Addendum: Obama-Clinton Diplomacy Debate

2007-07-31T12:00:00.000-04:00

This nicely encapsulates the Obama-Clinton scuffle and Hillary's inability to be consistent:

Bill Clinton Supports Obama (Clearly) And Obama Won The Foreign Policy Debate

2007-07-30T20:50:00.000-04:00

Bill Clinton weighs in (sort of) on the Obama-Clinton spat:

Bill Clinton said Monday that he had no interest in wading into "that little spat" that broke out last week between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama over whether the next president should commit to meeting with the leader of several U.S. adversaries.

Then, in the next sentence, the former president waded right in -- in a way that sounded like the Clintons are seeking a truce with Obama in the debate over the proper role of presidential diplomacy when dealing with assorted bad guys on the world stage.

While Hillary Clinton and her team pounced on Obama's pledge to meet with leaders of such countries as Iran, Syria and Cuba as "naïve," her husband took pains in a speech to centrist Democrats to emphasize that all the candidates basically agree on the big picture.

"We have to get back to more diplomacy," Clinton said, adding: "I've heard no fewer than four of our candidates say in the last month, remind us that in the middle of the cold war, in the darkest hours, we never stopped talking to the Soviets at some level. So no one disputes that."

There are a few things to take from this. One, this guy really, really wishes he could be president again. Two, he knows how to interject himself into a news cycle. But the most telling thing is: Clinton's tepid response reveals lackluster support for Hillary. He wants to endorse Obama's brand of diplomacy. He wants to turn the page; he wants to move away from our contrive machismo and inability to speak with those who might disagree with us.

Secondly, Obama has won the argument. Unfortunate for Hillary, because she gave the better answer in the YouTube debate. Hers was better crafted and quickly stated after Obama's response. Feeling a bit hubristic, I suppose, she called the Quad City Times of Iowa herself the next day, decrying Obama's response as "naive" and "irresponsible," leading to Obama's pithy response to the same paper:

"If anything's irresponsible and naive it was to authorize George Bush to send 160,000 young American men and women into Iraq apparently without knowing how they were going to get out," he said.

Obama went on to claim that Clinton and her staff are distorting his position on foreign leaders. "If I'm meeting with Hugo Chavez, I would be meeting with him and telling him what we don't like," Obama said. "I didn't say these guys were going to come over for a cup of coffee one afternoon. ... This is a fabricated controversy."

Obama is right. This is a fabricated controversy. Both candidates have the same position on the issue. But in the scuffling that followed it became evident that Obama, when pressed, can take a punch and throw a harder one. And, for what it's worth, the YouTube debate viewers were pretty happy with Obama's response.

With Fleet-of-Foot Stealth...

2007-07-25T22:27:00.000-04:00

...comes The Law Ninja. He will cut through political falsity like a katana and scale the walls of the Establishment with his grappling hook and . . . that's enough with the ninja analogies, I suppose. This is a blog. It will be about politics. It will defend Barack Obama and offer criticism against those who misrepresent his words and policy proposals. You should read it.