WASHINGTON -- The Democratic nominee for vice president uttered a rare
bit of campaign candor the other day when he told us what we should
expect in the first six months of Barack Obama's presidency -- an
international crisis.
Specifically, Biden seemed to suggest, this crisis will be born out of
how Obama will likely be perceived by our enemies abroad: as an
untested and sorely inexperienced freshman lawmaker who has made
strategic errors in judgment in foreign-policy crises before.
It's hard to conceive that the Delaware Democrat, famous for putting
his foot in his mouth, meant it the way it came out. It's harder,
still, to think that Obama was thrilled with what his running mate was
suggesting -- that his tissue-thin experience in international
statecraft would result in serious unintended consequences for our
country and our allies.
"Mark my words," Biden said at a Seattle, Wash., fundraiser. "It will
not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did
John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant
47-year-old senator president of the United States of America.
"Remember I said it standing here, if you don't remember anything else
I said. Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated
crisis, to test the mettle of this guy," Biden said.
Just about every chief executive in one way or another is tested by an
event or crisis during his presidency, some more than others. But what
exactly did Biden have in mind when he said that the world would test
Obama "like they did John Kennedy"? To those who remember their
history, it is not necessarily a flattering comparison.
Clearly, Biden was talking about Nikita Khrushchev's impression of
Kennedy as a lightweight who was not ready to engage in the
rough-and-tumble world of dictators and despots, someone who would back
down if, for example, the Soviet Union put nuclear weapons in Cuba.
The test came after a deeply humiliating confrontation Kennedy had with
Khrushchev at the 1961 Vienna summit -- not unlike the summit meetings
Obama has said he would willingly attend with some of the world's most
brutal dictators.
As author Richard J. Whalen recounted in his definitive biography of
"The Founding Father: The Story of Joseph P. Kennedy," "Before the
Vienna summit, (Kennedy's only face-to-face meeting with Khrushchev),
Kennedy told an aide: 'I have to show him I can be just as tough as he
is.' He failed.
"According to his aide, Fyodor Burlatsky, Khrushchev thought Kennedy
'had more the look of an adviser, not a political decision-maker or a
president.'"
Khrushchev, "determined to intimidate an adversary whose nerve he
doubted, upped the stakes." He gave the East Germans the go-ahead to
build the Berlin Wall, then -- after Kennedy did nothing -- he upped
the ante again by introducing strategic nuclear missiles 90 miles from
our shores, believing Kennedy would back down -- something he never
would have dared to do with Dwight Eisenhower, who built the nuclear
arsenal that kept the Soviets at bay. Ike didn't need testing.
In the end, of course, Kennedy didn't back down, but he brought the
United States to the brink of nuclear war -- all because he was seen as
someone who could be pushed around and who didn't lay down clear
foreign-policy markers until the missiles had been installed.
Kennedy, wrote historian Michael Beschloss, "had not warned against them until it was too late."
This is the kind of crisis scenario that Biden seemed to be referring
to when he told the Democratic fundraiser that Barack Obama would be
tested just as Kennedy was tested. It was a chilling comparison fraught
with high-risk implications for an Obama presidency.
National-security and foreign-policy issues have taken a back seat in
this election as the economy's crisis unfolds, and that has worked in
Obama's favor and against John McCain.
But we've seen disturbing examples of Obama's abysmal judgment on
foreign-policy issues both before and throughout this campaign.
He condemned the U.S. military surge in Iraq, predicted it would fail
and would even make the situation "worse." It succeeded and led to the
start of U.S. military withdrawals from Iraq.
When Russia invaded neighboring Georgia, sending warplanes and tanks
deep into its sovereign territory, he called on Putin and his gang of
Cold War warriors to show "restraint."
When he was challenged in debate with Hillary Clinton about how we
should respond to dangerous rogue countries like Iran and North Korea,
he said he would talk face to face with their leaders without
preconditions. Clinton condemned his position as irresponsible and
naive.
We are about to elect a president who will be the most inexperienced
chief executive in modern history. Never mind what McCain says about
this, listen to Biden who says ominously that Obama will be tested in
the first six months in office with a serious international crisis that
may endanger our national security, just as Kennedy was. Think about
that before you vote.
