Steve Clemmons writes with immense familiarity with the halls of Capitol Hill, the think tank dynamics, and the inner stories of Washington and national politics. His columns and blog posts are wonkish, so, I for one, turn to him to flesh out and analyze the latest. So when in his Washington Note blog he analyzes and criticizes both democratic presidential candidates' foreign policy, many readers took the following analysis quite seriously:

Senator Obama has a great team. Some of his staff are friends and former colleagues of mine -- though i can say the same about every one of the presidential candidates in both parties.

But his not calling any hearings in a Senate Subcommittee he chairs ought to raise some questions that he needs to respond to. His Subcommittee deals with Europe, with NATO, with various related political and security matters -- and he's got the gavel and can set the agenda.

Given the stress NATO is experiencing today on many fronts -- from the question of Europe's evolving security identity, to NATO's deployments in Afghanistan, to the evolving question of how to deal with Russia, Kosovo, and other common challenges -- it seems inconceivable that Senator Obama would not want to highlight important policy concerns by way of hearings.

I hope Senator Obama looks at this post as something to respond constructively to -- as we need to understand how this gap would be fixed or translate into a White House setting.

On its face, it seems that this criticism is particularly damning. It was embraced by Ambassador Wilson in his searing attack on Obama as a presidential hopeful as he embraced and defended Hillary with the tiresome and nonsensical "we were all fooled by Bush" defense for her Authorization of Force in Iraq vote. Although there is compelling evidence that Hillary was not fooled, but instead was triangulating, that is a subject beyond the scope of this discussion.

In the same posting, Clemmons says the following about the influences on Obama's foreign policy positions by members of his team.

I'm not trying to find a minor, nuanced difference between Obama and Clinton and inflate that to inappropriate levels. I am a fan of some of Obama's foreign policy positions -- though I think that I tend to appreciate his speeches influenced by Zbigniew Brzezinski that reflect tough-minded thinking and hard choices rather than those influenced by former Clinton National Security Adviser Anthony Lake that seem to want America to rush into every global cause without clear delineation of priorities and an accounting of potential costs and consequences to our national interest.

Clemmons here states that he understands that the US should make hard choices and pick the best causes in its global pursuits and not rush into every single cause that presents itself. However, his column is one which praises the candidate that jumps at every cause and has proposals for every problem and every sector while it expresses discomfort with the candidate whose Senate record, although impressive, did not pull every single lever at his disposal but made hard choices and picked his causes.

It is also either ignorant or disingenuous of Clemmons to link Obama's foreign policy statements on Afghanistan to his role as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations' Subcommittee on Europe. As David Corn notes:

It's true that Obama has convened no meetings of the subcommittee, but his camp counters that he became chair of the subcommittee early last year, just as he was starting his presidential campaign. Clinton is technically correct that Obama could have used the subcommittee to conduct oversight of actions and policies related to Afghanistan. But the full foreign relations committee, under the guidance of Senator Joe Biden, has held several hearings on Afghanistan that covered NATO's role there. It's not as if the foreign relations committee did nothing on Afghanistan because Obama did not take on the mission. Also, as happens with many committees, the chair of the full committee reserves the right to handle the big issues him- or herself, and Afghanistan counts as a big issue.

Clinton ought to be careful about hurling stones in this area. As she always tells campaign crowds, she is a member of the Senate armed services committee. In February the committee held two hearings on Afghanistan. On February 8, it focused on appropriations for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was a witness. Eight days later, the committee zeroed in on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, holding a two-part hearing examining recent reports on Afghanistan. Key witnesses included senior officials from the State Department and the Pentagon responsible for the administration's Afghanistan policy.

Clinton attended neither of these hearings. She was on the campaign trail

Attendance to meetings and sessions in Congress and prioritizing agenda involves balancing the pro and cons of investing time and resources in the pursuit of legislative goals, and no legislator can realistically attend to every issue just as US foreign policy cannot solve all of the world's problems. Effectiveness requires focus. Mr Clemmons really should know this.

Keith Olberman, on the same subject says:

Vote for her, stem the tide, stop the momentum because Obama has yet to call his first oversight hearing in a year. He‘s chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee for European affairs and it oversees relations with NATO and NATO is ruling Afghanistan. Yes, except that it‘s actually another subcommittee that oversees U.S. relations with Afghanistan and except that the Republicans are today, now using this one too.

The more I look at Mr Clemmons's criticism, the more I am reminded of AP pseudo-scandal columns by John Solomon and Nedra Pickler, in which there simply is no there there. However, Amb. Wilson disingenuously used it in his pro-Hillary attack column, Hillary is still tossing it with her kitchen sink, and now, as Olberman lets us know, the Republicans have embraced the empty but catchy attack. Once again, it is an example of the tendency of certain Democrats, although Wilson is not a Democrat, to embrace the Republican mode of debate, utilize distorted talking points, push them repeatedly, and then consider themselves different to the Republicans. Some people have indisputably spent much too long in Washington DC.