“Sen. Sanders accepts Clinton’s challenge. He will release all of the transcripts of all of his Wall Street speeches. That’s easy. The fact is, there weren’t any. Bernie gave no speeches to Wall Street firms. He wasn’t paid anything while Secretary Clinton made millions, including $675,000 for three paid speeches to Goldman Sachs,” said Sanders’ spokesman Michael Briggs.

On CNN last week and on Meet the Press this week, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders cited me as someone who has given him foreign policy advice. I admit I was surprised to hear this—I have spoken to Senator Sanders only once since he declared his candidacy, in October. In the time since, this fact has been used by the media and his opponents to cast doubt on Sanders’ foreign policy credibility, to point out a supposed weak spot in a surging candidacy: Since I’m not on his campaign, and have met with him only once, how serious could Sanders—the socialist crusader battling the former secretary of state—really be?

The answer is: serious. Since Sanders’ public mention of me, I have been asked repeatedly whether I think his foreign policy positions and experience are sound. I do.

In my dealings with him, and in analyzing his record in Congress over the past 25 years, I have found that Sanders has taken balanced, realistic positions on many of the most critical foreign policy issues facing the country. In the mold of realists like Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush, Sanders voted against the invasion of Iraq in 2002, while wisely supporting the war against in Afghanistan in 2001 and the intervention in the Balkans in 1990s. And Sanders certainly isn’t a foreign policy lightweight: In fact, given his long tenure in the House and Senate, he has more foreign policy experience than Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama did when they were running for office the first time.

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I have no doubt that Sanders will be willing to challenge the foreign policy establishment, as Obama did on such issues. Does Sanders have the same amount of foreign policy experience as Hillary Clinton? Obviously not. But Bill Clinton had far less foreign policy experience than George H.W. Bush, and Obama had less than John McCain—and both presidents had effective foreign policies. If he is elected, I believe Sanders will also be able to attract a competent foreign policy cohort, just as Obama did—including many of the current Clinton team. With the right partners in place—and, above all, the right principals and instincts—a President Sanders could be just the foreign policy president we need.

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In terms of what we can expect after the election, anybody that thinks they can predict the nominations, much less the election right now, I would love to talk to them. But I think this is going to continue to be an issue, or it's going to continue to be on the radar screen because of demographics. And to some extent, as people get older, they are going to be more and more reliant on our medicines. I think we've got to continue to demonstrate that there's value in the medicines we bring. Yes, they can be expensive, but disease is a lot more expensive. And emphasize the fact that low-cost generics, which account for over four out of five prescriptions today, represent ultimately the legacy of these investment efforts on our part, and provide the American consumer with tremendous value. So I think you can assume the industry is going to continue to maintain an active dialogue with each of the candidates, and to work across party lines to make sure that the views that ultimately translate into policy -- and that's what we've really got to be focused on -- remain balanced and factual over time.

So I don't think there's -- while I think we are and should be concerned about the rhetoric, I think the facts of the underlying story remain very strong.

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Vijay Das, who is a healthcare policy advocate at the consumer group Public Citizen, says that the recent statements confirm that the pharmaceutical industry’s “pricing decisions are based upon the reach of their market and political power, not development costs or lengthy FDA approval process.”