As much as we may love them on one level, presidential campaigns are awful enterprises. Candidates from both parties subject themselves to a seemingly endless series of bad chicken dinners at Holiday Inns, trudge through hundreds of rallies in rain and shine, and embrace a travel schedule that looks as if it was set by the devil himself. Nowadays, American presidential elections look less and less like a matter of informed choice than a bizarre offshoot of some Japanese game show designed to torture its contestants.
It is in that light, and with some sympathy, that we consider the six most import foreign-policy gaffes of the modern presidential era.
The above excerpt was originally published in Foreign Policy.
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