As announced by the George Washington Hatchet, Clinton returned to Washington on Monday to deliver a “major” foreign policy speech. The speech, which involved an audience of a little over 200 people, was more a conversation with donors, as noted by the reserved seating, than for the students who were allowed to straggle in and find the few open spots minutes before her entrance.

Still, the audience filled out the small college auditorium. Most hung on every word of her forty-five minute foreign policy speech which followed her common theme of experience. Based on the mosaic of expensive suits, bow ties and military Generals, I took away that this audience was less comparable to a true representation of the American people and more the Washington elites who play with their pocketbooks, especially when campaign season is abreast, like an extracurricular activity.

“The American people don’t have to guess whether I understand the issues, whether I would need a foreign policy instruction manual to guide me through a crisis, or whether I’d have to rely on global advisors to introduce me to global affairs. I’m lucky to have had a pretty good inside view, over the eight years in the White House and now over seven years in the Senate,” she said.

The speech came a day after the Washington Post published an article, The Value of Newness, by David Ignatius, who challenged the idea that experience won’t do much for the rapidly changing landscape of 21^st century global warfare. In the Op Ed columnist’s words, “the intellectual matrix formed by the Soviet threat, and before that by Hitler’s rise in Germany, needs to be reworked. There is a new set of problems and personalities – and if America keeps trotting out the same case of characters and policy papers, we will fail to make sense of where the world is moving.”

Could Ignatius be right?

The timing of Clinton’s speech, and that of Ignatius’s article, came not long after significant caucus returns: the Democrats abroad global primary. The group, made up of expatriates living across the globe, cast absentee ballots from February 5-12 in 33 different countries. The results, which were reported last week, endorsed Senator Barack Obama with an overwhelming majority of 65 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 35 percent.

On a closing note, Sen. Clinton spoke in a calm voice to the crowd.

“I will never let America’s good name be disgraced. I will always protect and defend our nation. And I will always advance the tradition and values that have made our country, as President Abraham Lincoln said, “the last, best hope on Earth.””