OWH: Presidential Profile: Obama relishes role taking on status quo (4th in series)

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2835&u_sid=10181778

Published Sunday | November 11, 2007
Presidential Profile: Obama relishes role taking on status quo
BY ROBYNN TYSVER
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

ATLANTIC, Iowa — After Barack Obama said he would consider sitting down and negotiating directly with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his opponents bashed him, calling him naive.

When Obama said he would never use nuclear weapons against terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, his opponents said he was inexperienced.


A recent poll in Iowa put Barack Obama in a statistical dead heat with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.


U.S. presidents don't sit down with dictators, they said, and they don't limit their military options.

Maybe not in the past, Obama responded, but his administration would not be hamstrung by the "conventional wisdom" or compelled to follow age-old diplomatic rules of conduct.

The fresh-faced Democratic senator from Illinois is promising to bring a new perspective to foreign policy and other topics. He is the new kid in town, full of promise but largely untested at age 46. It is his strength and Achilles' heel, rolled into one.

Obama is asking voters to embrace the unconventional and the new — with all its inherent risks and potential payoffs — over the security and experience of a familiar face such as Hillary Clinton.

FULL story at link.