Fingers crossed for Clinton...

Don't ask me to do the maths again, but I was mentally doodling earlier and decided that Britain would be worth 77 electoral college votes if it were the fifty-first state. Heavens, we'd have half as many votes again as California has now. So who, forgive the vainglory, would I wish to see 'our votes' go to in the presidential election in January? Well, I got one word for you, buddy: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I base this judgement on my main area of interest when it comes to who sits in the big chair in the round room over the pond: foreign policy. I'm not going to claim to be the closest observer, just a sort of cross between your average joe and your political ubergeek. I've watched snippets of the candidates on British and US news, seen the odd debate, and (here's the geekery) read what McCain, Huckabee, Clinton and Obama make of foreign policy in the snappily-titled Foreign Affairs. For me, without a doubt, Clinton comes out on top. Which surprised me, because I thought I would be pretty happy with either Obama or Clinton, and possibly even McCain - after all, the overall impression is of a swing to the sensible centre after the madness of President Bush.

I won't bore you with the details - you can always read up for yourself (and what Romney, Giuliani and Edwards thought too). But the upshot is that Senator Clinton is the only candidate who seems to me to be coherent and adventurous in the name of common-sense, practical politics -at least inasmuch as anybody can be when they are constrained by the patriotic fantasy of the US political worldview. She may give in at times, in her article and latterly in her campaigning, to the rhetoric of terrorism and national security, but she is never strident in the way that Governor Huckabee is ("We are living on borrowed time...I understand the threats we face today. When I am president, America will look this evil in the eye, confront it, defeat it, and emerge stronger than ever". Nice).

The real surprise for me was the vacuity of Senator Obama's views. I hadn't heard anything from him about foreign policy in the news, so I'm left only with his own Foreign Affairs article. The caveat that it is from last summer doesn't really alleviate my horror at some of his claims and initiatives. For instance, Obama seems to suggest that the US should withdraw from Iraq for the prime purpose of compelling Iraqi politicians to reach their own peace deal:
"The best chance we have to leave Iraq a better place is to pressure these warring parties to find a lasting political solution. And the only effective way to apply this pressure is to begin a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces, with the goal of removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008."

It seems to me that "pressuring Iraq's leaders to finally get serious about resolving their differences" is what you might call "completely bonkers". The notion that the very idea of peace is so powerful that it will eclipse all other considerations in a divided nation is not just simplistic but dangerous, fitting much more nicely with a happy view of a peaceful, America-led free world than with the rather more threatening reality.

The rest of Obama's views are similarly wafer-thin. One comparison with Clinton stands out for me: he spends a paragraph setting out all the environmental calamities which may befall us in the near future: rising sea levels, crop failures and famine, disease and poverty. His sonorous conclusion to this? "That means increased instability in some of the most volatile parts of the world." You could have knocked me down with a feather. Thanks, Barack. Meanwhile, Clinton is busy boring the pants of her readers with proposals for an "E-8" forum of the naughtiest global carbon-emitting economies, like the G-8 but in order to shove green issues to the forefront of international politics.

All this is not to say that President Obama (will they really swallow that idea on election day?) would be a Bad Thing. For all his vacuities (his solution to the genocide in Darfur, for instances, is to "rebuild our ties to our allies in Europe and Asia and strengthen our partnerships throughout the Americas and Africa") there is plenty of his trademark rhetoric, so eloquent as to inspire rather than fall flat like the usual politician's platitudes. And I suppose this is more powerful to a domestic audience than a foreign observer like me, looking for reassurance that America will have new ideas from next January which might actually make the world a better place. Obama's rhetoric points in that direction, but it's Clinton who seems to have the policies to get there.

So, Hillary looks to me like far and away the best candidate, so bravo for her rescue by Ohio and Texas the other day. Of course, if Britain had those 77 electoral college votes then it wouldn't be foreign policy which informs my decision. Besides, whether it's Clinton, Obama or McCain is unaffected by foreign opinion and in any case will be a welcome, welcome change from the incumbent. Which makes this post either circular, or redundant. A perfect addition to the blogosphere, in fact. Enjoy.