Rubio Echoes Obama More Than Romney on Foreign Policy
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan - Apr 26, 2012 12:01 AM
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a potential Republican vice presidential pick, outlined a vision of foreign policy that sounded more like President Barack Obama’s than that of Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Rubio, 40, a first-term senator whose popularity with Tea Party supporters and Hispanics has raised his political profile, used a speech yesterday in Washington to praise international alliances and bipartisanship in foreign policy. His message -- that global coalitions are critical and American leadership is essential -- echoed talking points delivered almost weekly by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Rubio argued for an activist foreign policy that puts a priority on keeping the peace, promoting democracy and trade and investing in foreign aid and global health -- all points that are gospel to the Obama administration. He reserved his criticism for a mild rebuke that also has come from some Democratic lawmakers: that Obama should be more forceful leading coalitions he has built to address problems such as Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s violent crackdown on his opponents.
“Global problems do require international coalitions; on that point this administration is correct,” Rubio told foreign policy makers and reporters at the Brookings Institution, a Washington policy research organization. “But experience has proven that American leadership is almost always indispensable.”
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