Lionel Beehner: How to Judge the Candidates' Foreign Policy Experience

Who has greater foreign policy experience: Obama or McCain? Well, that's easy. Just count their frequent flier miles, says McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann. Let's see, McCain has visited dozens of countries, many of them in Latin America: "He's been to the Amazon rain forest, he's been to the Galapagos Islands," Scheunemann told the Washington Post. Golly, Randy, that is impressive! Has McCain also rented Motorcycle Diaries? Obama, by contrast, has never bothered visit Latin America. He probably doesn't even know the capital of Paraguay is what McCain advisers are insinuating. Of course, under that logic, that makes millions of keg-guzzling college kids who visit Cancun each spring experts on U.S.-Mexican relations. Ah, but McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, Scheunemann adds, which, as the Post... [read full story]