At an April 6th fundraiser in San Francisco, Senator Obama took a question on possible running mates. Acknowledging that his competitors have asserted a vast experience gap between he and they, he noted that conventional wisdom would have him select a veep with "more experience" in foreign policy. His reply?

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 Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."

Pointing out that, unlike many junior Senators (hell, and many people in the US), he knew the difference between a Shi'a and a Sunni before his tenure on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began. Certainly this would have helped Senator McCain who, over and over again asserts that Iran (a Shi'a nation) is supporting insurgents Al Queda in Iraq (a Sunni group in a Sunni nation) and he's been in the Senate since before the Eight Track Tape!

"It's ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags 'I've met leaders from eighty 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 eighty countries--you don't know those eighty countries. 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...."

Now, cries of "He's cocky" are ringing throughout the internet. I'm sure. Comments about the highly ceremonial nature of many trips abroad seemed dismissive, until I thought of my own world travels--mostly meeting people, seeing an impoverished village and speaking at a university...every trip, that I got the connection: These trips can be heavily scripted as sound bite and photo ops and less as opportunities to really get to know what's going on. In fact, it wasn't until I spent two or three months in Namibia a few years ago, that they really started letting me in on what was really going on--where they were challenged and where they needed help as a government.

I hope whoever our next president is s/he's cocky (Don't like that grammatical construction? Get bent. If we can add EVOO to the lexicon because Rachel Ray says it incessantly, I can make up a gender neutral pronoun), given timid as an alternative. What I don't want is and administration where they already think they know what's going on and are blind to new information or new ways of seeing things. My husband is wont to say that "a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." We've certainly had that for the last several years. Even General Patraeus and Ambassador Crocker's discussions in hearings yesterday seemed to tow the party line with respect to what President Bush said he wanted. "See, we're winning because I say we're winning. Ignore the fact that Patraeus was sent there four years ago to raise the Iraqi army, which he never...um, actually did."

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