McCain's Advisors

I attended a conference at the Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota, "America's Future:Conversations about Politics and Policy" during the RNC last week. Many of the presenters during the four-day conference are current advisors to John McCain. I know there has been a great deal of speculation about McCain's approach to foreign policy. Will he make a rightward shift in the same way he has on domestic policy? Or, will his foreign policy be less ideologically driven and more realistic? If the sessions I attended on the future of foreign policy are any indication, McCain's approach will be the latter. I learned last week that many of McCain's top foreign policy advisors held posts in the George H.W. Bush administration and tend toward realism. Even Obama has praised the first Bush's foreign policy. Indeed, compared to the aggressiveness of the current administration, McCain's policy advisors seem downright left-wing. Most were reluctant to impose a Western worldview on the world and criticized current policies. The only McCain advisor with ties to the current administration, Rob Portman, U.S. Trade Representative, is a staunch free trader but very moderate. If there was any running theme of the sessions it was a blind faith in the power of free markets. They are Republicans, after all. Still, the comments were measured, thoughtful, and backed up with research and experience. If McCain is elected president, I don't think we have as much to fear on the foreign policy front. Domestic policy is another matter.

It was very clear to me after listening to luminaries such as Joseph Liberman, R. James Woolsey, Rob Portman, and Henry Kissinger that foreign policy will no longer be part of a political calculation but instead will return to careerists in the State Department. And I predict that Joe Liberman will be Secretary of State in a McCain administration.

If Rob Portman, Joe Liberman, Henry Kissinger and others are active surrogates for McCain during the next couple of months, Obama will have some explaining to do about his foreign policy goals and will be hard-pressed to make clear distinctions between his approach and McCain's.