What a great idea: Obama going on international foreign policy trip.

[Big Blue Marble]

Have you heard about this? Obama may be planning a trip to Europe, Isreal, and Asia.

Imagine the crowds and the excitement he will generate. It will dominate the news cycles
and show Americans that we can be loved again.

Will Obama Go this Month on Foreign Policy Tour?


A pilgrimage abroad for Obama in the next weeks contains many more opportunities and benefits electorally at home than lost ones. First among them is that it would, for various news cycles, make Clinton irrelevant to the story. Were Obama to remain and battle out Pennsylvania day after day he would simply feed the media appetite to exaggerate that state – like New Hampshire and Ohio before it – as “the one” that will decide the nomination, when in fact it will not.

Presuming that the trifecta floated in the Post story is accurate – that an international trip would involve going Europe, Israel and Asia – let’s look at what could be accomplished.

First and foremost, an international tour would decisively take the eyes of US voters outside of themselves to the question of how others
see them. That, after all, has been, from the beginning, one of the big messages of Obama’s campaign: showing a new
face to the world, or, as he puts it, “America’s back.”

Enthusiastic crowds in almost any part of the world would greet Obama, providing a new and novel angle for a media that is getting tired rephrasing the same story – “change vs. experience” – over and over again. Man-and-woman-on-the-street interviews in those lands would provide a refreshing new look at the candidate from the outside. And at every step, the lens would view the candidate as international leader, American emissary, suggestive of what his presidency could look like: all those things would bolster Obama’s foreign policy profile and gravitas not by merely saying so, but by doing so. Actions speak louder than words.

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