McCain-Palin Campaign Conference Call On Joe Biden's International Crisis Statement

"This is an extraordinary statement by Senator Biden. I don't ever recall a vice-presidential candidate predicting that the election of their candidate for the President of the United States would invite forces in the world to test the mettle of the person elected. It has to mean that Joe Biden continues to harvest serious doubts about whether Barack Obama is prepared to be commander-in-chief as he famously announced a year ago." -- Rudy Giuliani

Today, McCain-Palin 2008 held a press conference call with Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Randy Scheunemann, McCain-Palin Foreign Policy Adviser to discuss Joe Biden's admission that Barack Obama's election will precipitate an international crisis:

Randy Scheunemann: "Senator Biden's comments that he made last night were very revealing. He said quote 'remember I said it standing here. If you don't remember anything else I'd said, watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.' 'This guy' apparently referring to Senator Obama.

"Senator Biden went on to say that they needed the support of the big donors he was addressing because quote 'it's not apparent that we're going to be right' closed quote in responding to this crisis. This statement is what Michael Kinsley once famously called a gaffe, 'a politician inadvertently speaking the truth.'

"Senator Biden talked about the test that a previous president, President John F. Kennedy, faced and that's an important subject to spend just a minute or two on. What Senator Kennedy did in his first year in office was enter into an ill-prepared summit meeting with the Soviet leader Khrushchev. A summit meeting that he said during the course of the campaign he would not have and his conduct in that meeting led Khrushchev to believe that President Kennedy was weak. He went on some weeks later to begin the construction of what became the Berlin Wall and ultimately led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"In foreign policy, it is weakness, real or perceived weakness, that is provocative. Weakness invites challenge, invites testing, invites attack. We've seen multiple examples of Senator Obama in the course of this campaign responding to international crises and none of his responses are reassuring. When the surge was first announced for Iraq, Senator Obama said that it would fail, predicted that it would increase violence, voted to cut off funding for our troops, which would have amounted to nothing more than a surrender to Al Qaida and Iranian-backed extremists.

"In the course of this campaign, Senator Obama has said he would meet in his first year in office unconditionally with tyrants from Ahmadinejad in Iran to Chavez in Venezuela to Kim Jung-Il in Korea. Senator Biden even criticized him for that position at the time. Those kinds of unconditional summit meetings, which Senator Obama promised, would undermine our allies, would undermine multilateral diplomacy, and it would undermine American interests.

"More recently, in August of this year when Russia invaded Georgia, Senator Obama called on Georgia to quote 'show restraint.' It took him three days to call for a Russian withdrawal. This kind of erratic behavior sends a signal of weakness and indecision to our allies.

"Senator Obama in the course of this campaign has said that he wants to rip up free trade agreements with our allies and he opposes new ones coming in to force because big labor doesn't like them.

"The next President of the United States will be tested. There are enemies of the United States that are awaiting the results of this election. John McCain has passed every test in his life. He's spent over two decades wearing the uniform of this country. He's spent over two decades traveling the world, learning the issues, getting to know the leaders, and taking very difficult positions. Senator Obama's chief claim to experience is leading in the front lines of community organizing and doing legal work with ACORN. As Joe Biden said, Senator Obama would invite testing and his responses would not be the right ones."

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Rudy Giuliani: "This is an extraordinary statement by Senator Biden. I don't ever recall a vice-presidential candidate predicting that the election of their candidate for the President of the United States would invite forces in the world to test the mettle of the person elected. It has to mean that Joe Biden continues to harvest serious doubts about whether Barack Obama is prepared to be commander-in-chief as he famously announced a year ago. And also, I would remind Senator Biden that it is not uniformly the case that the mettle of American presidents are tested. No one tested Eisenhower's mettle and no one tested Reagan's mettle.

"Senator McCain has the experience, the background, the predictability as to how he would handle the defense of the United States and the national interest of the United States. And none of us can predict, although Joe Biden apparently thinks he can, what's going to happen. But certainly, Senator McCain would not present that same risk that Joe Biden seems to be worried about. Senator McCain has a long history on all of these issues. Randy pointed out the reaction to Georgia of Senator Obama which was to take several positions, including creating a moral equivalency between Georgia and Russia, talking about going to the Security Council of the United Nations before he realized that Russia has a veto on the United Nations, before he settled on a position on Georgia. You know John McCain settled on a position on Georgia within a short time of finding out about it and didn't have to change it three or four times, and we could go through numerous examples like that.

"So, I don't exactly know what Joe Biden meant by this. I think all of you should question him about it, although Joe Biden is able to say things like this, and no one seems to question him. At least, no one in the media seems to question him. This is an extraordinary statement. He talked about it in very serious language, saying things like: Mark my words, we're going to have to 'gird our loins.' He seems to be predicting some very serious incident that's going to take place, and he also seems to think that the reaction is not going to be the right one because he's going to need everybody's support. It's again, an extraordinary statement.

"I don't know exactly what he has in mind, but I can logically figure out that the risk that he's talking about, America will not run with John McCain who has the experience, the background, and is prepared to be commander-in-chief, and he certainly is not going to invite anyone risking a test of John McCain. If somebody acts, they're going to act, and they're going to have to deal with John McCain's reaction in defense of the United States. But he is certainly not going to invite that kind of an attack the way Joe Biden is talking about here."

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