July 29, 2016
Heather Hurlburt wrote for the Democracy Journal about Hillary Clinton and national security:
The national security insiders gathered at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House Wednesday afternoon were restless. In less than a week, Donald Trump had aimed a kick at every pillar of longstanding U.S. doctrine: alliances (make NATO pay to play); partnerships inased on respect (electronically monitor all Muslims in the country); and basic assessments of friend vs. foe (encouraging Russia to hack a former secretary of state). So why, they wondered, didn’t the convention have a national security-themed night? Why was the all-star team of veterans, four-stars and former Cabinet members split up, with Madeleine Albright speaking Tuesday, Leon Panetta Wednesday, and John Allen Thursday?
The surprising answer became clear later that night: international experience and expertise are now built so deeply into Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Party that you couldn’t fit all the speakers into one program. Whereas Obama’s 2008 campaign brought a group of veterans on stage as a visual for an inexperienced candidate, Clinton 2016 kept that backdrop and sprinkled a dozen veterans and family-member speakers, by my count, through all four nights.