Why Obama shouldn’t pick a foreign policy expert as his running mate

Barack Obama is widely expected to name his running mate in the next few days. He is now back from vacation and presumably will want to make the announcement before the Democratic convention which begins a week on Monday.

The buzz is that Obama is going to go for someone with foreign policy credentials. Obama’s running mate will address the convention on Wednesday, a night billed as a Tribute to Veterans, Active Duty Military & Military Families. National security will dominate that day and it would be odd to have someone with no experience on the subject speak in primetime that evening.

Yet, picking a foreign policy expert as his running mate would be a major mistake by Obama. It would both highlight his inexperience on the issue and undercut his position that national security is really about judgement, and that he demonstrated his judgement when he opposed the Iraq war in 2002.