THE ADVISERS. Tom Edsall's piece on the foreign policy advisers of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is useful stuff. Given that the candidates are basically in get-elected mode, who they're listening to is much more illuminative than what they're saying on the subject. And, as Edsall says, the basic breakdown is that the establishment foreign policy experts who opposed the Iraq War from early on have come into Obama's orbit, while those who cheerfully boosted the war's prospects encircle Hillary. Many of these folks have turned against the conflict as it's proven more and more hopeless, but the essential difference between a candidate who relies on advisers who instinctually support preemptive wars of choice and one who chooses advisers who oppose them is significant. Edwards, meanwhile, is getting advice from Derek Chollet, Michael Signer, and others in their orbit. I'm not up enough on their past work to feel secure in typecasting them, but they're young, muscular-internationalists of the Truman National Security Project variety, and have a long paper trail for those who feel like googling. --Ezra Klein
