Hillary The Hawk

HILLARY THE HAWK....As Matt and Ezra say, the biggest progressive beef with Hillary Clinton is that her foreign policy is too hawkish. That's how I feel too, though trying to define what any of us really mean by this is maddeningly difficult. To a large extent, after all, the biggest difference between Hillary and Barack Obama is simply that Hillary refuses to tie herself down. Basically, she wants maximum freedom of action when she takes office, and in the case of foreign policy this isn't necessarily a bad thing to want.

Still, it leaves us all in an uncomfortable position. So let me put things a little differently. I would say that, within a reasonable margin, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore all had roughly similar foreign policy outlooks during the 90s. Today, Gore is obviously opposed to the Iraq war more strongly than either of the Clintons, but my guess is that all three still have pretty similar foreign policy instincts.

Question: Agree or disagree? Iraq aside, do you think Gore has fundamentally changed his worldview since the 90s in ways that Hillary hasn't? Did it need changing? In hindsight, was the Gore/Clinton worldview of the 90s good or bad?