Obama Uplift of the Morning: Real Leadership

As the Clinton camp concedes Mississippi to Obama (once again, Clinton foregoes a small rural state for the brighter lights of the bigger cities), Georgie Anne Geyer offers some encouraging comment on Obama, experience, and leadership:

As the man I would choose as having these capacities above all others, former Secretary of State James Baker III, said, "There's no such thing as presidential experience outside of the office itself." The quality we ought to seek, he went on, "is leadership."

That is a quality that Obama has, and one that he embellishes with his sometimes aloof style, but also with his refusal to get down and dirty with some of his less discerning opponents. Leadership is not fighting whatever gets in your precious way at any moment. It is exemplifying and embodying an entire set of profound American principles and beliefs and giving such expression to them on the international stage that other peoples will want to be more, and not less, like us [Georgie Anne Geyer, "Leadership Is Obama's Best Quality," Yahoo News, 2008.03.10].

Geyer makes some useful observations about Clinton's own foreign policy experience. Such experience as part of her husband's administration would only make Hillary part of what Geyer
characterizes as eight years of "almost unmitigated disaster for foreign policy." Failed interventions to democratize Russia (setting the stage for Tsar Vladimir), foul-ups in Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans -- with experience like that, argues Geyer, who needs naïveté?

Geyer also addresses Clinton's efforts to make political hay out of Obama's expressed willingness to talk with bad dudes like Castro and Ahmadinejad:

As for Hillary's other big foreign policy question -- should an American president speak to undesirable foreign leaders? -- that one, too, is grossly unfair to Obama. He has said that, yes, he would personally negotiate, but so did Richard Nixon (and that Metternich of Metternichs, Henry Kissinger) with China, with extraordinary success [Geyer].

Obama himself said in the Austin, TX, debate in February, "I recall what John F. Kennedy once said: We should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate" [Mike Allen, "Obama Would Meet with Castro," Politico.com, 2008.02.21].

Sometimes choosing to talk to the people who've wronged you or whom you've labeled as your enemies takes more courage and leadership than throwing a punch. As Nixon demonstrated, leadership sometimes means taking the initiative to do what no one else is willing to do.

Just more to think about as we head for the all-important South Dakota primary....