In part, the "orbiting" is a senate strategy (ie. "What do you see as the end?" v. Obama's approach and "What do you think about THIS as the end?").  Obama's strategy probably isn't grounded in a future in the Senate.

In this regard, I do feel bad for Clinton.  Obama was fortunate in that he could watch her and listen to her questions, see what the chattering classes thought about her approach, and shape his own questions accordingly.  

Poor Hillary just can't catch a break. It's like the whole world is out to get her! ;-)

Seriously, folks ... I didn't get the feeling that Obama or Clinton (I didn't see all of her appearance though) used the opportunity to campaign or had one eye on the primary race (I know, I know -- that's just what they want me to think). But Obama's appearance certainly wasn't calibrated on Clinton's.

And certainly neither made a blunder on par with McCain's umpteenth Shiite-Sunni conflagration. Of course, at this point I don't know if McCain honestly still doesn't what's going on there or is just lying. I may have to go with "lying" for $400, Alex.

All in all, the Democrats I saw - Obama, Boxer, Biden, Clinton - laid some pretty solid groundwork for the politicos to make some hay with issues this fall: what constitutes success; how Iran has become the most important outside player in Iraq even though we're the ones with soldiers there dying; that it makes much more strategic sense to focus on Afghanistan/Pakistan than Iraq. And, after all this time, Petraeus still can't state that the war in Iraq has made the U.S. safer.

I heard Clinton's testimony in its entirety.  It was on at the gym when I was up on the elliptical.  She made me proud!  I missed Obama's, but assume he was consistent.  It would have been nice to TNR to have posted pieces on both instead of just Obama.  There are readers who want to see how our candidates act live, perform in real situations, rather than simply talk about such things on the campiagn trail.  I'm hoping other news outlets give them both equal coverage for the same reason.  So far, that hasn't been the case.  Politico, CBS, ABC, Yahoo, CNN have led with Obama pieces.  Typical!

Tammya, agree.

The big three were afforded a rare chance to demonstrate (and not just bloviate about) how they'd each make the best commander-in-chief.

Um, TNR did post a piece on Clinton's appearance.

Ok Woody.  Can you tell me where it is?

blogs.tnr.com/.../hillary-and-petraeus.aspx

Thanks Woody, but certainly you'll agree with me that a one paragraph blog entry on Clinton is not the same treatment Obama got by TNR.  My point stands about the other news outlets.  

First off, that's two paragraphs. The second graph is critical of Obama, so we'll count it.

Second, how did HRC get unfair treatment here? Is it the two entries vs. one? One person posted a one-graph entry on Obama and another, who was there, responded to it. That's hardly a conspiracy. Is it the tone? Is it that Crowley said Obama was more interesting, aggressive and awake than Hillary? Truth is the defense there. Since you didn't get a chance to see Obama, I guess you didn't see that. Fair enough.

I didn't obsessively check news outlets to see if their coverage (of what was not, by its nature, supposed to be a political event anyway) was Fair And Balanced. But I do know that throughout several hours of the day yesterday, Hillary was a star of the news coverage of the hearings. That's because her committee met in the morning and Obama's met in the late afternoon. Once late afternoon rolled around, the freshest news was Obama and Biden and the Foreign Relations Committee, not HRC and Armed Services. So where's the unfairness? I guess if you want to use the logic in this thread's first comment, you could make a case that Time and the Senate committee schedulers worked together to screw Clinton. And the day-after coverage I've seen today hasn't favored Obama over Clinton.

You made what seemed to be a rather heartfelt post the other day about coming together and listening to both sides and uniting. That was pretty good stuff, but that spirit is not served by touting imagined slights.

Woody.  I suppose my "typical" at the end of my first post on this story may indicate my frustration with media coverage of Clinton.  I won't dwell on that point with you as I agree that the amount of coverage they got on TNR was fairly equitable.  Thanks for showing me the post.  I wish other outlets would follow this model.  That their work came at different times of the day might explain a a part of it, but certainly not all.  Getting back to my point that this is the kinda stuff voters want to see-- action by their candidates.    I did see clips of Obama's testimony since yesterday.  I'm feeeling a little like Elizabeth Edwards today who still talks of a dream ticket with Hill and Barry.  Watching them yesterday "in action" rekindled that for me.  

The Weekly Standard' s Matt Continetti and I did a bloggingheads debate last night in which we chewed

Tammy, Yeah, I agree about the dream ticket, at least based on yesterday. Of course, yesterday also made me reminiscent for the dream that died, the dream of Biden.

The Dream Ticket thing is sticky ... I just can't see Obama choosing Clinton has VP.

I wanted to sound off on the ongoing national security duel between John McCain and Barack Obama. Two