A Record So Thin

Philip Klein keeps describing Obama as a candidate with “the the thinest [sic] records of any presidential candidate in the modern era,” but this seems demonstrably false when it comes to foreign policy.  When Candidate Bush or Candidate Clinton was running the first time around, did either one have thicker portfolios on their foreign policy views?  No.  Indeed, Bush’s actual knowledge, to say nothing of his “record,” was so risibly thin that he had to staff his campaign with as many veterans of past Republican administrations as he could find to ease the minds of observers that someone would be around to explain just who “the Grecians” (as he called them) were.  I have tremendous problems with Obama’s foreign policy vision, but it seems obviously wrong to say that he has the “thinnest record” of any candidate in the modern era.  Thinner than Jimmy Carter’s record on foreign policy as Governor of Georgia?  Thinner than George W. Bush’s (non-existent) record?  As limited as his national political experience is, it is hard not to conclude that he has several years more foreign policy-related experience in his brief time in the Senate than many of the governors who have been elected President.  Now, given the actual record of the last sitting Senator to win the Presidency, that doesn’t necessarily mean much in practice, but since Klein seems intent on using this “thinnest record” line to justify his obsession with proving Obama’s pro-Hamas sentiments, it might be worth noting that this claim is bogus.