Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton sees too little serious dialogue among political candidates about foreign policy. He’s hoping to change that – and one way may be to seek the Republican presidential nomination.
Bolton, who served in the George W. Bush administration, said he’s “considering” a run.
“Somebody has to push the party into a broader international debate on these foreign policy issues,” he said Thursday in an interview with McClatchy.
Bolton is scheduled to speak Saturday, along with as many as a dozen possible Republican presidential hopefuls, at the Iowa Freedom Summit. About 1,000 party activists are expected.
Bolton said his message will be that national security “needs to be placed at the center of the overall political debate in 2016 election cycles, presidential Senate and House. I believe it has slipped out of the center for the last six years.”
President Barack Obama, he said, hasn’t made it a priority, and Republicans haven’t done an “adequate job explaining why national security concerns are important to the country.”
Usually when he brings that up, media and others cite polls that show foreign policy is not a prime voter concern.
But in 2016, Democrats could nominate a former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. And with terrorist threats apparent constantly, such issues could come up frequently.
“She can talk the talk,” Bolton said. At the same time, he would argue, “She didn’t accomplish anything.”