Candidates debate foreign policy, but not costs

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

OXFORD, Miss. - It was not until 32 minutes into Friday night’s debate at the University of Mississippi — a debate meant to focus on foreign policy — that either Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain or his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, so much as mentioned a foreign policy issue.

It came when Obama pledged to bring the Iraq war to a close.

For most of the opening segment of the face-off, the candidates sparred — without a decisive result — over the proposed $700 billion bailout of financial firms. Neither really would say for certain that they would support a final version of that plan since it is still being negotiated.

And neither of them was able to answer with much specificity moderator Jim Lehrer’s inquiries about what particular spending items they would cut to help free up some money to pay for the $700 billion rescue plan.

But Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer, on his way to the post-debate spin room, insisted that Obama "got very specific about his plans to cut spending. And it begins with beginning to draw down our presence in Iraq, where we’re spending $10 billion a month while Iraq has a surplus of nearly $80 billion.”

Obama, he said, would close tax loopholes and restore the higher top income tax rates for upper-income Americans that were in effect prior to 2001.

“There are some of his (spending) priorities he may have to delay — but we’ll have to look at that when he’s president,” Pfeiffer said.

Video The benefit of hindsight: Highlights from past presidential debates Sept.25: Watch video highlights of the debates dating to 1960. By John Harwood of CNBC and The New York Times and NBC's Marisa Buchanan.

“If we’re spending $10 billion a month in Iraq, that’s $10 billion a month we don’t have to deal with our problems here at home,” added Obama strategist David Axelrod.

Even as the two candidates sparred, the scope of American foreign policy was being narrowed by the limited financial means the United States will have after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

An impaired balance sheet
The banking and credit chaos of the last three weeks has made it clear the next president will be in charge of a federal government with a much-impaired balance sheet.

The country will be even more dependent on Chinese and Japanese investors now than it was before.

Throughout much of his career, McCain has favored a robust, interventionist foreign policy.

On Friday Obama, although promising that he will figure out a way to reduce the U.S. military involvement in Iraq, gave a strong and detailed argument in favor of a more intensive U.S. military commitment in Afghanistan. He is also for greater non-military engagement in Pakistan.

“We need more troops,” he said, citing the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, as his authority. He specified two to three additional brigades, and, he said, they need to be dispatched “as quickly as possible.”

Both Obama and McCain have called for more troops to join the more than 30,000 U.S. personnel already there.

But McCain may have missed an opportunity to challenge Obama: Why does he favor a timeline for exit from Iraq, but not from Afghanistan?

Withdrawal from Afghanistan?
Obama “has not set a timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan,” his foreign policy adviser, Susan Rice, said in July.

McCain was patronizing throughout the debate in describing Obama’s scant foreign affairs experience, at one point accusing him of “a little bit of naïveté” in his comments on the Russian attack on Georgia.

"I don't honestly believe" Obama, who is 25 years his junior, has the foreign policy expertise to handle the job of president, McCain said.

In the post-debate spin room, McCain adviser Charlie Black continued the portrayal of Obama as not ready to be running American foreign policy.

“Sen. McCain believes that Sen. Obama is a patriotic American and a good man, but he does not have either the experience or judgment in foreign policy or national security, and John McCain sincerely believes he doesn’t understand some of these complex issues,” Black said.

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