Jeffrey Goldberg on Hillary, two other Dem wannabes

The New Yorker has a good piece by Goldberg, who avoids the fever swamps of the left as he pursues the Peter Beinart/Michael Lind search for sane Democrats on foreign policy.

Hillary Clinton comes off well in Goldberg's rendition, making even Paul Wolfowitz look un-demonized in her well-informed "tour d'horizon." She appears to harbor little bitterness from perceived Republican unfairness on Bosnia and Kosovo, and has what Goldberg describes as a "precinct captain" acquaintance with Hamas/Fatah rivalries in Gaza/West Bank feuding.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is clearly not yet up-to-speed on the intricacies of foreign policy and demonstrates this both in his feel-good kumbayeh book and his conversation with Goldberg. He is Orwellian in his double-speak as quoted by JG:

"It’s not a great bargain for the next President to take over the mess in Iraq," Obama told me last month. "But there is as much pressure in both the Republican and Democratic camps, because both have genuine concern for the troops and the families and the budget. It won’t be good for congressmen of the President’s party if we’re still spending two billion dollars a week in Iraq in two years."

Edwards appears willing to play the Gore/Kerry card of plunging into the fever swamps to get the Democratic nomination, then emerge to go centrist in the general election. This Gresham's Law drives out thoughtful centrists like Evan Bayh, whom JG quotes in the beginning of the article.

Edwards is bashing Wal-Mart to get union support and clearly sees domestic politics verging on class-warfare as his meal ticket. On Iraq, he is succinct: "Let's start leaving now," withdrawing 40.000 troops right away. On the overall foreign stage:

In his announcement speeches, Edwards called for "getting America and the world to break our addiction to oil" but did not mention counterterrorism as a top priority, which sets him apart from the current Democratic field. Rather, he emphasized universal health care, ending poverty, and combatting global warming.

Although Clinton describes herself "in the lonely middle," she sounds almost hawkish compared to the other two leaders in polling run-ups to the Iowa caucuses. Her lawyerly caution may not play well in the Dem primaries, where miasmal swamp things appear behind Cindy Sheehan on cue and interrupt candidates not sufficiently deluded on Iraq and foreign policy in general. Jimmy Carter may again appear to upbraid in his censorious manner anyone less demented than himself.

But if the Dems are going to take themselves seriously in '08, they will require a candidate whose foreign policy pronouncements are more sophisticated than getting out of Iraq, eliminating AIDS, fighting global warming, and ending genocide in Darfur---the last three being the runner-up foreign policy picks of a recent poll on Dems' long-range international priorities.