Foreign Policy: Dems Plan to Press National Security Advantage in Charlotte
By Truman Project Staff | 9.3.12
Foreign Policy’s The Cable highlights how the Truman Project is working with Madeleine Albright, Michèle Flournoy, and congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth to make national security a top priority at the DNC:
U.S. President Barack Obama‘s campaign message at this week’s Democratic National Convention will be that Mitt Romney‘s campaign has been avoiding foreign policy — and when the former Massachusetts governor does talk about it, he puts forward a set of policies that is backwards-looking and frightening.
“We’re living in an upside-down world, because for the first time in a generation the Democrats and President Obama hold a decisive advantage in the polls going into the election in terms of the confidence the American people have on foreign policy and national security issues,” Colin Kahl, former Obama defense official and co-chair of the Obama campaign’s national security advisory team, toldThe Cable in an interview.
The polls have consistently shown Obama with a double-digit advantage when it comes to foreign policy and national security, and that could be in part because the Republicans have avoided focusing on the issue, especially at their convention in Tampa, he said.
“In Tampa, Republicans were ignoring foreign policy,” Kahl said, pointing out that only Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke about foreign policy much at all, while Romney and his running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, barely mentioned it.
“We will honor America’s democratic ideals because a free world is a more peaceful world,” Romney said in his acceptance speech in Tampa. “This is the bipartisan foreign policy legacy of Truman and Reagan. And under my presidency we will return to it once again.”
Kahl pointed out that Romney didn’t mention Afghanistan, the troops fighting overseas, or veterans during his speech.
“The most bizarre element of Mitt Romney’s speech is here’s a guy who is auditioning to be the commander in chief of the most powerful country on Earth and he forgets to mention the war in Afghanistan, where we have almost 80,000 men and women in harm’s way,” Kahl said. “He didn’t even mention the war in Afghanistan much less let the American people know what he wants to do about it.”
The Obama campaign will hammer that theme by making sure its officials and surrogates talk about the ongoing war in Afghanistan with a particular focus on veterans. There are a host of veterans’ panel and training events, some being run by the DNCC’s Veterans Advisory Group, the DNC Veterans and Military Families Council, and the Truman National Security Project, a center left advocacy organization.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Truman National Security Project or Educational Institute.
