“Clinton to Paint Trump as a Risk to World Order.”

Thus did page one of Thursday’s New York Times tee up Hillary Clinton’s big San Diego speech on foreign policy.

Inside the Times, the headline was edited to underline the point:

“Clinton to Portray Trump as Risk to the World.”

The Times promoted the speech as “scorching,” a “sweeping and fearsome portrayal of Mr. Trump, one that the Clinton campaign will deliver like a drumbeat to voters in the coming months.”

What is happening here?

As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America’s broken borders and Bill Clinton’s trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off independents and Republicans by painting Trump as “temperamentally unfit” to be commander in chief.

Clinton contends that a Trump presidency would be a national embarrassment, that his ideas are outside the bipartisan mainstream of U.S. foreign policy, and that he is as contemptuous of our democratic allies as he is solicitous of our antidemocratic adversaries.

In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open letter rejecting Trump.

William Kristol has recruited one David French to run on a National Review-Weekly Standard line to siphon off just enough votes from the GOP nominee to tip a couple of swing states to Clinton.

Robert Kagan contributed an op-ed to a welcoming Washington Post saying the Trump campaign is “how fascism comes to America.”

Yet, if Clinton means to engage on foreign policy, this is not a battle Trump should avoid. For the lady has an abysmal record on foreign policy and a report card replete with failures.

As senator, Clinton voted to authorize President Bush to attack and invade a nation, Iraq, that had not attacked us and did not want war with us.

Clinton calls it her biggest mistake, another way of saying that the most important vote she ever cast proved disastrous for her country, costing 4,500 U.S. dead and a trillion dollars.

That invasion was the worst blunder in U.S. history and a contributing factor to the deepening disaster of the Middle East, from which, it appears, we will not soon be able to extricate ourselves.

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Source: Patrick J. Buchanan, http://humanevents.com