Obama's foreign policy challengers

Is Barack Obama going through a "Where's the beef" moment?

The thought occurs to us as it becomes clear that others in the Democratic presidential race are striking very similar chords in responding to his stepped-up efforts to flesh out his foreign policy views.

The specific tunes from Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd --- each, like Obama, a U.S. senator, but each far more entrenched in Washington --- have varied. But the basic tenor of their remarks has been the same. These seasoned politicians are trying to persuade voters that Obama, in detailing an aggressive posture Wednesday toward terrorists hiding in Pakistan and when discussing on Thursday the prospect of using nuclear weapons, has shown himself to be in over his head and not quite ready for prime time.

How Obama reacts to this general challenge could go a long way to determining his candidacy's prospects. He and his aides had best hope he does better than Gary Hart in the 1984 Democratic nomination battle when Walter Mondale posed ...

... the aforementioned "Where's the beef" query at him in a memorable debate moment.

In that case, Mondale was aiming at the "new ideas" Hart was touting as a better way to confront largely domestic issues. But if the target was different, the intent was the same as we see now --- to deflate the new kid on the political block as more flash than substance; to depict his proposals as half-baked.

What has become a chorus of criticism directed at Obama along these lines actually began with the "naive" note Clinton sounded last week in dismissing his comment that he would be willing, as president, to meet with the leaders of hostile countries without preconditions. Obama fought back hard, and then stayed on the offensive with the speech Wednesday in which he asserted that if intelligence reports merited it, he would authorize an attack on a military strike on terrorists in Pakistan if that country failed to act.

He grabbed headlines, but also earned barbs from several Democratic presidential candidates, including Biden and Dodd. The commander in chief doesn't announce an intention to attack, Biden sniffed. "Dangerous" and "irresponsible," Dodd declared in a terse but pointed statement.

Clinton had no official statement, but she pounced Thursday when asked to respond to Obama's remark a few hours earlier, made to the Associated Press, that under no circumstance would he use nuclear weapons against terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons. ... I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons," Clinton said. And she weighed in on possible unilateral U.S. military action in Pakistan, again stressing the need for discretion: "How we do it should not be telegraphed or discussed for obvious reasons."

Biden took another shot during an appearance on National Public Radio, invoking the "naive" card Clinton has already played. And Dodd decided a second official statement was merited, in which he scolded Obama for making "threats he should not make and made unwise categorical statements about military options."

In case anyone missed the theme that he (and Clinton and Biden) want to drive home, Dodd added: "We are facing a dangerous and complicated world. The next president will require a level of understanding and judgment unprecedented in American history to address these challenges."

Hart was dogged by the intimation that he lacked the heft --- the beef --- for the Oval Office. Increasingly, Obama can expect that he will need to grapple with the same suggestion.

-- Don Frederick