For the Undecided Voter

If you, like me, have not yet decided which candidate to support in the primaries and care deeply about their foreign policy positions, you may be interested in the series of articles that Foreign Affairs has been running since the summer. In each issue, a Democratic and a Republican candidate present their foreign policy platforms. It makes for interesting reading.
The two candidates on my short list, Obama and Clinton, took many of the same positions – multilateralism, participation in international institutions, engagement with China and Russia, military withdrawal from Iraq – but with rather different tones. While Obama emphasizes partnership over patronage as our mode of interaction with other states and seeks to pursue “the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders” as the best means of ensuring American security and well-being, Clinton talks about “build[ing] the world we want,” and contrasts ideological decision-making with fact-driven analysis as our mode of determining our course of action. Obama calls upon the images of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy as visions of inspired, world-changing leadership, while Clinton calls emphatically for “more than vision” in outlining her policy prescriptions.
Of course, there’s more: check out Huckabee, McCain, Giuliani, Edwards, and Romney for the full array of would-be presidential views thus far.