Clinton's Iowa Loss

The Iowa caucus-goers had hardly made it back to their farms before the left-wing political pundits were trying to blame Senator Clinton's loss there on her more hawkish foreign policy views. By voting to join the Battle of Iraq and leaving the door open to a continued American troop presence there, by voting for tougher economic sanctions on Iran, and by refusing to meet without preconditions with the leaders of Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, this argument goes, Mrs. Clinton opened herself up to attacks from Senators Edwards and Obama, who accused Mrs. Clinton of giving President Bush a blank check for a new war in Iran and who promised a quicker withdrawal from Iraq than she did.

Don't believe it. On domestic issues, particularly health care, Senator Clinton has actually been running to the left of Senator Obama, boasting that his health care plan isn't truly universal, while hers is. Mr. Obama, meanwhile, has been portraying himself as a post-partisan consensus builder, "a leader who will bring us together," as his closing television commercial in Iowa put it, in implicit contrast to Mrs. Clinton.

On foreign policy, Mrs. Clinton moved, as the caucuses approached, so far to the left that her positions were practically indistinguishable from those of Mr. Obama. On Iraq, she sponsored legislation calling for a 120-day timeline for withdrawing American troops. She is also trying, with Senator Byrd, to repeal the 2002 congressional resolution that authorized the war. On Iran, she co-sponsored Senator Webb's bill attempting to forbid the president from taking military action against Iran without first getting permission from Congress, and she issued a statement claiming she has "been concerned for a long time over George Bush's saber rattling and belligerence toward Iran." She also says her administration would talk to the government in Tehran.

If anything, Mrs. Clinton suffered on foreign policy not from a perception that she was a hawk or a dove but from the perception that she stood for no principle other than getting herself elected. The Democratic nominating process is a long way from over, and as Iowa goes isn't necessarily how the nation goes. But if Mrs. Clinton can figure out a way to recover from her loss in the cornfields, well, it'll be a feat worthy of a presidential nominee.