By looking abroad, Obama may have lost his shine with a homegrown constituency, Scott Kleeb says.

Transcript:You know, Senator Obama actually recognized it himself during the trip when he said, “It is a tremendous risk. Here, people are worried about losing their homes, they’re worried about their jobs, they’re worried about rising gas prices, worried about rising food prices. And I’m overseas talking to the Jordanians, talking to Israelis, and talking to the French, Germans, and British. There seems to be a disconnect and that you’ve got to make politics relevant to people’s lives as they see it, as they know it now.” And so, even he recognized that it was a risk. I think it was a risk well worth taking because we do need to project a different image overseas. One that is willing to work with other nations, one that is willing to go and be well-received with other nations even though we don’t always agree with other nations to include our allies by the way, not just our enemies. I do think that the risks outweighed the… or that the rewards outweighed the risks in that trip but it was a risk. And I do think that going forward, it is gonna be looked, it will be looked back on… I mean, the greatest liability that he himself has said he has is, you know, understanding the world outside of the United States. And so, I think, it was a valuable experience for that. If nothing else, then to talk to people in Iraq, to talk to people in Afghanistan, to talk to people in Israel and Jordan about some of the great challenges with the Middle East and just get a first hand account of that, makes the policies that he then runs on for the next three months that much smarter, that much more well-informed because he had on the ground feedback with world leaders.

Recorded on: 8/13/08