Last night, I watched Matt Frei on BBC World News America interview Kori Schake, John McCain's Senior Foreign Policy Advisor, ostensibly to determine "her perspective on what policies would prevail in a McCain administration."
Schake, as one would expect, comes with significant foreign policy credentials, including a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins and experience at both West Point and the Hoover Institution. So when the interview begain, I expected Condoleezza Rice, someone who could shoot down questions and issues with a laser-like intellect. But I was wrong.
Unfortunately, I can't find the interview anywhere online, but it was the strangest offering from a head wonk on a major party ticket that I have ever seen: moments of silence where I could almost hear crickets chirping, a proposal for a "League of Democracy" that sounds like something a high school freshman would steal from a comic book to fill out a term paper (Will Batman be a member?), and the stunning revelation that, and I quote, "we have to do something about the bad guys."
"Bad guys"? This foreign policy is straight from Saturday morning cartoons. Cobra Commander was a Bad Guy. The Peculiar Purple Pie Man was a Bad Guy. What to you call a serious threat to American foreign policy? The Guild of Calamitous Intent?
I don't think that it is a left-wing critique to say that McCain's entire campaign seems strangely lethargic and intellectually unexciting. We deserve better.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Kori Schake exhibited similar difficulties in explaining McCain's terrorist detainee initiatives during an interview on the June 17th edition of NPR's The Diane Rehm Show. For all of McCain's supposed expertise in the foreign policy his senior campaign staff can't articulate it well.
Post a Comment