Steve Radelet of the Center for Global Development was recently interviewed by NPR’s Michele Kelemen for a great piece on the presidential candidates’ attitudes toward foreign aid.

While he is pleased to see both Obama and McCain recognizing the importance of foreign assistance, Radelet asserts that real reform will require a stronger, independent USAID and a Cabinet-level official in charge of development. He says:

The way we are organized to deliver foreign assistance and to invest in low-income countries is really quite behind the times. Our apparatus was set up in the early ’60s — the legislation is the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, passed in the early days of the Kennedy administration.

NPR also played audio clips from CGD’s “Bring U.S. Foreign Assistance into the 21st Century” video, which has been seen by over 13,000 people since June 2008.

One of Radelet’s studies makes the case that there are too many government agencies that have a hand in this issue — a point he’s been trying to make to both the Obama and McCain campaigns. At a speech in Washington this summer, Obama spoke about development aid as a strategic imperative for the U.S.:

I know development assistance is not the most popular of programs, but as president, I will make the case to the American people that it can be our best investment in increasing the common security of the entire world and increasing our own security. That’s why I will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion by 2012 and use it to support a stable future in failing states and sustainable growth in Africa, to halve global poverty and to roll back disease.

McCain has also said the U.S. needs to do more on U.S. development assistance in a foreign policy speech he gave in March this year. Referring to the threat of radical Islamic terrorism as the “transcendent challenge of our time,” McCain said:

Prevailing in this struggle will require far more than military force. It will require the use of all elements of our national power: public diplomacy; development assistance; law enforcement training; expansion of economic opportunity; and robust intelligence capabilities.

For more details on both candidates positions, see: Obama’s Uncommon Commitment to Global Development and McCain Says International Good Citizenship Key to American Security and Global Image.

And if you missed Steve on the radio, you can listen to him straight from the web.