[ek_hornbeck]

I also get the impression that Bill Clinton was closer to the Realist foreign policy school by instinct, while Hillary is fanatical about "nation building," "human rights," "peacekeeping" etc.

Rumor has it that during the Kosovo conflict, Bill Clinton was initially reluctant to intervene until Hillary started egging him on.

[Ben Ficklin]

Clinton, like all dem presidents, had a foreign policy team of realists and interventionists. And Albright(interventionist) would have been the most powerful.

Clinton also retained Colin Powell(realist) as the Joint Chief, but Powell resigned because of Albright/interventionists were driving foreign policy

Similarly, Powell resigned from Bush because the neocons were driving Bush's foreign policy.

As for what you said in a previous post about Obama conducting foreign policy as a liberal interventionist, that is partially true.

Thru out 2009 and 2010, it was realism. But when he began his re-election campaign in Jan 2011, he didn't want to end up like Carter, so he shifted to interventionist.

Best Example: He hired Realist George Mitchell as an envoy to twist Israel's arm and hold their feet to the fire over the Palestinians.. But when he began his re-election campaign, he fired Mitchell and backed off Israel. After he got re=elected he hired Realist Kerry to twist Israel's arm.

Same with Libya. The realists were telling him not to intervene but he went with the interventionists and did intervene. But most recently, he defied the liberal interventionists and their allies the NeoCons on the Iranian sanctions, and apparently Obama prevailed because the realists were backing him.