Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.): Palin's Not Ready

| Mon Oct. 27, 2008 10:18 AM PDT

In an interview with his home-state paper, the Omaha World-Herald, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), says Sarah Palin "doesn't have any foreign policy credentials.":

You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything.... I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia.' ... That kind of thing is insulting to the American people.... [I]n a world that is so complicated, so interconnected and so combustible, you really got to have some people in charge that have some sense of the bigger scope of the world. ... I think that's just a requirement.

Hagel, who is retiring, is perhaps the most outspoken Republican critic of the Iraq war in Congress. Hagel traveled with Barack Obama and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) when Obama visited Iraq earlier this year. And Hagel's wife, Lilibet Hagel, endorsed Obama earlier this month. Now the Senator himself has become the most prominent Republican critic of Sarah Palin, his own party's VP pick. Could a formal endorsement of Obama be coming before the election?

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Nick Baumann

News Editor

Nick Baumann covers national politics and civil liberties issues for Mother Jones' DC Bureau. For more of his stories, click here. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Email tips and insights to nbaumann [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS |

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