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Brzezinski Grants Obama the "Upper Hand" On Foreign Policy.

Barack Obama, who is having to contend with the perception that he is too young and inexperienced to handle a dangerous world, got a boost today from someone who fairly exudes foreign policy eminence, Zbigniew Brzezinski.(see 2005 Newsweek Op-ed by Brzezinski) The 79-year-old former national security adviser announced today on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital with Al Hunt" that he was supporting the junior senator from Illinois for president.

Obama "recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world," said Brzezinski, who remains active on the lecture circuit, keeps an office at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand. He has a sense of what is historically relevant, and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world."

Brzezinski, who had a relatively hawkish reputation in the Carter administration but has been an outspoken critic of President Bush and the war in Iraq, rejected the notion that Hillary Clinton is more experienced in foreign affairs than Obama. "Being a former first lady doesn't prepare you to be president," he said. " Clinton's foreign-policy approach is "very conventional. I don't think the country needs to go back to what we had eight years ago."

Brzezinski also defended Obama's position in his recent foreign policy tiff with Clinton, in which she called him "naive" for saying he would be willing to meet with the leaders of U.S. antagonists like Iran and Venezuela. "What's the hang-up about negotiating with the Syrians or with the Iranians?" Brzezinski said. "What it in effect means" is "that you only talk to people who agree with you."

In general, he concluded, "There is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs. And Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America's relationship with the world."