Barack Obama's VP: 'Somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff'
When, and if, it comes to looking for a vice presidential running mate, Democrat Barack Obama will be looking for "somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I'm not as expert on.''
At a closed San Francisco fundraiser Sunday evening, previewed here earlier on the weekend, the Illinois senator, who leads
in delegates and the popular vote sounded a little defensive as he fielded a question on what he's looking for in a running mate when the time comes.
"I would like somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I'm not as expert on," the senator is quoted on Huffington Post today. "I think a lot of people assume that might be some sort of military thing to make me look more commander in chief like.
"Ironically, this is an area -- foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Sen. Clinton or Sen. McCain.
"It's ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be commander in chief,'' he continued. "Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world.
"When Sen. Clinton brags, 'I've met leaders from 80 countries -- I know what those trips are like! I've been on them. You go from....
the airport to the embassy. There's a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then -- you go.
"You do that in 80 countries -- you don't know those 80 countries,'' Obama claimed in a transcript provided by HuffingtonPost's Mayhill Flower. "So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa -- knowing the leaders is not important -- what I know is the people. I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college -- I knew what Sunni and Shia was before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."
Obama, who's about halfway through his first U.S. Senate term, asserted that, "Nobody is entirely prepared for being commander in chief. The question is when the 3 a.m. phone call comes, do you have somebody who has the judgment, the temperament to ask the right questions, to weigh the costs and benefits of military action, who insists on good intelligence, who is not going to be swayed by the short-term politics. By most criteria, I've passed those tests and my two opponents have not."
And, by the way, why is it always a 3 a.m. call? What's wrong with having a crisis at 2:24? Or 4:17?
Or lunchtime?
--Andrew Malcolm and Mark Silva
Mark Silva writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau.
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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Barrack Obama is right! Meeting with dictators that the administration has kept in power with taxpayers' money is not "experience". Conversing with the people is the experience we need.
If you saw Michael Moore's film that showed President Bush sitting with children in a classroom reading a book to them and he heard about 9/11 then sat there stunned for 12 minutes, you realize he hadn't a clue as to what to do. Didn't then and doesn't now. The country will go bankrupt with McCain providing more of the same.
VOICE YOUR SUPPORT FOR OBAMA! VOTE FOR OBAMA!
Our grandchildren need to build their world, not be burdened with the costs of past blunders.
Posted by: Carol | April 08, 2008 at 05:35 AM
Some people say that Obama is snooty or elitist, but that's exactly the opposite of the truth, as shown by his response to this question. Hillary and Bush and McCain and most of political Washington are elitist, and cocoon themselves with a closed circle of sycophantic adviisers, and see the outside world only through the frosted glass of their limousines as they whiz past on their ways to and from airports. Obama is the opposite, and he recognizes that only if America's leader understands how the common people of foreign lands view the U.S. will it become possible to deal constructively with the foreign-policy challenges this nation faces.
Posted by: cettel | April 08, 2008 at 08:56 PM
The sad part is that Obama can't even focus on finding the best running mate, until Hillary drops out. Meanwhile, McCain has time to identify someone who balances his own age, ideology, geography, etc. Here's how it should - and still can, I think -- work:
http://digits.hrblock.com/ssDigits/digits.php?rType=1&sPath=1140&sNode=1140&uId=198
Posted by: GHarri | April 10, 2008 at 01:36 PM
Since Obama plans to run against the status quo it is important that he beat Clinton with all her tricks. By defeating her no holds barred he will be better prepared for his next test. I would like this contest to be over but this is what it means to change the Democratic Party. That's first then the country.
Posted by: Ron M | April 10, 2008 at 05:57 PM