By Zachary Keck
Hillary’s Clinton may be a foreign policy hawk, but that won’t matter in 2016.
As Ankit noted earlier this week, in a new interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attacked President Barack Obama’s foreign policy principle of not doing stupid stuff. In doing so, she revealed herself to be more hawkish than President Obama on foreign policy, which had previously only been known to those with memory spans of a year or more.
In other words, it came as news to most of the U.S. media and punditry. This revelation has in turn spurred feverish speculation in some circles about whether Hillary Clinton is too hawkish on foreign policy to become the next U.S. president (to be fair, August is a slow news month, and Hillary Clinton/2016 election news is always in vogue.)
Don’t bet on it. As seems to be true in most countries, the economy and jobs almost always decide national elections, and foreign policy is almost never important. A brief review of recent American presidential elections underscores this fact. For instance, George H.W. Bush had a nearly impeccable foreign policy record during his one term in office. And yet, he was defeated in the 1992 presidential election by then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, who boasted almost no foreign policy experience. President Clinton’s foreign policy record during the first term left much to be desired. Yet he sailed to victory in the 1996 election.
Read the full story at The Diplomat