The Obama-Clinton dust-up

Both Charles Krauthammer and E.J. Dionne take to the pages of the Washington Post today to discuss the ongoing dispute between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over his response in the youtube debate about meeting with foreign tyrants in his first year in office. Dionne takes the position that Obama did himself good by providing a contrast with Clinton over whether he'd change American foreign policy from the cursed Bush years.

But the eagerness with which Obama's camp kept the battle going reflected a cardinal rule in politics: Front-runners should be wary of picking fights with challengers. In this case, Clinton allowed Obama to make one of her prime vulnerabilities, the Iraq vote, a central part of the campaign dialogue. She also let Obama get to her dovish side.

In a Democratic primary, that's not where she wants Obama to be. It was Obama's good fortune that as the controversy was building, Iowa Democrats were receiving a campaign mailing headlined: "Barack Obama said No to the war in Iraq from the start."

The most intriguing aspect of this controversy is that both campaigns were operating from their respective positions of strength. Clinton has successfully cast herself as the toughest candidate of the Democratic bunch and has Washington experience that Obama can't match. Obama, precisely because he exudes newness in every possible way, promises the most obvious break with the past.

If Obama wins the nomination, Republicans will try to make him pay a price for his negotiation-friendly attitude. But this week, at least, Clinton started a battle about experience and Obama turned it into a debate about change.

In Dionne's view, this means that Obama has won the week's discussion by appealing more to the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party. Krauthammer, on the other hand, thinks that Obama showed himself to be unprepared to be the nation's chief diplomat and commander-in-chief.

These gaffes lead to one of two conclusions: (1) Obama is inexplicably unable to think on his feet while standing on South Carolina soil, or (2) Obama is not ready to be a wartime president.

During our 1990s holiday from history, being a national-security amateur was not an issue. Between the 1991 death of the Soviet Union and the terror attacks of 2001, foreign policy played almost no part in our presidential campaigns. But post-9/11, as during the Cold War, the country demands a serious commander in chief. It is hard to imagine that with all the electoral tides running in their favor, the Democrats would risk it all by nominating a novice for a wartime presidency.

Do the Democrats want to risk strike three, another national security question blown, but this time perhaps in a final presidential debate before the '08 election, rather than a midseason intraparty cattle call? The country might decide that it prefers, yes, a Republican -- say, 9/11 veteran Rudy Giuliani -- to a freshman senator who does not instinctively understand why an American president does not share the honor of his office with a malevolent clown like Hugo Chavez.

I think that the contrast between Dionne's and Krauthammer's pieces is telling. Dionne is focused on the primary politics of what Obama and Clinton have said about meeting with foreign tyrants. He thinks that Obama scored points with the Democratic electorate and therefore, is a winner. Krauthammer focuses on what is the proper position for someone seeking the highest office in the land. What is the right thing to do for America's position in the world? And on that scale, Obama flunked and demonstrated that he is not yet ready to be president. As John Kerry might put it, Obama flunked the global test.

Notice that there is a difference between what the politically expedient position might be and what the strongest position for an American president might be. Perhaps Dionne is wrong and the Democratic electorate isn't as enthralled with change for change's sake as he thinks and actually wants a nominee who has demonstrated some cognizance of how to conduct foreign policy. And perhaps Krauthammer is correct and Democrats will not want to nominate someone who has demonstrated an inability to think on his feet when discussing foreign policy.