Obama: Foreign Family Experience Helps by Mike Glover (AP)

[veldamorgan]

The first-term Illinois senator is frequently asked whether he has the foreign policy credentials to be president, and he faced the question again at a town hall meeting in Clarion.

"I spent four years living overseas when I was a child living in Southeast Asia," said Obama, who was born in Hawaii and spent four years in Indonesia. "My father is from Kenya. That's where I got my name. He's passed away now, but I still have family."

"A lot of my knowledge about foreign affairs is not what I just studied in school. It's actually having the knowledge of how ordinary people in these other countries live."

Obama contrasted that with tightly controlled congressional trips overseas.

"You get picked up at the airport by a state convoy and a security detail. They drive you over to the ambassador's house and you get lunch. Then you go take a tour of some factory or some school. Children do a native dance."