Clemons on the candidates' foreign policy stances

Steve Clemons has an interesting piece in The Washington Note on where the 2008 presidential candidates stand on major foreign policy issues. He suggests that the best way to determine this is by taking a look at their campaign advisers, and gets into some interesting analysis of those advisers' big policy ideas, which we don't get much of in the media coverage of the primaries. Excerpt:

". . . sometimes the 'person' that the candidate is just doesn't matter all that much -- at some point, the candidate becomes a franchise of so many interests and perspectives, sometimes in internal conflict with one another, that what the candidate really thinks or feels becomes less important.

That is why I spend a lot of time looking at advisers, funders, and other interests that surround these candidates. Each is somewhat of a free trade zone unto himself or herself for political interests vying to steer him or her this way or that."

"Agonizing Over the Candidates and Who They Really Are" [The Washington Note]