The most memorable television ad that Hillary Rodham Clinton ran during the Democratic primary campaign against Barack Obama was the one with the red telephone that rings at 3 a.m. “While your children are safely sleeping,” the announcer intoned, “something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.” That Obama was dangerously unprepared to deal with a foreign crisis was a key Clinton campaign theme. She pronounced herself and Republican candidate John McCain as passing the “commander-in-chief threshold”—and pointedly refused to say the same of Obama.

Their fiercest campaign clashes involved foreign policy: Obama wanted to sit down with leaders of rogue nations such as Cuba, North Korea or Iran “without preconditions,” an idea Clinton dismissed as “irresponsible and frankly naive.” She voted for a Senate resolution asking the Bush administration to designate the Iranian Quds force a terrorist organization—something Obama said was playing into a Bush administration ploy to lay the groundwork for war against Iran. And Obama boasted of superior judgment in opposing the Iraq invasion (she voted to authorize the use of force), while implying Clinton’s foreign policy experience as first lady consisted of having tea with ambassadors. “What exactly is this foreign policy experience?” Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. “Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no.”

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