Obama vs. Hillary

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070724/ap_on_el_pr/democrats_diplomacy

Barack Obama's offer to meet without precondition with leaders of renegade nations such as Cuba, North Korea and Iran touched off a war of words, with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton calling him naive and Obama linking her to President Bush's diplomacy.

Older politicians in both parties questioned the wisdom of such a course, while Obama's supporters characterized it as a repudiation of Bush policies of refusing to engage with certain adversaries.

Who's the scariest?

Osama
Obama
Chelsea's Momma

I consider Hillary's response to the question to be a minor intellectual victory but a major political defeat. Focus groups right after the debate seemed also to take the view the Obama nosed ahead of Hillary. It reminds of the Gerald Ford many years ago when he asserted that Poland wasn't under the domination of the USSR-- narrowly true but contrary to what Americans generally believed.

A concern I have with Hillary, apart from her tendency to trim the truth, is her effort as I see it to demonstrate that whatever a general can do, she can do better. I think it's that attitiude that can have her looking for a fight should she become president. I also see a tendency as well to carefully triangulate between the policies of the Bush administration and the Democratic base to prepare for the general election. In any case, as much as Hillary's response may have won plaudits from the Council of Foreign Relations and the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune, it scarcely reflects the kind of new leadership this country needs to to reject and repair the legacy of the Bush years.