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Clinton, Obama's foreign policy views not so different

BY ELIZABETH MOORE | elizabeth.moore@newsday.com

November 16, 2008

Last February, when Hillary Rodham Clinton had her back to the wall in the Democratic primaries, she questioned Barack Obama's readiness to lead with a TV ad asking voters who they'd want picking up the phone at 3 a.m.

"We've seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor the wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security," Clinton said in another speech that month.

Now, thanks to the "team of rivals" approach that observers say Obama is taking, she is reported to be a leading candidate for secretary of state in the future administration of the man she criticized.

But could Clinton and Obama really see eye to eye on foreign policy, after a primary in which she chided him for being too soft on Iran, too ready for chitchat with dictators and maybe not "ready on Day 1"?

"He's a grown-up - he's very politically sophisticated," said Princeton University presidential historian Fred Greenstein. "I'm sure he's not going to sign her on to subvert his heartfelt views."

Throughout the campaign Clinton struck a more hawkish tone than Obama and stuck to more conservative positions. She would maintain the embargo against Cuba, for instance, while he would work toward normalization.

But foreign policy analysts have generally found there is less than meets the eye to many of the differences between them.

IRAQ. Clinton's vote to authorize the war, and Obama's speech against it, helped power him to victory in the primaries. But though he called for a more aggressive schedule for pulling out troops than she did, both wound up advocating a phased withdrawal that would leave troops behind to protect U.S. interests and combat terrorism.

IRAN. "I certainly would not meet with [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," Clinton said during an April debate. "... He's not someone who would have an opportunity to meet with me in the White House."

That was a direct jab at Obama, who had called for more multilateralism and said he would be willing to meet with hostile foreign leaders without preconditions.

But when Ahmadinejad sent Obama a message of congratulations on his election victory, the first such gesture since the Iranian revolution of 1979, he told reporters he would take his time to "respond appropriately," adding that Iran's development of a nuclear weapon is "unacceptable."

ADVISERS. Early on, policy analysts noted that Obama's advisers tended to include a younger generation of experts who were bigger fans of "soft power" methods. Those included Harvard scholar Samantha Power, forced to resign after she called Clinton a "monster" and said Obama's pledge to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office was a "best-case scenario" that he would "revisit" after winning.

Power's slip reflected a disdain emanating from parts of Obama's circle that Clinton would surely contend with should she join his cabinet.

Still, Clinton's top advisers began finding berths on the Obama team in the first days of her conceding the race, and most of his transition team is now made up of Clintonites.