Matthew Yglesias (May 23, 2007) - Edwards at CFR (Foreign Policy)

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Edwards at CFR

23 May 2007 12:18 pm

I'm off to see John Edwards' speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. Readers will recall that I have some doubts about Edwards on the national security front, so I'll be interested to hear what he has to say. This genre of speech -- the "major foreign policy address" by a presidential candidate -- tends to be dull, but Edwards' 2008 campaign has shown a flare for dramatic gestures so maybe this one will be different. You can see a webcast here. This looks promising to me.

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Comments (20)

I also have some doubts about Edwards on the national necurity front. If his CFR address regurgitates any of the conventional wisdom of the bipartisan national security establishment, my doubts will be confirmed. If he seriously defines as a "threat" some country's actions within 300 miles of its own borders on the other side of the world, or a military budget one tenth or less that of the U.S., I'll figure he's fucking worthless.

Posted by Kevin Carson | May 23, 2007 1:21 PM

that should be "flair"

Posted by Oberon | May 23, 2007 1:26 PM

Well based on the Times article at least, Edwards is planning on presenting a lot of politically safe and boring ideas: More multilateralism, more diplomacy, less torture, more "smart power", more respect for international law, "restoring America's moral leadership", military force as a "last resort", a pacification and stabilization force - this all seeems like very standard Democratic policy shop and position paper stuff. Every leading Democrat is spinning some variant of this same story.

I will be more interested in seeing if Edwards manages to rise above all this the banal and derivative wonkery, and give some indication that that he has an original thought in his head, any interesting and unconventional insights, a lively sense of the historical moment, a real command of the global scene that goes beyond briefing book talking points, or even, dare we say it - an original strategic vision. Or is he just going to advocate a "return to normalcy", and hand foreign policy over to the think-tankers who probably wrote this speech for him?

I think Edwards needs to do more than touch on all of the standard themes and grace notes that are currently popular with Democratic audiences, and cobble together some "solid" foreign policy paper of the sort that could be written by any yahoo who knows how to navigate to the Brookings, CFR, Truman Project, Princeton Project and CSIS web sites. He needs to show people he is not a lightweight.

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