Hillary Clinton dropped the ball in Buffalo. While her colleagues who share responsibility for representing New York went ballistic over Washington’s 40% cut in anti-terrorism funding for the city, Mrs. Clinton wouldn’t be diverted from acting like the presidential contender she intends to become. She constantly commanded New Yorkers to “stand with me” in her fight for the national spotlight. But Mrs. Clinton didn’t even try convincing voters how she’ll fight for us during a second term in the Senate.

New Yorkers shouldn’t begrudge Mrs. Clinton’s aspirations to make the White House home again. But we should expect her to stand with us along the way – especially on the day she officially launched her pre-presidential reelection campaign.

In her speech at the state’s Democratic convention, Mrs. Clinton didn’t mention the brewing battle over homeland security funding. Her one-liner on the topic could be the punch line for a joke: “New York should get its fair share, so we can protect ourselves from New York City to Lackawanna.”

Nothing against the 18,000 people who live in Lackawanna – six men who lived there did plead guilty to a terrorist plot – but I’m quite sure their fair share of federal anti-terrorism funds adds up to zero.

Yesterday’s senseless decision to slash anti-terrorism funding for the city provided Mrs. Clinton with a picture-perfect opportunity to illustrate the Bush administration’s instinct to “deny and dismiss inconvenient facts.”

According to the Department of Homeland Security, New York City’s grand total of zero “national monuments and icons” is equal to Lackawanna’s. Tell that to Shahawar Matin Siraj, who was convicted last week of trying to blow up the Herald Square subway station. I’m not exactly an art freak, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art sure looks like an icon. There’s also the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge. And if the downtown courthouses near One Police Plaza aren’t icons then we should open up the streets that are inconveniently closed to traffic. We could also mothball the magnetometers outside City Hall, open the New York Stock Exchange to tour groups and make the United Nations a free-for-all.

New York is an icon for the nation because the city boasts so many obvious icons. The Statue of Liberty may rest in New Jersey’s territorial waters, but I suspect Al Qaeda’s version of the Zagat guide lists Lady Liberty in the New York section of terror targets.

New York City shares a near-monopoly on iconic terrorist targets with Washington, D.C. To suggest otherwise is preposterous. To sit out the fight is insulting.

Give Senator Schumer credit. He ordered President Bush yesterday to stay out of the five boroughs until he learns math. Even Rep. Peter King of Long Island, a loyal Republican ally of the White House, declared a war with Washington. Mrs. Clinton should be the general leading Mr. King’s war. Apparently she’s forgotten that war heroes have a way of attracting national admiration.

By noting that terror funding “raises very serious questions about the quality and sincerity” of the president’s men, Mr. King’s inadvertently bolstered Mrs. Clinton central complaints about the administration’s mendacious tendencies. Throughout her speech yesterday, the senator sounded a bit like a detective – constantly searching for facts.

“I believe in a government that makes decisions based on facts,” Mrs. Clinton told the Democratic faithful gathered to adore her, “and sadly that’s beginning to sound like an unusual thing in Washington these days.”

Her half-hour talk was heavy on theme and light on details, sounding more like a national stump speech than a statewide appeal for support. Even when Mrs. Clinton was specific she was far from uplifting. The senator praised existing economic development efforts in economically depressed upstate. She also gushed over the beautiful scenery that adorns the state “from the beaches of Long Island to the mountains of the Adirondacks to the lakes of the Great Lakes.” Anyone with an atlas could make the same observation. New Yorkers should demand more from their junior senator than a list of sightseeing preferences.

Mrs. Clinton does have plenty of political reasons to prefer rhetorical concepts to real ideas. The biggest criticism of the senator’s first term has been her failure to deliver on promises to create jobs along the I-90 corridor that includes Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. Mrs. Clinton would expose herself to criticism if she pushed hard for initiatives that failed. In a sense, Mrs. Clinton keeps her opponents away when she stays away from specifics. She learned that lesson with the 1992 health care plan that doctors still won’t forgive.

Mrs. Clinton played it safe yesterday. She preached “the dignity of work” and “individual responsibility” without wading into individual rights like abortion and gay marriage. She talked up “affordable housing” and “manufacturing” and offered made-for-everyone observations like, “A country that doesn’t make anything is a country that cannot sustain its economic position globally.” Can’t argue with that.

Mrs. Clinton’s biggest obstacle to the presidency is her lack of obstacles to reelection. A true opponent would force her to focus on the election at hand. It’s hard to blame Mrs. Clinton for ignoring New Yorkers even while she asks us to vote for her – given that her potential Republican opponents probably couldn’t win a town council seat in Lackawanna. But that political reality doesn’t diminish her ongoing obligations to the state she represents.

Just before Mrs. Clinton won four years ago, a hotel housekeeper gave her a snow globe of the city and begged, “Mrs. Clinton, don’t forget Buffalo.”

Lackawanna is just a few miles away. Does that count?

Mr. Goldin’s column appears regularly.