By Hendrik Hertzberg
The New Yorker

What might be called the Long Campaign has created a demand for news of political conflict, and that demand 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:

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