Strike Two for Obama

Remember strike one, Obama's Dukakis'-like moment in the face of a nuclear attack on our cities.

Strike two at the most recent debate on personally meeting as president with the world's bad guys.

And actually I think we have strike three, though this one applies to the other liberal Dem candidates and Hillary as well (though maybe she will flip-flop). Her husband Bill had his own trademark special take on such a situation:

Liberals used to argue that sending U.S. troops abroad was a small price to pay to stop genocide; now they argue that genocide is a small price to pay to bring U.S. troops home.

President Clinton lied in his 1998 apology to survivors of the Rwandan massacre when he suggested that he and his staff hadn't known genocide was taking place. But documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in 2004 showed that the Clinton administration referred to the slaughter as genocide in its internal discussions but refused to say so publicly because Clinton had decided against intervention.

"Genocide can occur anywhere. It is not an African phenomenon," he said in 1998 as part of his apology. "We must have global vigilance. And never again must we be shy in the face of the evidence." Thus, Clinton nicely articulated a moral principle whose moral authority he excluded himself from.

It was typical Clinton photo-op politics, symbolism over substance, such nice amoral sentiment.

But back to the implications for the 2008 election. Charles Krauthammer:

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.

Given her temperament and her husband Hillary Clinton makes some staunch Democrats profoundly uneasy, but she may emerge in their minds as most electable even though Obama leads in the Democrats' field of dreams.

UPDATE: Video clips: Obama and Hillary have at it. More from The Politico.