I tend to think Kevin's wrong that there aren't actual differences between Obama and Clinton on foreign policy. It's entirely true that their statements, if read for meaning rather than tone, don't reveal much in the way of daylight between their positions on negotiating with foreign leaders. But that's because they're both looking to win the same primary, from largely the same pool of voters, with largely the same set of opinions.
Beneath all that, it's pretty clear that they have fairly fundamental disagreements. Their positions on the Iraq War, for instance, are very different. Obama believes we shouldn't have gone in. Even if there were weapons. Clinton believes we were wrong about the weapons, but that she did, at the time, vote correctly on sending us to war. So she believes the war was fundamentally right, while he believes it was fundamentally wrong.
Or take their advisors. Obama's crew is fairly progressive: Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Tony Lake, etc. Hillary Clinton's close advisors are...less so. Richard Holbrooke, Mark Penn, and others are charter -- and largely unreconstructed -- members of the liberal hawks caucus.
Or take the grounds of their disputes. Clinton keeps going at Obama for sounding too soft and dovish. Obama keeps going at her for sounding too hawkish and bellicose. Clinton clearly believes liberalism should remain muscular and a bit hawkish. Obama, less so. This sort of rhetoric does have a substantive impact, and the degree to which the nominee (and president!) believes the public is fundamentally hawkish or dovish will hugely impact which policies they decide or feel forced, to pursue.
Point being, the differences are real. They're just not in the rhetoric. So far as I can tell, these have been a weird series of arguments in which Obama and Clinton are arguing over things they actually disagree about, but they keep framing their language in such a way that a close read makes it look like they actually don't disagree. If you're not paying attention, you'd get a fairly accurate impression of where they stand. If you do pay attention, you're getting too-carefully parsed statements that suggest there's less difference than there is. In this case, a little knowledge may be a dangerous thing...
