Right now, America has no competent leadership in international affairs. There really is no one who could claim with a straight face that president Obama has any skill regarding foreign affairs. It has gotten so bad that the other day even Jimmy Carter said that during the Obama presidency, America's standing in the world had only gotten worse. According to Carter, there is no area in the world where things have improved for the USA. Having Carter criticize the Obama foreign policy is about as low as Obama can go.
As the 2016 elections get started, the question arises as to exactly which candidates we can trust to run a competent foreign policy for the USA. It would be better if we could find a candidate to run an inspired and highly successful foreign policy, but right now let's settle for those who could be competent.
Among the Democrats, we can pretty much rule Hillary Clinton out. We have already seen her deal with foreign policy for four years. She had no successes aside from hiding her emails. I'm sure you've seen those videos where they ask Hillary supporters to name her accomplishments and they stammer and then give up. There's a reason for that: she really was out of her league when it came to American foreign policy.
How about Bernie Sanders who is rising among Democrats faster than a gusher in an oil well? Bernie wants to cut the military. His method for confronting ISIS is not to do so. It sounds nice, but it would leave us open to disaster. So the answer for Bernie is no.
The other Democrats have had so little to say about foreign affairs that I cannot rate them.
Then there's the Republicans. Let's start there by ruling out the ones who have already demonstrated that they would be disasters. First on that list must be the clown Donald Trump. Second would be Rand Paul. There's no way that either could run a foreign policy without major disasters. Among the troop of remaining candidates, some have more experience at foreign relations than others, but that is not indicative of success or failure. We need to look for those who have expressed coherent views on foreign policy. So far, there are only five who have spoken much on the subject in ways that make clear they understood the subject matter. Those five are Rubio, Fiorina, Kasich, Bush and Cruz. Some of the others have not had that much to say. Scott Walker may get a pass thus far since he has yet to announce and has tended to limit his statements to domestic matters.
As the 2016 elections get started, the question arises as to exactly which candidates we can trust to run a competent foreign policy for the USA. It would be better if we could find a candidate to run an inspired and highly successful foreign policy, but right now let's settle for those who could be competent.
Among the Democrats, we can pretty much rule Hillary Clinton out. We have already seen her deal with foreign policy for four years. She had no successes aside from hiding her emails. I'm sure you've seen those videos where they ask Hillary supporters to name her accomplishments and they stammer and then give up. There's a reason for that: she really was out of her league when it came to American foreign policy.
How about Bernie Sanders who is rising among Democrats faster than a gusher in an oil well? Bernie wants to cut the military. His method for confronting ISIS is not to do so. It sounds nice, but it would leave us open to disaster. So the answer for Bernie is no.
The other Democrats have had so little to say about foreign affairs that I cannot rate them.
Then there's the Republicans. Let's start there by ruling out the ones who have already demonstrated that they would be disasters. First on that list must be the clown Donald Trump. Second would be Rand Paul. There's no way that either could run a foreign policy without major disasters. Among the troop of remaining candidates, some have more experience at foreign relations than others, but that is not indicative of success or failure. We need to look for those who have expressed coherent views on foreign policy. So far, there are only five who have spoken much on the subject in ways that make clear they understood the subject matter. Those five are Rubio, Fiorina, Kasich, Bush and Cruz. Some of the others have not had that much to say. Scott Walker may get a pass thus far since he has yet to announce and has tended to limit his statements to domestic matters.
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