Barack Obama has assembled a cast of hundreds to advise him on foreign policy matters as he tries to convince American voters that he has a clue.
Obviously, he needs a LOT of help.
As Obama embarks on his lib media-hyped Obama-palooza Tour abroad, we gain insight into the inner workings of the Obama campaign's making of foreign policy positions.
WASHINGTON -- Every day around 8 a.m., foreign policy aides at Senator Barack Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters send him two e-mails: a briefing on major world developments over the previous 24 hours and a set of questions, accompanied by suggested answers, that the candidate is likely to be asked about international relations during the day.
One recent Q. & A. asked, for example, whether Mr. Obama supported the decision by Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to include a timetable for American troop withdrawal in any new security agreements with the United States. The answer, provided to Mr. Obama with bullet points, was yes — or “a genuine opportunity,” as he put it in a speech on Iraq this week.
Behind the e-mail messages is a tight-knit group of aides supported by a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department, to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters.
“It is unwieldy, no question,” said Denis McDonough, 38, Mr. Obama’s top foreign policy aide, speaking of an infrastructure that has been divided into 20 teams based on regions and issues, and that has recently absorbed, with some tensions, the top foreign policy advisers from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign. “But an administration is unwieldy, too. We also know that it’s messier when you don’t get as much information as you can.”
The group is on the spot this week as Mr. Obama is planning to make his first overseas foray as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, with voters at home and leaders abroad watching closely to see how he handles himself on the global stage.
...Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, has a far smaller and looser foreign policy advisory operation, about 75 people in all, and none are organized into teams.
...From day to day, the main point of contact with Mr. Obama and his foreign policy team is Mr. McDonough, who is soon to be joined in Chicago by Mr. Lippert. “If there’s something big in the morning, we will either e-mail or call Obama,” said Mr. Lippert, who performed a similar job, although on a smaller scale, when he was Mr. Obama’s foreign policy adviser in the Senate. “So instead of having 20 people at your fingertips, you have 300. The pressure is there, the time is much shorter, but the principle is the same — lining up the calls, briefing the candidate, e-mails, op-eds, statements.”
Out in the netherworld of the 300, advisers often say they are unclear about what happens to all the policy paragraphs they churn out on request. “It’s all mysterious what we send him and what gets to him,” said Michael A. McFaul, a Russia scholar at Stanford University who leads the Russia and Eurasia team for the Obama campaign.
Other team leaders include Ivo H. Daalder, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who has organized his 40-member nuclear nonproliferation team into eight working groups, and Philip H. Gordon, another scholar at the institution, who is in charge of Mr. Obama’s Europe team.
300 advisers?
I don't see that as a good thing. Is this an indication of the sort of BIG government tangle of teams Obama would establish as president so he could figure out what to think?
I think the Times refers to his advisers as a "mini State Department" to boost Obama's credentials in terms of his incredible lack of experience in foreign policy. He's already managing a State Department! What experience!
Obama's campaign bureaucracy is a bloated mess!
That might explain Obama's collection of disjointed foreign policy statements. For example, one day he says that Iran is a tiny country compared to the Soviet Union and doesn't pose a threat to us, and then he turns around to say that Iran is a great threat.
300 advisers on foreign policy.
How many advisers does he have on domestic policy?
This does show that more is not necessarily better.
Just because Obama has an army of advisers does not mean that it is effective.
Obama doesn't have a foreign policy advisory team. He has a league.
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