I went to a forum with Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers yesterday.  Dr. Susan Rice, Denis McDonough, Paul Bucha and Richard Danzig were at Penn, taking questions from whomever wanted to come sit down with them for two hours.

What an excellent campaign strategy. Granted, most people don’t want to sit down and discuss international law with a bunch of policy wonks, but for those of us that do get a rush out of it…how nice to be included in the discussion. How different from the way the current administration–and really, any administration–works.

Dr. Rice (a way cooler Dr. Rice than Condi) pointed out that we need a multifaceted, complex approach to problems.

Paul Bucha impressed me the most, I think, when near the end he said that the different thing about how Obama thinks is that he doesn’t believe in binaries. He doesn’t have to be black OR white, he can be both. Countries don’t  have to be with us OR against us. We can talk to them about the things we like and try to work on the things we dislike. The world isn’t black and white.

That warmed my little feminist heart. Especially coming from an old white guy.

This is, again, why I like Obama so much. Foreign policy is the number-one area where the president has real control. They can talk all they want about health care plans, but those have to get through Congress. But the idea that we have people who have real interest in looking at foreign relations in a complex way, not reducing them to good and evil, is very impressive. The idea that we have nothing to lose by talking to Cuba, for instance, is long overdue.

Posted: April 4th, 2008 under Hope, Politics.
Comments: 2