MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow and his guest former Democratic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson can’t understand why embattled Senate Democrats didn’t run on President Barack Obama’s foreign policy successes. (RELATED: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Refuses SIX TIMES To Say If Obama’s Policies Are On The Ballot)
FARROW: One thing conspicuously absent for most candidates is the foreign policy issues at a time when there is a fraught foreign policy landscape. Can Dems tout foreign policy and this administration’s track record on it as a success on the campaign trail right now?
RICHARDSON: Well, I would have said, “Look, this President said he’d get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and he has done this. This president would promote initiatives to restore America’s presidency abroad after the Bush years when we were isolated, he has done this. He assembled a coalition on ISIS, fought a tremendous battle against an April Spring [sic] that brings the Middle East that is so uncertain. We have new relationships in trade and with Latin America, Asia and China.”
Yeah, I would have touted the foreign policy. But for some reason there has been such uncertainty and explosiveness with ISIS that Republicans in the past have been on national security issues, they were positive, they worked with Democrats. This time it’s all gotten partisan. I think the president had a good foreign policy and I believe that we should have touted it a lot more. Instead we’re hiding, and voters don’t like their candidates to hide.
The most recent Economist/YouGov poll finds that only 33 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of foreign policy.