I don't think this will be a major issue in American public opinion unless the Bush administration makes it one. And since "Pakistan is going to hell and for God's sake the al-Qaeda-allied Islamists might get their hands on Paki a-bombs any day now if this keeps up" is exactly contrary to the tenor of administration policy toward Pakistan, I don't expect any public-inciting panic from Washington.

I agree with Rhubarbs -- though I could see it making an impression with those HRC supporters whose primary motivation is to elect a female president.

Aren't all "Paki a-bombs" set for 'automatic' delivery to India?  Does the current Pakistani inventory include rockets with the capacity to deliver an a-bomb as far away as Israel?

I have no real idea how--or even if-- Benzair Bhutto's assassination will impact the presidential

Like most things, I don't believe the event (by itself) really makes a difference, because  most folks don't know who Bhutto is and will file this away in the sadly overfilled "muslims blow something up" compartment of their brain.

However (and this goes without saying) - if Obama or Edwards comes out and says something stupid...or Hillary crosses the line and tries to scare people ala Bush ("Vote for me or your precious children will die!"), then there could be trouble. Keep an eye on them...

Rhubarbs, don't forget that Bush is still in search of a legacy and is running out of time to create one that doesn't evoke the term "FUBAR."  I would not put it past him to put his finger in the pie there, and if past is prologue, bungle yet another diplomatic crisis in the region.

Wow, guess it was a really smart move for the Edwards' campaign to leak the memo accusing Hillary of running a Bush '04-like scare campaign--now anytime she says anything about "experience" or remind voters of the fact that we live in a world made more dangerous by Dubya, she'll get attacked for "scare" tactics.  I think blurring the line between legitimate policy debates and "vote for me or your precious children will die" tactics  is as bad as "crossing the line."

2 immediate thoughts: It was a miracle that Pakistan has NOT already blown up, given that my first post-9/11 instinct was to expect a meltdown in that country that is Taliban South.

Second thought: this cannot avoid helping Biden in Iowa. The median age of Iowa caucusgoers is, what? 50? 55? These are precisely the kind of people who would rate a steady hand above charisma in times like these.

Spechs:

Maybe so. Point taken.

A better argument would be that Hillary helped facilitate the creation of this dangerous world by giving Bush nearly unlimited power to wage war in Iraq. Hillary saw a minor threat to stability (Saddam) and she reacted belligerantly. How will she react to chaos in Pakistan or a dangerous leader of Pakistan? It's a pivot from experience to judgment. Then again, Edwards can't credibly make this argument, because he supported the war.

This whole debate goes to the core of my problem with Hillary's campaign strategy (at least the way I see it). Everything seems to work backwards for her.

1. While Democrats disagree with her support for the Iraq War, they subconsciously use her support for the war to credit her as a tough leader who will keep us safe (despite supporting the biggest foreign policy disaster in a generation, she leads in foreign policy judgement questions in polls).

2. While Democrats disagree with her campaign's various underhanded tactics against Obama (kindergarden, cocaine, etc), they subconsciously credit her as a tough campaigner who will use similar tactics against the Republicans (this is why she leads in electability questions in polls - people see the Clinton machine as mean and tough).

In both cases, the brain says "Hillary wrong!" while the gut nevertheless says "Hillary strong!"

Like Bill Clinton said a few years ago:  the American people would prefer to elect someone who is strong and wrong rather than weak and right. Obama has to keep hammering people persistently with questions about judgment or he will lose this argument.

Pakistan's meltdown changes everything. Different presidential race now. Asian Century now, and we'd best get ourselves a president who knows his way around Karachi, New Delhi, Beijing, etc

TNR, please, PLEASE given Biden the deep and sustained attention he deserves.

Or are you guys just in the tank for McCain?

teplukhin2you said:

Pakistan's meltdown changes everything. Different presidential race now. Asian Century now, and we'd best get ourselves a president who knows his way around Karachi, New Delhi, Beijing, etc

Forgive my sarcasm, perhaps this is just the opening George Bush was hoping for.  George Bush #41, that is.

Biden is great.   Has he decided what his GPA (really) was back in the college years?  Or has he decided to leave the whole Neil Kinnock era behind him?

My thinking is changed on this now...

Any discussion of foreign policy is a painful reminder of Hillary's lapse in judgment on the Iraq War resolution...

virginiacentrist said:

My thinking is changed on this now...

Any discussion of foreign policy is a painful reminder of Hillary's lapse in judgment on the Iraq War resolution...

Hillary's Iraq resolution vote was purely strategic.  She refused to be pigeon-holed as weak on defense - where come upon the day she knew she would be a candidate for president.  A cynical political move to be sure, a lapse in judgement hers was not.

Bukharin:

How do you know Hillary's move in 2002 was purely strategic and cynical?  Because Maureen Dowd said so?  22 Democratic Senators voted for the resolution--not all of them had crass political concerns (think Biden, Feinstein, Schumer had electoral concerns?)

Virginia Centrist:

can we please stop talking about HIllary's "underhanded" tactics?  The kindergarten thing was a joke (as Ben Smith of the Politico pointed out a tthe time) and she fired Billy Shaheen, at political cost, for making the cocaine reference.  I don't know if the Democrat subconsciously credit Hillary for her Iraq vote, but many supported the use of force resolution at the time, so aren't going to be critical of her.  And no campaign talks about that vote more than the Obama campaign--the campaign has elevated Barack's 2002 anti-war speech into some kind of heroic moment that single-handedly vindicates his judgment.  It was an anti-war speech by a candidate running on the left for the Democratic nomination to the Senate--prescient, to be sure, but not exactly a huge political risk.  And as he admitted in 2004, he doesn't know how he would have voted had be been in the Senate at that time.  History has vindicated the anti-war stance (though Hillary, again, did not vote for war at the time, as Colin Powell and Dubya were promising they needed the vote to get inspections) but at the time, based on the faulty intelligence that Obama did not have access to, does that prove that he has the judgment to be President?  Guess it's up to every vote, but I'm not convinced.

sprechs:

Ms. Clinton's vote was pure Clintonian, straight from the mind of the master politician himself, Bill.  

Ms. Dowd said as much, too?  Well then, she has that going for her too!

Sprechs,

You make a good point about the war vote. But. I favored the war at the time, to the extent that I would have favored an actual declaration of war. (I have this thing for legislative honesty and respecting the constitutional formalities, which pretty much is why I'm not a Republican, but I digress.) And it's precisely because I favored the war that I hold her vote against Hillary. If she was voting strategically, she was not doing her job. And if she really believes her argument that she was not voting for war but rather voting for inspections and peace and and a warm puppy for every child, then I think she's manifestly unqualified to serve in any public office. Did she not read the text of the resolution? It gave the executive unlimited authority to wage war. It was, in all but formal legislative title, a declaration of war. You don't vote in favor of a declaration of war and then claim that you didn't actually mean for there to be a war right after you voted for it. Either she is honestly describing her thought process, in which case she is one of the greatest fools in America, a seriously dumb person, and I mean "stupid" in the sense that you'd describe an adult who just isn't good at rational thought, or she is not honestly describing her motivations and she is lying to us about one of the handful of most important actions of her public career. Either way, it is going to take the Republicans nominating a particularly noxious candidate for me even to consider voting for Hillary for president.

I hold a lot of other things against Hillary, not all of them fair, but it's her explanation of her war vote that gives me the greatest and most reasonable doubt that she's up to the job of being president. Not her vote itself -- I'd have voted the same way -- but the way she describes her thought process now really does force me into an uncomfortable either-she's-lying-or-she's-an-idiot logical corner.

Rhubarbs:

I disagree with your take on the use of force resolution--it was not a declaration of war but an authorization to use force if diplomatic means failed.  In hindsight, it's easy to see how duplicitous the administration was regarding Iraq, how marginalized Powell had become, Condi's ideological plasticity or the zeal with which the neo-cons had already decided on pursuing their war aims.   We don't know why Hillary voted the way she did, but to claim that only a fool could have seen the vote as anything but a declaration of war is reading history with hindsight.

Sprechs,

OK, but I was not confused about the nature of the resolution at the time, and neither was anyone I knew who actually read the text of the resolution. The fact is that the resolution gave the president a legal blank check to go to war with Iraq, and most of the Democrats who voted against the resolution made exactly that point _on the floor of Congress_. There have been times in American history when Congress has given the president the power to negotiate with the threat of war but without giving the president a preemptive blank check to go to war, so the option of proposing such legislation was open to Hillary if that's really what she meant to accomplish. So I honestly think it is fair to question the competence of anyone who didn't understand the nature of the war resolution at the time to hold federal office. I mean, it was called the "Iraq war resolution", not the "Iraq peaceful diplomacy resolution", in common conversation in Washington at the time. Which is to say, if you're right and I'm wrong, then Hillary is not a liar or a fool, she's just incompetent to a degree that compares poorly with George W. Bush. Um, you know, yay Hillary!

In any event, happy New Year to all.