Madeleine Albright promotes Barack Obama at MU

The first female Secretary of State spoke about the candidate's foreign policy plans.

By Mary Daly

Published Sept. 19, 2008

Students, faculty and community members filled every seat in Jesse Wrench Auditorium to hear former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright speak about Sen. Barack Obama's foreign policy and national security plans Thursday.

Albright, who served under President Bill Clinton from 1996 to 2000, spoke at Memorial Union as part of her town hall meeting tour to discuss foreign policy issues. She also made stops at UM-Kansas City and Webster University in St. Louis on Thursday.

"I am supporting Barack Obama because I think he is a remarkable leader and exactly what we need in the 21st century," Albright said. "He is exactly what we need because the world is a mess - that's the diplomatic term."

She said she was happy to be in Missouri because she used to live here in 1959.

"I worked at The Rolla Daily News," she said. "I had a great time. I did everything. I set type, I wrote the social page and I interviewed people that had seen UFOs."

Kelley Robinson, an organizer for the Missouri Campaign for Change, spoke before Albright, stressing the importance of student voting.

"It's all up to you guys to make this happen," Robinson said.

Freshman Tina Casagrand, an organizer for the Obama campaign, introduced Albright and also stressed youth involvement.

"My involvement began out of frustration growing up under the Bush administration," Casagrand said. "By working to elect Barack Obama, we're making the change we want to see happen."

Albright said she particularly enjoys addressing college audiences because young people "are the ones who can make changes happen."

Albright said America has the possibility to elect a new leader who has the vision to put the country where it belongs.

Albright, who sits on the Council of Foreign Relations Board of Directors, a nonpartisan think tank, said there are five "big umbrella issues" for national security in the coming presidency. She said the first issue is how to fight terrorism without creating more terrorists.

"Lumping everybody together who disagrees with us or don't like us, calling them terrorists, makes the situation complicated in every possible way," she said. "It links groups together that don't really belong together."

Albright said the second issue is how to deal with a broken nuclear nonproliferation bargain.

"Currently there are new nuclear powers," she said. "We have to make sure the worst weapons don't get in the hands of the worst people."

Albright's fourth issue is "how to restore the good name of democracy."

"I think we're all the same and that people want to make decisions about their own lives," Albright said. "But you can't impose democracy. That is an oxymoron."

She said the Bush administration's plan to bring democracy to Iraq has given democracy a bad name because it is being forced upon Iraqis.

She said the last issue is how to deal with the negative aspects of globalization, including the growing division between the rich and the poor.

"This is a country where the middle class is having a lot of problems and a lot of those problems come from the negative aspects of globalization," she said.

Albright said energy and the environment make up the "biggest bundle of issues" for the next president.

"It hit me as I've been driving across this state that in the United States, you can't go from here to there unless you are driving in some form," she said. "Gasoline prices are impossible and I think for farmers and various people who depend on gasoline, it is very difficult."

She said the next president has to deal systematically with not only high gas prices, but also high food costs and a variety of pandemic diseases.

She said she supports Obama because of his "capability of thinking in 21st century terms."

Albright was the first female U.S. Secretary of State and one of the highest-ranking women in the history of the government.