Clinton also called for an independent, international investigation into Bhutto’s death, “perhaps along the lines of what the United Nations have been doing with respect to the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri in Lebanon.” Obama said he doesn’t share that view. “It is important to us to not give the idea that Pakistan is unable to handle its own affairs,” he said.

Could Obama’s foreign policy be any less consistent? It seems that it is based simply on disagreeing with Hillary Clinton. This is the kind of reckless politicizing that one might expect from someone who has virtually no foreign policy experience, and it seems that Obama is proving everyone who has mentioned his lack of experience as a concern exactly right.

More beneath the fold…

And as much as Obama may want to pontificate about his foreign policy superiority on the Pakistani issue now, when Katie Couric asked the candidates on December 12 which country frightened them the most, Obama toed the Bush terror line and answered Iran. It was Hillary Clinton who answered Pakistan:

Well, right now I am most worried about Pakistan. I think Pakistan is very unstable. I believe President Musharraf has failed to deliver on either democracy or a rising standard of living for his people. You know, democracy has to be carefully nurtured. I would put the United States firmly on the side of the Pakistani people and on behalf of those who are agitating for democracy and for rights. I mean, it’s almost touching to see lawyers, well-dressed lawyers, in the streets protesting and demonstrating for democracy, for the rule of law. I think the United States should be supporting those kinds of voices inside Pakistan, the nongovernmental organizations that they are part of.

John Edwards also had different concerns:

China. Because I think China presents huge challenges for America because of their size, because of their population, and because of their not paying attention to human rights, because of their support of dangerous regimes around the–around the world: Sudan, Iran, places that China gets its fuel supply, its energy supply. And they’re growing their military. And we need to put pressure on them economically; not allow them to manipulate their currency; not allow them to continue to dump dangerous goods on American consumers, which I think they’re doing today. I would ratchet up pressure on them diplomatically in terms of what they’re doing around the world. I think they’re enabling genocide in Sudan, in Darfur, with their economic policies with Sudan and Bashir. But I–those are the things I think that need to be done.

Contrast this with Obama’s answer on Iran:

I think Iran poses a significant threat to stability in the Middle East. So I think we have to talk to Iran directly. And when we talk to Iran directly, even if there are profound disagreements there, that will send a signal to the world that we are not simply seeking to impose our will without paying attention to what other countries think. And that kind of dialogue has not taken place. This president has refused to do it. I think it’s a profound mistake. JFK once said we should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate.

Although suggesting direct diplomacy with Iran, Obama is still operating within the basic neoconservative framework of the Bush administration. He is concentrated on the Middle East and on Shi’ite Iran, a natural enemy of Sunni al-Qaeda, instead of on our actual terrorist enemies in Afghanistan and, increasingly, Pakistan. At least Clinton and Edwards realize that our foreign policy needs to be a comprehensive one that deals with threats everywhere, a foreign policy that isn’t obsessed with the Middle East. Again, I fail to see how Obama represents the “change candidate.” What I see is a candidate working within the Bush, neoconservative, Middle East-centric framework.

“It’s ridiculous,” Edwards said. “It’s a ridiculous stretch. I think in times of international crisis — which this clearly is — what America needs to be doing and serious presidential candidates need to be doing is providing an atmosphere of strength and calm. We need to be a calming influence and not stoking the fire and certainly not be talking about the politics of this.”

Edwards’ criticism of Obama is much more valid than Clinton’s, since her campaign too has been guilty of politicizing Bhutto’s assassination. John Edwards is the only candidate who has risen above the temptation to politicize this assassination, as Obama has done, or worse yet, to use this assassination to terrorize the American people into voting for them – as all of the Republicans and Clinton, in her own way, have done. Edwards is right that we need strength and calm in times of crises, and he’s the only one who hasn’t been running around like Chicken Little since Bhutto’s assassination.

A new Strategic Vision poll released Friday finds that the former North Carolina senator has the support of 28 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers, his best standing in Iowa over the past six months. Edwards now trails Clinton by only one point and Obama by two points, well within the poll’s margin of error of 4.5 percent.

And from the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier:

A new Iowa caucus poll from Lee Enterprises newspapers shows the Democratic race in a virtual three-way tie, with John Edwards rising to tie Barack Obama for the lead and Hillary Clinton rising to just one point behind.

I’ve thought for some time that Edwards might win Iowa, because of his strong support in rural areas and because I felt that Clinton and Obama would tear each other apart sufficiently to allow another candidate to move into first place. It looks like that could happen. Meanwhile, Edwards is still competing with Obama for the anti-Clinton mantle. On the heels of news that Hillary Clinton has stopped taking questions at campaign events, this announcement from the Edwards campaign represents the polar opposite point of view:

On day two of John Edwards’ 38-county “America Rising: Fighting for the Middle Class” tour, the Edwards campaign announced the “Ask John” program — giving undecided Iowans the opportunity to ask questions about any issues that concern them and get answers before they caucus. With just one week to go before caucus night, the program reflects Edwards’ commitment to discussing his bold, specific agenda directly with Iowa caucus goers and answering their questions about the issues that are important to them.

“I believe that anyone running for president has an obligation to listen to the voices of regular people and answer their questions directly,” Edwards said. “In these final seven days, I want every Iowan who has a question to know exactly where I stand and what I’ll do to take on the special interests and give middle class Americans a voice in Washington.”

Sounds good to me.

A senior aide to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee admitted Friday that the former Arkansas governor had “no foreign policy credentials” after his comments reacting to the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto raised questions.

During an event Friday in Pella, Iowa, Huckabee said the crisis sparked by Bhutto’s death should lead to a crackdown on illegal immigrants from Pakistan.

The Huckabee official told CNN that when he said that, Huckabee was trying to turn attention away from scrutiny of his foreign policy knowledge.

If Huckabee was really trying to divert attention away from his lack of foreign policy experience, he’s failed miserably. The absurdity of his comments yesterday have only renewed scrutiny of his foreign policy capabilities, and I would say that Huckabee is the candidate most hurt by the Bhutto assassination from either party.

“Those who made the judgment that we ought to divert our attention from Afghanistan to invade Iraq and allow al-Qaeda to reconstitute and strengthen are now having to assess the wisdom of that judgment as we may be seeing yet another manifestation of al-Qaeda’s potency,” said Susan Rice . . .

Rice also hints that the Obama campaign is in favor of regime change in Pakistan, contradicting Obama advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski who has said that “the United States should not get involved in Pakistani politics.” Well, that’s as clear as mud.

The fact that voters are waking up to economic reality in this country is good news for Democrats, but The Scanner points out that the left could still be in trouble unless it comes up with a comprehensive and comprehensible message:

So why do I say that the new progressive movement is fucked? Because they have no ideology. They lack any semblance of a creed. Now, naturally, the progressives would vigorously dispute this. Of course we have a creed! We believe in universal healthcare, combating global warming, protecting the right to abortion… [etc., ad infinitum] But that’s not a creed, it’s a list of policies. And of course, what happens when you have only a list of policies as your lodestar is that crafty politicians come along who loudly proclaim to embrace your goals before quietly vitiating them with a lobbyist’s scalpel and reams of fine print.

I agree that the absence of ideology within the Democratic party is a serious problem, and I propose that the basis for forming a new ideological message should be socialism. That’s right: socialism.

At its core, socialism is about democracy. Socialism takes the principle that people should govern themselves and extends it to the economy, so that those who are impacted the most by economic decisions (i.e., the working and middle classes) have a proportional role in making those decisions. It takes economic decisions out of the hands of a few, very wealthy people and puts them in the hands of the people or, sometimes, their elected representatives. Socialism moves beyond democratic government and proposes a democratic economy as well.

The most successful Democratic president of the twentieth century, Franklin Roosevelt, was a pseudo-socialist. The New Deal, especially as initially proposed, was an inherently socialistic policy aimed at public regulation and in some cases outright control of the means of production. The possibility of further socialist reform was halted by the cold war and subsequent propaganda that lumped democratic socialism in with authoritarian communism. Even as we fought authoritarian communism alongside democratic socialist governments in Western Europe, politicians here at home refused to accept any differentiation between democratic socialism and authoritarian communism.

Now, with a new generation rising that was born at the end of or after the cold war and certainly after most of the extreme anti-socialist propaganda had gone out of style, and with a previous generation that didn’t buy into it in the first place thanks to capitalist debacles like Vietnam, it is now possible once again to pursue socialist reforms. It is possible to talk to voters about democratic management of the economy without being demonized as Stalinists. This is exactly what today’s Democratic party should have the courage to do.

The Democratic party shouldn’t just talk about health care, fair trade, etc. It needs to talk about the values that lead us to work toward universal health care, fair trade, and other reforms. We work toward universal health care because we believe that public management of the health care industry is necessary to ensure that the poor and middle class, and not just the rich, have the health care they need, because all people have a right to health care. We work toward fair trade because we believe it’s wrong for the rich to profit by exporting American jobs overseas because there they are able to produce cheaper goods on the backs of abused foreign workers.

We need, once again, to talk to the American people about economic and social justice not just in terms of convenience, but in terms of morality. It is profoundly immoral to have so much wealth concentrated in the hands of a few while the many suffer, both here at home and abroad. People today are receptive to this message and will not listen to the fear-mongering of the right. People will not dismiss such moral discussion as communism, for communism is dead, we have prevailed in the cold war, and people now see that America cannot and will not become a communist dictatorship. People are ready for an economy that is democratically managed for the benefit of all the American people, and not just the wealthiest among us.

But we can’t begin this new socialist project unless Democratic politicians are willing to be bold and imaginative. They must stop heeding the warnings of right-leaning interests like the Democratic Leadership Council to be cautious, for it has been this kind of cautiousness encouraged by the right-leaning fringe of our party that has lost us two elections. They must be bold, they must speak out strongly in favor of the middle and working classes, and they must reveal Republican capitalism for what it is: an ideology that favors the rich and seeks to keep all wealth, and thus all power, in their hands. Democrats today must remember the words of Franklin Roosevelt:

First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

This is exactly the kind of terror that the right has been fomenting for decades to prevent economic reform, and again and again Democrats have given into this fear. It is time to end the paralysis, time to stop fearing the Republican fear-mongering, and time to stand up and boldly declare that we will take back the American economy and make it a system that is of the people, by the people and for the people.

“When there are unfortunate calamities like this, the Republicans [will say], ‘See. See what we told you? We have to have someone who’s strong to defend America at a time of concern.’ Well, Senator Clinton is strong,” he said. “And she’s experienced. And she’s tough enough to defend this country and do it in a way that’s true to our values, the civil liberties we cherish, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m supporting her.”

Where to even begin? By making this statement, Bayh is legitimizing the Republicans’ claim to national security dominance and cementing the idea that only a war hawk can protect us. He is, in other words, loading the gun for the Republicans to use on Democrats and on the eventual Democratic nominee, even if that nominee is Hillary Clinton. He is equating strength with bad decisions and refusal to apologize for those bad decisions once it’s revealed just how bad they were.

Moreover, Bayh seems to be arguing that a good president, a “tough” president, has to adopt a foreign policy of neoconservatism or cold realism in order to keep America safe. He is dismissing internationalism as a valid foreign policy philosophy. He is, in other words, dismissing those within his own party who believe that the best way to keep America safe is to work with our allies and follow the international rule of law in fighting terrorism and other threats to our national security. Here again, he does the Republicans’ work for them.

Finally, I want to discuss for a moment the notion that Hillary Clinton is somehow stronger on national security than the other Democratic candidates, and especially the idea that she will “defend this country and do it in a way that’s true to our values, the civil liberties we cherish.”

What exactly is it that makes Sen. Clinton so much stronger on national security? For the life of me, the only things I can think of are her votes for the Iraq War and for the resolution that paved the way for war with Iran by declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. If decisions such as these are what supposedly make Sen. Clinton stronger on national security, then I hope Sen. Bayh is joking. Authorizing the Iraq War was a disastrous congressional mistake that has made America less secure. Declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization and thus giving Bush legislative space to move toward aggression against Iran could prove even more disastrous.

And what’s this “true to our values, the civil liberties we cherish” business? Let’s not forget, please, that it was the Clinton administration that began the practice of extraordinary rendition, in which detainees are kidnapped and taken to foreign countries to be tortured. It was Bill Clinton who brought us to where we are today, to actually having to argue with each other about whether or not torture is legitimate. Do I trust his wife to be “true to our values, the civil liberties we cherish”? Absolutely not.

Evan Bayh should be ashamed of himself for distorting the merits of Clinton’s candidacy and making her look like some kind of war hawk superhero. He should be doubly ashamed of himself for using Benazir Bhutto’s assassination to attack other Democrats. And in case anyone is keeping score, the Edwards campaign is the only top tier campaign that hasn’t used the Bhutto assassination as a weapon to beat other Democrats with. I’m just sayin’.

- – -

* Yes, I do know that Evan Bayh was not officially speaking for the Clinton campaign. I also know that this is how political campaigns say things they know they shouldn’t be saying – by getting a supporter like Bayh to say it in an unofficial capacity, thus giving them room to distance themselves from the comment if reaction turns too ugly. Anyone who thinks Hillary Clinton isn’t thrilled that Evan Bayh said this is deluding himself.

Bhutto’s death will “call into issue the judgment: who’s made the right judgments,” [Obama advisor] Axelrod said. “Obviously, one of the reasons that Pakistan is in the distress that it’s in is because al-Qaeda is resurgent, has become more powerful within that country and that’s a consequence of us taking the eye off the ball and making the wrong judgment in going into Iraq. That’s a serious difference between these candidates and I’m sure that people will take that into consideration.”

I’m first in line to criticize Hillary Clinton for a) voting to authorize the war; and b) refusing to admit that her vote was a mistake, as John Edwards has. But to imply that Clinton is somehow indirectly responsible for Bhutto’s assassination, which is what the Obama campaign is doing here, is the worst kind of despicable politics. Does anyone remember when Barack Obama was promising a new politics of hope? I wonder what happened to that?

Yeah, Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War, and whether she’ll admit it or not, she was wrong. So were a lot of other senators and representatives. So was most of the country. To his credit, Barack Obama was against the Iraq War from the beginning. But there’s a huge difference between being against the war in principle as an Illinois state senator and actually having to decide how to vote in the U.S. Senate. I’m not at all sure that, had Barack Obama been in the Senate at the time, he wouldn’t have voted exactly as Sen. Clinton and Sen. Edwards did.

Spare me the “formal role”/”tangentially involved” niceties, and hold her to account. Make her defend Bill Clinton’s decisions or tell us exactly what she thinks he did wrong. And don’t let her dodge around by playing on our feelings about the marital relationship.

I agree. One of several reasons I’ve decided to support John Edwards instead of Hillary Clinton is because I believe that Clinton is somewhat responsible for the decisions of the Clinton presidency, including the bad ones, and I haven’t seen her sufficiently respond to her husband’s poor choices. I’m looking for some of those choices to be corrected by the next president and I’m afraid that Hillary Clinton won’t correct them.

Bill Clinton was one of the better presidents of the latter half of the twentieth century, and far better than the president in office now. Still, Clinton made several very bad decisions during the course of his presidency.

• It was Clinton who presided over the institution and implementation of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell military policy, which required gay and lesbian service members to remain silent about their sexual orientation or be discharged.
• Clinton supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and globalization, which has cost American jobs, hurt American workers, and given the nod to the abuse of workers in developing nations.
• Clinton failed to secure health care reform, even with the Democratic party holding majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
• These and other Clinton debacles, as well as Democratic corruption in Congress, led to the overwhelming victory of congressional Republicans in 1994.
• It was the Clinton Justice Department that returned Elian Gonzalez to Cuba to live under Fidel Castro’s communist dictatorship, clearly against the wishes of Gonzalez’ deceased mother who gave up her life to free her son from communist tyranny.
• Clinton paved the way for the Iraq War by signing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 and authorizing a series of bombing campaigns against Iraq, beginning with Operation Desert Fox in the same year.
• Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, continuing Reagan’s strides toward media consolidation and bringing us to where we are today, with media in the hands of a few powerful corporations.
• Clinton signed the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, which gave unconstitutional power to the president to selectively veto items contained in spending bills, effectively usurping congressional spending power. This act was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
• Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited the application of the constitution’s full faith and credit clause to same-sex marriages or civil unions, and which prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages or civil unions even if the states did.
• Clinton began the practice of extraordinary rendition, in which detainees are transported to other countries for interrogation. This began the “torture by proxy” of detainees and led to today’s political climate, in which we are actually debating whether or not to torture detainees.
• It was Clinton who popularized the terms “state sponsor of terrorism” and “rogue state” – in reference to Iran, which the Bush administration is now threatening with aggression for the same reasons.

Will Hillary Clinton continue all of her husband’s bad policies? Maybe, maybe not. It’s difficult to trust her when one considers that she has made her own bad decisions, including voting to authorize the Iraq War and still refusing to admit that her vote was a mistake. Her continued affiliation with the right-leaning Democratic Leadership Council, which advised Bill Clinton to enact many of the bad policies mentioned above, is also a cause for concern.

Americans have a right to know whether Hillary Clinton will be her own president or simply be a continuation of the first Clinton administration, and we have a right to know exactly what course Hillary Clinton’s presidency would take on these issues. If she wants to claim her husband’s administration as her experience card, then she needs to address concerns about her husband’s policies and what, if anything, she would do differently.