The 2008 Race for the White House is beginning to feel like those cross-country road trips traveled as a child. Jostling for position in the back of the station wagon with New Hampshire receding in the rear view mirror, the candidates are busy chattering about Iowa as if it were just around the curve. Turn up the music, because it’s going to be a loooooong ride.

This past weekend, two of the key Democratic contenders for the throne, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, were on the campaign trail. Not surprisingly, their views and actions on the war in Iraq were front and center, as reported here by the New York Times:

For Clinton and Obama, Different Tests on Iraq

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was challenged on Iraq from corner to corner of New Hampshire this weekend, while Senator Barack Obama drew cheers in Iowa for his opposition to the war.

Besides giving voters a chance to probe the views of two major rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, the weekend appearances gave the two campaigns a chance to road test their strategies for dealing with the central issue of Iraq in the primaries and beyond.

At nearly every stop in New Hampshire, Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York, has been greeted warmly but has been met by skeptical voters asking pointedly about her 2002 vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq. On Sunday in Nashua, one person told her that her explanation “doesn’t fly,� while another asked why she did not simply say that the vote was a mistake.

In these instances and similar moments in New Hampshire, Mrs. Clinton stuck to a set of talking points that she and her advisers hope will ultimately overcome the antiwar anger that is particularly strong among Democrats likely to vote in primaries. She took full responsibility for the vote, said she would not vote for military action in Iraq again, and then pivoted quickly to frame Iraq as President Bush’s war. This answer was usually met with applause.

Yet Mrs. Clinton’s refusal to use clear, categorical phrases — “I’m sorry� or “I made a mistake� — has created an opening for Mr. Obama and another rival, former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who has openly apologized for his identical 2002 vote.

On Sunday, at a news conference in Ames, Iowa, Mr. Obama declined to say whether Mrs. Clinton should explicitly express regret for the vote, but he phrased his answer to keep the onus on her.

“I will let her speak to her plan, and I will let her address both past decisions and how she wants to move forward,� Mr. Obama said. “I am not clear on how she would proceed at this point to wind down the war in a specific way.� [full text]

It is worth noting that the only current Democratic presidential candidate to have voted against the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq was Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Clinton, Edwards, Biden, and Dodd all supported the resolution. (Obama had yet to be elected to the Senate. Bill Richardson and Tom Vilsack were governors of their respective states at the time.) Although their votes and views on the war are important to examine as they seek the highest office in the land, the candidates should also be challenged on related matters such as the USA Patriot Act. In October of 2001, with the rubble that was the World Trade Center towers still smoldering, only one Senator was cool-headed and principled enough to oppose the Patriot Act. That was Russ Feingold. In the House of Representatives, 66 members voted against the bill, including Dennis Kucinich. When the Patriot Act came up for extension last year, 10 Senators and 138 Representatives voted nay. Again, among the current Democratic candidates, only Kucinich opposed the bill. Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Dodd all voted yea.

Any one of the aforementioned candidates would be a vast improvement over the current resident of the White House. (Frankly, a big block of cheese would be an upgrade.) But in deciding who ought be the standard-bearer for the Democrats, it would likely be helpful to carefully assess their judgment and principles, past and present. All too often, politics clouds judgment and compromises principles. Gandhi viewed such as a sin, of which he identified seven: “politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.� The sins of the candidates will no doubt be examined and reexamined ad nauseum in the months to come. Sadly, at this early juncture, some of them already appear lacking.