Pat Dollard | Young Americans

The Hill
By Byron York
July 27, 2007

Perhaps you’re suffering from “debate fatigue.” You hear a lot about it these days, with Democratic and Republican presidential candidates squaring off many months before the first primaries or caucuses.

Yes, it can be tiring. But please don’t succumb. For all the derision directed at them, presidential debates are useful exercises. And early debates are especially useful.

Early debates help us learn things about candidates that might have remained unnoticed until much later in the race. And sometimes those things are very important.

For example, in the four Democratic debates held so far, we have learned one crucial fact: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) isn’t anywhere near ready to be president.

Our Obama education started with the first debate, held in April in Orangeburg, S.C.

Moderator Brian Williams of NBC News asked how the candidates would respond militarily if two American cities were hit simultaneously by al Qaeda terrorists.

Obama was first to answer. He said we would want an “effective emergency response.” And “good intelligence.” And a policy that would not “alienate the world community based on faulty intelligence, based on bluster and bombast.”

The only thing he failed to mention was how he would respond militarily. As in, you know, fighting back.

Obama later tried to return to the question, but the damage had been done.

Front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) stepped in with a better idea. “I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate,” she said. After identifying the enemy, Clinton continued, “Let’s focus on those who have attacked us and do everything we can to destroy them.”

After the debate, the Clinton campaign bragged that she had “demonstrated that she would know how to respond if the country was attacked.” Not like that other guy.

Now we’ve had another debate, last Monday night in Charleston, and Obama faced another question on international affairs.

A questioner speaking via YouTube video asked whether the candidates would “meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration … with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.”
Obama quickly said, “I would.”

Really? Would the first year of the Obama administration be filled with summits with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar Assad, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il?

Apparently so. “The reason is that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding principle of this administration — is ridiculous,” Obama explained. “Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to the Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire.”

As in Orangeburg, Hillary Clinton stepped in with a dose of reality. She would make no such promises, she said, because “I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes.”

Anyone, other than Sen. Obama, knows that a handshake and a photo-op with the president of the United States would be a huge propaganda gift to the rogue-state dictators. And for what benefit to the United States national interest?

“Certainly, we’re not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be,” Clinton added.

After the debate, Obama’s top political adviser, David Axelrod, tried to explain that Obama didn’t really say he would meet face-to-face, one-on-one with the rogue-state leaders.

“He said that he would be willing to talk,” Axelrod explained. “And what he meant was, as a government, he’d be willing and eager to initiate those kinds of talks, just as during the Cold War there were low-level discussions and mid-level discussions between us and the Soviet Union and so on. So he was not promising summits with all of those leaders.”

OK. But that’s not what I heard.

The next day, Clinton called Obama’s answer “naïve.” For his part, Obama tried to suggest that just a few months ago, Clinton had said the same thing that Obama said in Charleston. But it turns out she hadn’t.

All of this has come about as the result of early debates. And now, six months before the first primary and 15 months before the general election, we’ve learned that one major candidate is unquestionably unprepared to be president.

That’s worth a little debate fatigue.

York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.