John Hutson, a retired rear admiral and judge advocate general in the Navy who is now head of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., summarized the state of affairs as follows: "I'm very sad and very worried about what's happened to our foreign policy. I'm very worried that historians are going to look back at the early days of the 21st century and say that's where the U.S. got derailed, that's where we made a wrong turn, that's where the U.S. began to become the next former great power."

What the country and the world needed at such a dangerous time, the advisers said, was Obama's fresh perspective, candor and ability to bridge gaps within the country and around the world. The praise of their man conjured a veritable Superman of diplomacy. "It would be transformative overnight," Anthony Lake, national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said of the worldwide effect of an Obama victory. All this buildup was a tough act to follow once Obama finally joined the panel -- audience members would have been forgiven for expecting the ghost of Dean Acheson in his place given all the hype.

But he mostly held his own, seeming to relish the chance to show off his foreign policy knowledge and academic side. He focused his remarks around the need for "openness" in foreign policy (with the implication that not only President Bush but also Hillary Clinton have lacked forthrightness) and offered long, discursive answers to the audience's almost comically erudite questions, including one from a small-business man about the global supply chain's role in the reduction of world conflicts. Another, from a former student of Margaret Mead, on the need for a more anthropological mind-set in the foreign service, resulted in Obama observing: "My mother was an anthropologist, so the Margaret Mead reference, I'm always hip to."

Afterward, some of the Obama gurus were asked why they were offering such a dark view of world affairs as part of a pitch for a candidate with a short foreign policy r¿sum¿. They answered that it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. "It is a perilous time," said Susan Rice, former assistant secretary of state for African Affairs. "It's dishonest to deny that, and one thing we don't want to be is dishonest."

-- Alec MacGillis

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