For a sense of the way the foreign policy debate is shaping up for 2008, New Yorkers can click on the Internet sites of Senator Clinton and Governor Romney, where two starkly different visions are on display of how to deal with our foreign policy challenges. HillaryClinton.com carries a transcript of Mrs. Clinton’s comments in the first night of her “conversation.”

“I don’t understand why our current president won’t talk to people that he considers bad,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I mean, look, there are a lot of bad actors in the world, but I think it’s a sign of strength, not weakness, to engage in a process with these people because, frankly, you can learn something. You know, one of the first rules of warfare is know your enemy, and we’re flying blind because we won’t sit down and try to figure out what these people really want, who’s calling the shots, how we can better deter them.”

The notion that President Bush “won’t talk to people that he considers bad” is disingenuous. He’s jawed with Presidents Mubarak and Putin, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Presidents Hu and Abbas, none of whom are exactly saints. He’s sent his envoys to talk with Iranian diplomats in Geneva. The idea that Mr. Bush can better understand, say, Osama bin Laden or the president of Iran by sitting down and talking to them is naïve, at best, as is the idea that either Messrs. bin Laden or Ahmadinejad can be deterred, as Mrs. Clinton suggests. As Bernard Lewis recently observed, from Mr. Ahmadinejad’s perspective, “Mutual Assured Destruction” is not a deterrent, but an inducement.

Mittromney.com offers a contrasting vision — video from the governor’s address yesterday in Israel, where he spoke of the need to “impose diplomatic isolation” on Iran. To applause, Mr. Romney told of how he denied the protection of Massachusetts state police to Iran’s former president, Mohammed Khatemi. “The real question is, why did Harvard invite him in the first place,” Mr. Romney said. The governor also said Mr. Ahmadinejad should be indicted under the Genocide Convention for incitement to genocide.

Heretofore, Mrs. Clinton has been careful not to get outflanked from the hawkish side on national security matters, and she deserves some credit for being more sensible than other members of her party. But if her idea of a strategy for victory is to avoid “pointing fingers and making judgments,” which she criticized Mr. Bush for, and to instead “try to figure out what these people really want,” then in a head-to-head battle with a candidate like Mayor Giuliani or Mr. Romney, who understands the threat and the need to defeat it, she’s going to have a tough time bringing the American people along with her.