Barack Obama met Wednesday with a new national security advisory group that includes many of former President Bill Clinton's top advisers, saying that if he's elected president he'll return the nation "to a pragmatic tradition of American foreign policy, which has been so ably advanced by the people in this room."
With former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher and former Defense Secretary William Perry signing on to a panel already heavy with former Clinton officials, Obama continued to consolidate the support of Clinton loyalists.
It gives Obama a team with decades of collective expertise and one that advised the last Democratic president during a decade of peace and prosperity.
At the same time, Obama's choices for his Senior Working Group on National Security could open him up to more criticism from Republicans that the professed candidate of change is relying on Washington insiders.
"There's nothing new about this group of Washington insiders," said Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant. He urged Obama to spend more time meeting with commanders in Iraq and considering the positive effects of the military troop buildup there instead of "sitting down in a room with a bunch of Washington elites."
Bill Cohen, a former Republican senator who also served as a Clinton defense secretary, said he didn't see any downside to the panel: "They're all top-notch people, and he'll get solid advice."
Michael O'Hanlon, a national security expert at the Brookings Institution, a centrist research center, said that Obama's working group offered expertise but would benefit from more new voices. "For every seasoned veteran you also want to have some new ideas and a process that ensures the new people are not intimidated or overruled" by the veterans, he said.
Obama and his advisers said they'd add more experts to the panel in coming months.
