Thursday, December 27, 2007

Obama experience: Living in Asia as a child

Obama has not been held accountable for his naive comment about foreign policy

Unbelievably, a major candidate for President has said that his most important foreign policy experience was living abroad in Asia from ages 6 to 10 (?):

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama told an audience Monday that some of his strongest foreign relations experience comes from having spent four years of his childhood in Indonesia, and having family ties to Kenya.
After first mentioning that as a senator he's had "frequent interactions with world leaders" on fact-finding missions across the globe, the Illinois Democrat added, "But you know, probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact that I spent four years living overseas when I was a child in Asia — Southeast Asia."
According to the campaign, Obama was six years old when he moved to Indonesia in 1967, and stayed until he was 10.



The Clinton team was criticized for bringing up Obama's elementary school years at the end of a factual piece proving Obama lied about not planning for "years" to run for President. He had in fact been thinking about and angling to run in this decade, the 1990's, 1980's and all of his life. Yet people felt it was not funny or appropriate to bring up childhood issues. I thought it was a bad joke. But whatever.

Now, Obama has made his childhood experiences in the same time period the central reason he is more qualified that the other candidates.

Where is the skeptical press? Where are people thinking clearly. How could a person EVER say this, even Once?

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