The Security Council may or may not comment this week on Gaza events that are developing much too fast for this slow moving body. Meanwhile, Senators Obama and McCain took public positions on this issue, presenting a window into the two parties’ attitudes toward Turtle Bay.

Governor Huckabee frequently uses a comic throwaway line on the trail, as he did last week during a Florida debate, illustrating how his approach to the economy is unique among Republicans. “You all were acting like I was the only one at the U.N. without a headset,” he told the other candidates. In this joke, the “U.N.” is used as a butt of a cartoonish joke, well illustrating the party base’s suspicion toward Turtle Bay.

The cartoon Democrat, on the other hand, reveres the United Nations and ascribes to it more importance than it deserves. “It is conferences like this that compel governments and people everywhere to listen, look, and face the world’s most pressing problems,” the American first lady, Hillary Clinton, told fellow participants in a 1995 U.N. conference on women in Beijing. But as last week’s letters demonstrated, there are much more nuanced positions on both sides than these cartoonish portraits. There may also be differences between what candidates say on the hustings and what they do once elected.

Both letters, in essence, conveyed the same message: America should not allow the Security Council to single Israel out for wrongdoing in Gaza. But where Mr. Obama’s letter urged valence, Mr. McCain’s advocated a hard American line. Some knee-jerk anti-Israel U.N. denizens, incidentally, were disappointed with Mr. Obama, saying they expected more of him than of Mr. McCain. On the other hand, Mr. Obama’s letter may not be enough to clear suspicions about him among some pro-Israel voters. In meetings with Mr. Obama, “I was left with the impression that he was not entirely forthright with his thinking,” Israel’s former ambassador to Washington, Daniel Ayalon, wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed last week, criticizing Mr. Obama’s instincts on Iran and Israel. If a Democratic November victory is followed by a Labor win in Israel, will the Barack v Barak headlines dominate our foreign policy?

“All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families,” Mr. Obama wrote the American U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. “However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this,” he added.

“As you know, U.N. statements have often served as platforms for rhetorical attacks against Israel by various member states,” Mr. McCain wrote to Secretary of State Rice. “I urge you to ensure that this pattern does not repeat itself.” Ms. Rice certainly needed some urging. Hobnobbing with the sophisticates of Davos last week, she instructed the American U.N. mission to “engage” with the 15 members of the council, even as Jerusalem lobbied other administration allies to prevent the council from taking any action.

By the end of last week, America proposed a council statement that, if passed, would be, like most U.N.compromises, very uncomfortable for any Israeli government. While turning its condemnation to the rocket launchers, the American proposal would limit Israel’s ability to pressure Gaza, and “encourage” agreements with the Palestinian Authority, including on sensitive issues like Fatah-Hamas cooperation.

Luckily, the Arab group at the U.N. is likely to shoot even this compromise down, but for Ms. Rice and the Bush administration, it represents a long journey from the days the Texas governor and his Stanford guru introduced to the world their policy so vilified as “unilateral.” The world view from the White House is always different than from the campaign trail. When Governor Romney vowed to withdraw America from the Human Rights Council, his instinct was correct, but with no State Department aides, he failed to recognize that America has already declined to run for a seat on that discredited body. In Foreign Affairs essays, the candidates laid some more nuanced positions, and Ms. Clinton showed she is cognizant of the U.N.’s limitations, criticizing Russia’s Security Council stance on Kosovo. At Turtle Bay, some veterans are as uncomfortable about the return of the hard-charging Richard Holbrookes and James Rubins as some Americans are about a third Clinton White House stint.

My favorite position is that of Mr. McCain, who vowed to create an organization of “like-minded nations working together for peace and liberty” in the mold of Theodore Roosevelt, rather than Woodrow Wilson. But, he added in Foreign Affairs, “This League of Democracies would not supplant the U.N. or other international organizations but complement them.” Competition. Now there is an idea whose time has come.

bavni@nysun.com