Boston Globe Editorial - Iraq dominated that debate

Boston Globe Editorial - Iraq dominated that debate
Copyright by The Boston Globe
Published: June 4, 2007


More than half a year before New Hampshire voters will cast the first primary ballots in the 2008 presidential election, last night's debate by the Democratic candidates saw the two front-runners - Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - already trying to gloss over differences within the party on the Iraq war.

John Edwards staked out a tougher antiwar position and insisted there were differences among the candidates.

Among the eight contenders who otherwise share similar views on hot-button issues like gays and lesbians in the military and immigration, this disagreement produced the only tension in the two hours in Manchester, New Hampshire.

While Clinton insisted that the differences among the Democrats were minor, Edwards insisted that one difference was his willingness to acknowledge that his 2002 vote in the Senate to authorize force was a mistake - an admission that Clinton, who also voted for the war, has refused to make.

For all the back and forth about the war, however, there were few specifics about how each would deal with it when the next president is inaugurated in January 2009. The audience was better served by the discussion over the candidates' proposals for broadening the number of Americans who have health insurance, with Edwards and Obama getting credit for having the most detailed proposals, outside of Kucinich's endorsement of a national, non profit single-payer system.;

This debate yielded few sound bites. But it made at least one thing clear: dealing with President George W. Bush's war in Iraq will be the defining issue - and most divisive one - for the Democratic candidates trying to succeed him.