Meaty fare amid the junk food | Postman on Politics

Seattle Times chief political reporter David Postman is traveling throughout Ohio in advance of its presidential primary March 4.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Covering a campaign can be a bit like bingeing on junk food. A snarky news release or the latest candidate's mishap is as alluring as a glazed, old-fashioned doughnut.

But just as man cannot live on sugar alone, reporters cannot thrive for long riding the waves of charges and countercharges of who did the latest flip or flop. So maybe it was a bit of penance that brought me to Ohio State University this week.

Four of Barack Obama's foreign-policy advisers appeared at the Michael E. Mortiz College of Law just eight days before Tuesday's primary election here. It was the same day that Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a major foreign-policy address in Washington, D.C.

This really was about as far as you could get from the screaming crowds Obama and Clinton have been drawing in Ohio. The auditorium was maybe a quarter full, with about 60 people at most.

They were there to hear from Susan Rice, a former Clinton White House adviser and assistant secretary of state for African affairs; former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig; retired Air Force Gen. Scott Gration; and Denis McDonough, a top foreign-policy adviser to former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle.

The four began by making fairly standard campaign pitches for Obama, although with a foreign-policy slant.

Then they took two hours of questions from the audience.

A young woman said she was asking her question on behalf of her brother, who was serving in the Israeli Defense Force. She wanted to know how Obama could envision a Palestinian state adjacent to Israel at the same time he says he has a "zero-tolerance policy for terrorism."

McDonough said Obama sees no contradiction in the two goals.

"He starts with a very simple premise that any agreement has to guarantee security for the Israelis and peace and security for the Palestinians," McDonough said.

He said Obama would not deal with Hamas — the hard-line Islamist party that controls the Gaza Strip — until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel's right to exist and agrees to abide by any peace agreement. Until then, "Hamas is not a reliable partner for any kind of peace process," McDonough said.

The next questioner saw the problem from the other side. He wanted to know what Obama would do about what the questioner termed illegal Israeli settlements designed "to ensure a viable Palestinian state never exists."

McDonough, acknowledging the depth and breadth of feelings represented by the two questions, said Obama wouldn't dictate the final details of a settlement as it relates to borders.

"These are final-status issues that the parties need to work out themselves," he said.

Obama believes that for a viable Palestinian state to survive, Israel will have to "come to terms with the settlements," McDonough said. At the same time, he said, Palestinians will have to "come to a reinterpretation of the right of return." That's the belief that Palestinian refugees can return to the land their families held before Israeli independence.

There were fewer questions about Iraq than I would have expected. But someone did ask what Obama would do if genocide erupted in the wake of the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"We'll have to go back in there if there is a genocide," McDonough said. But he said Obama would work to build an international force.

Added Rice: "It will be a very brief, very time-limited, mission-specific effort to protect innocent citizens."

Danzig ended with a note of reality about what Obama can accomplish.

"This is not the coming of the messiah, and we are not going to be able to convert loaves into fishes," he said. "And as Barack Obama says himself repeatedly, it will be hard. I want to add, risky. The odds are that some of the things that are envisioned will not be able to come to pass. ...

"You have to ask yourself, which of the candidates affords the greatest likelihood of pointing us in the right direction?"

Rice argued that one difference in an Obama administration would be a more open process of deciding foreign policy. She said Obama wants the American people "engaged in the decision-making and to frankly diminish the power of conventional wisdom which has so often led us in the wrong direction."

How does that happen in real life, though? It's one thing to hold a campaign-season forum with top advisers. But can foreign policy and national security be shaped by public comment?

Rice said Obama's pledge that all his Cabinet officers would hold online "fireside chats" and the televising of policy discussions would go a long way to making the public feel connected. And she said she could envision town-hall-like meetings that would deal with foreign policy.

"Everywhere I go I find audiences asking incredibly intelligent and hard questions," she said. "They know what's going on. They're following it in many different media now. And every one of them has a useful perspective to bring to the debate."

David Postman is The Seattle Times' chief political reporter. Reach him at 360-236-8267 or at dpostman@seattletimes.com