Obama vs Clinton: Left vs Right

[illinoisprogressive]

Matthew Yglesias linked to this assessment of the week's fight of Obama vs clinton. The article is right is saying the big loser is the media. they missed the point of a debate of foreign policy and focused on who was right or wrong. It was more conventional policy vs. constructive.
excellent insight:



I think the escalating rhetorical battle the two senators is perhaps the only helpful instance of campaign jousting I've ever seen. At the same time, I only think I'll believe that as long as Barack Obama wins, or at least puts up a good show. Because what we are seeing is, in as close to an unfiltered way as possible, a standoff between a status quo foreign policy and a much more constructive (though I hesitate to say new) direction.

Certainly what you're hearing from Clinton and Obama is a healthier debate than what you're hearing from journalists. Clinton's basic position is that Obama has, by announcing his intent to engage enemy leaders, proven that he's too naive to set the country's foreign policy. Obama, on the other hand, contends that Clinton's foreign policy ideas are too similar to George Bush's for comfort. As far as I'm concerned, I think Obama's argument is basically correct and Hillary's argument is totally nuts, but in any case both arguments are pretty close facsimiles to what the two candidates actually believe about foreign policy.

The press, on the other hand, is doing exactly what you'd expect. Conservatives are saying exactly what you'd expect--that Hillary's correct, and that diplomacy is bad and that nobody will ever support Obama's idea. David Brooks wrote, "He continues to attract huge crowds and huge money, but he also continues to make rookie mistakes, like saying he’d talk with Hugo Chávez." Charles Krauthammer wrote,

For Barack Obama, it was strike two. And this one was a right-down-the-middle question from a YouTuber in Monday night's South Carolina debate: "Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?"

"I would," responded Obama.

Liberals, of course, responded as they always do--by neglecting to evaluate the merits of the two positions and offering instead a maddeningly typical meta-analysis of the argument--one that defaults with 100 percent regularity to the idea that only hawkish ideas seem serious.

http://beutler.typepad.com/home/2007/07/obama-vs-clinto.html