Sparring Partners.(The Talk of the Town)(Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama)

What might be called the Long Campaign has created a demand for news of political conflict, and thatdemand is being duly supplied. At this preposterously early date in the 2004 election cycle, the candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination had participated in exactly one "debate," as, for lack of a better word, these overpopulated, overmoderated, your-time-is-up Q & A panels are called. Two cycles ago it was zero debates. This time around, it's--already!--eight.

The political arena is ideally a marketplace of ideas, but in our country, more often than not, it's all marketplace and no ideas. Caveat emptor, Democrats. The market pressures in this particular souk almost all push in one direction: making political mountains out of policy molehills.

A case in point is the quarrel, nominally about foreign policy, that the two leading Democratic hopefuls have been carrying on for the past few weeks. It began during the YouTube/CNN extravaganza. A video questioner, citing Anwar Sadat's visit to Israel, asked, "In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, 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, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?"

Senator Barack Obama, called upon to answer first, said, "I would. And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this Administration, is ridiculous." After noting that Cold War Presidents regularly spoke to Soviet leaders, evil empire and all, he went on, "One of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria, because they're going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses."

Senator Hillary Clinton, who was next up, spotted a chink in Obama's armor and went for it:

Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort. Because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are. . . . I will use a lot of high-level Presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way. But certainly we're not going to just have our President meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the presidents of North Korea, Iran, and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.

The commentariat, from David Brooks, of the Times, to the Nation's David Corn, scored this exchange as a stumble for Obama, a palpable hit for Clinton. Over the next few days, things got huffier. Obama's remarks were "irresponsible and, frankly, naive," Clinton said. Obama, aiming at Clinton's greatest vulnerability with the Democratic base, shot back, "I think what is irresponsible and naive is to have authorized a war without asking how we were going to get out." A day later, he swung a left hook: "I don't want Bush-Cheney lite." Clinton's parry: "This is getting kind of silly. I've been called a lot of things in my life, but I've never been called George Bush or Dick Cheney. . . . I don't want to see the power and prestige of the United States President put at risk by rushing into meetings with the likes of Chavez, and Castro, and Ahmadinejad."