BARACK OBAMA: OCTOBER 22nd

October 22nd, 2008, 2:14 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Dan Lehr

TODAY’S EPISODE: Campaigning in Virginia & talking foreign policy…a stump speech from Florida…an endorsement from a conservative that might mean more than Colin Powell’s

Campaigning in Virginia Today

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Barack Obama is in Virginia today, as he continues his assault on John McCain’s economic proposals.
But he’ll introduce national security differences into the final-stretch mix.
Obama and Joe Biden will meet with a group of national security advisers to the campaign. And Obama plans to talk publicly about his approach to world affairs, and how it differs from McCain’s.
Obama also will hold events in Richmond and Leesburg that will focus heavily on the financial woes gripping the nation.
Yesterday, in Florida, he criticized McCain for offering little more than “willful ignorance, wishful thinking, outdated ideology” to an economy in crisis.

Read comments delivered in Virginia here.

Above: In Miami yesterday.

Foreign Policy “Wonk Session”

RICHMOND (AP) - Barack Obama has gathered together a panel of foreign policy and military luminaries in Virginia, to talk about what he describes as “urgent issues” facing the country from overseas.
Obama is hoping to push aside the renewed charge that he is too untested for the White House. John McCain and Sarah Palin have seized on comments from Joe Biden, who said Obama would face a “generated crisis” within months of taking office because adversaries would want to test him. Biden says Obama would do well when tested, because he’s “got steel in his spine.” But McCain says Biden’s warning of a test shows the danger of electing Obama.
Obama got a huge boost on the foreign policy front over the weekend when Colin Powell endorsed him.
Obama says he doesn’t want the financial crisis to overshadow the many serious foreign policy problems the nation faces.
He’s spending the week bouncing from one patch of Republican turf to another.

Arguably a More Powerful Endorsement Than Powell’s

Above: Ken Adelman, lifelong conservative Republican. George Packer gives his background:

“Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.”

Adelman also (in)famously predicted that the war in Iraq would be “a cakewalk.”

In an e-mail exchange with Packer, Adelman explains why he’s pulling the lever for Obama this time around:

“Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?

Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible—dare I say, Clintonesque—than his liberal record indicates, than his cooperation with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid portends. If not, I will be even more startled by my vote than I am now.”