Obama to focus on foreign policy in four-nation Asian trip

[Jeffersons Ghost]

Post-midterms, Obama to focus on foreign policy in four-nation Asian trip
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 4, 2010; 10:34 AM

President Obama embarks Friday on a foreign trip focused on Asian nations that he believes are essential to the recovery of a stumbling American economy, just days after voters anxious over the lack of jobs dealt Democrats a stinging defeat.

Presidents often emphasize foreign policy during difficult political times at home, and Obama's only extended foray outside the country this year will take him to a quartet of democracies where he is viewed more favorably than he is in the United States.

But among his challenges will be convincing his counterparts in Asia and at two economic summits that he has not been weakened politically by the midterm setback and that issues such as free trade, a divisive subject within the Democratic Party, remain central to his ambitions in the region.

"He'll look pretty beaten up," said Douglas H. Paal, a National Security Council official for Asia in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations who is now vice president of studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "But the practical reality is that the president of the United States is a big deal - defeated in an election or not."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/04/AR2010110402673.html?hpid=topnews

[jaxx]

1. The President wasn't on the ballot.