Presidential hopefuls Marco Rubio and Scott Walker exchanged fire over foreign policy in Iowa on Saturday, hours before the two are scheduled to appear together at a Faith and Freedom Coalition summit outside of Des Moines.
Speaking to The Des Moines Register editorial board on Saturday morning, Rubio said his seat on the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees lends him a distinct advantage on “the most crucial obligation the president faces, as commander in chief.”
“Governors can certainly read about foreign policy, and take meetings and briefings with experts,” the Florida Republican said, “but there’s no way they’ll be ready on Day One to manage U.S. foreign policy.”
At an afternoon reception put on by Iowa Republican congressman David Young, the Wisconsin governor and prospective presidential candidate struck back.
“Sometimes people say, ‘How can a governor talk about foreign policy?” Walker told the crowd at the Machine Head restaurant in West Des Moines. “In my lifetime, the best president when it comes to foreign policy was a governor from California. In my lifetime, the worst president for foreign policy was a freshman senator from Illinois.”
When asked to respond specifically to Rubio’s remarks, Walker made the contrast between himself and the freshman Florida senator even more explicit.
“He’s questioning how Ronald Reagan was ready,” he told reporters. “I believe that Barack Obama shows that as a first-term senator, he isn’t prepared to lead — at least not in the case of Barack Obama.”
“Governors innately have the ability to lead,” Walker continued. “Every day we’re required to use our status to make decisions — not just give speeches, not just to travel to foreign places — but to ultimately make decisions.”
After a shaky start on foreign policy — he compared union protesters to Islamic State terrorists and called Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers his “most significant foreign policy decision — the governor is reportedly studying up and focusing heavily on the issue.
That was on display this Saturday, when the governor gave an impassioned push for what he called “safety.”
“Some of you may call it national security,” he said. “National security is something you read about on page 6 or 7 in the newspaper. Safety is something you feel.”
Regardless of what you call it, Senator Rubio’s national security bona fides are tough to question. He’s made a muscular foreign policy the centerpiece of his federal career — opposing sequestration cuts to the defense budget, urging a tougher line against the Islamic State and Iran, and savaging the Obama administration over its detente with Cuba.
Still, most who attended Walker’s speech were impressed by his security strategy — and some expressed skepticism over Rubio’s dig against the governor.
“I think that’s a very unfair thing to say, that a governor could not handle foreign policy,” said Doyle Hutzell of Aredale, Iowa. “I know what I learned from Scott today. I think he could easily step in and do a better job than Obama is now.”