Another grimly amusing moment from the Obama team today.
Secretary of State John Kerry tells Fox News’s James Rosen that the Obama administration does not “do foreign policy by polls.” That, the sescretary of state said, is “a good thing.”
The claim came in a response to a question about the American public not approving of President Obama’s job on foreign policy. “The latest New York Times/CBS news poll finds nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapproving of President Obama’s handling of foreign policy, including nearly a third of Democrats. This is not just one snapshot poll. If you look at the realclearpolitics.com average of major reliable polls on this subject, the handling of foreign policy, NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Fox News poll, all of them produce the identical result. So clearly, right now it is a fact that Americans are expressing disapproval of the President’s and your performance,” said Rosen. “Are you humbled by that?”
Kerry replied, “Well, look, it’s a good thing that we don’t do foreign policy by polls. That would be a tragedy and a huge mistake.”
Moments later…
But after saying that polls don’t dictate American foreign policy, Kerry then said that Americans don’t want troops in foreign wars, which limits the tools the administration has to solving the world’s problems.
“American people also don’t want American troops going into these places to fight the wars for these people. So there are very limited tools, very limited tools.”
John F. Kerry cited public opinion — a poll — to justify not conducting foreign policy by poll.
And then he denied doing what he had just done.
Rosen responded, “It sounds like you like the polls you like and you don’t like the polls you don’t like.”
“No, I just don’t pay attention to polls. If I paid attention to polls, I would have quit in Iowa a long time ago. I don’t pay attention to polls,” said Kerry, an apparent reference to his failed presidential bid in 2004.
Still a bit bitter?
Somewhere out there, Putin is musing “Maybe we lost the Cold War to these guys. We won’t lose the next hot war against them.”
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