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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Obama: Elections Aren't Democracy
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Candidate
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| Contributor | karin1492 |
| Last Edited | karin1492 Jan 19, 2009 03:17pm |
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| Category | Opinion |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Monday, January 19, 2009 09:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | An excerpt from President-elect Barack Obama's Jan. 15 meeting at The Post.
Question: To what extent is the promotion of freedom or democracy something that you think should be part of the foreign policy and, if it is a part, how would you do it differently than it has been done in the past eight years?
President-elect Obama: Well, I think it needs to be at a central part of our foreign policy. It is who we are. It is one of our best exports, if it is not exported simply down the barrel of a gun.
And one of the mistakes, I think, [that] has been made over the last eight years, and, by the way, I'm not somebody who discounts the sincerity and worthiness of President Bush's concerns about democracy and human rights, and I think a lot of the ways that he spoke about it were very eloquent, but I think the mistake that was made is drawing an equivalence between democracy and elections.
Elections aren't democracy, as we understand it. They are one facet of a liberal order, as we understand it. And so in a lot of countries, you know, the first question is, if you go back to Roosevelt's four freedoms, the first question is freedom from want and freedom from fear.
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