When Hillary Clinton signed on to John McCain's proposal to suspend the 18.4-cent federal gas tax this summer and Barack Obama didn't, the Democratic candidates suddenly had a real substantive difference to debate.

The trouble is, there's not much to argue about. Everyone who's looked at this knows that a gas-tax holiday is a silly idea. With gasoline supplies pretty much fixed in the short term, demand will increase and the price will go back up. But instead of the U.S. government capturing that revenue, the oil companies will pocket it. Factcheck.org tried and failed to find a single economist who thought gas prices would drop as a result of the holiday. PBS couldn't find a supporter, either.

Asked about this by ABC's George Stephanopoulos Sunday, Hillary sniffed, "I'm not going to put in my lot with economists." What's it going to be then, prayer circles?

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Now, you might say: There's almost zero chance this proposal will go anywhere, so what's the harm? Well, it makes no sense to say you're for "energy independence" while vowing to cut gas taxes. If anything, the U.S. government should raise the federal gas tax to at least 50 cents a gallon, not cut it. Or better yet, tax carbon and bring coal emissions into the mix, too. But above all, don't mislead voters about the choices before them.

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I think it's safe to say this joke by Mark Halperin was in poor taste:

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a filly named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown. Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

Over at the Huffington Post, National Interest Senior Editor Jacob Heilbrunn worries that realists such as Kissinger and Scowcroft have failed to groom a generation of young Republicans to follow in their pragmatic foreign-policy footsteps:

[W]hile Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and other realist elders are consulted by [John] McCain, his heart is with the younger neocons, the 'beavers,' in the words of one McCain supporter, who draft the speeches and get the grunt work done ... the result is disastrous recommendations such as threatening to expel Russia from the G-8.... The gap -- and it is fundamental -- in the GOP today is generational. The elderly realists haven't groomed anyone to replace them. The neocons have."

I think the simplest explanation for why the neocon voices within the McCain campaign are the loudest is that in recent years McCain has most closely identified with them ideologically. That's why, as I pointed out a couple months ago, he surrounded himself with foreign-policy minds like Mark Salter, Daniel McKivergan, Marshall Wittmann, and Randy Scheunemann (though McCain has never really fully signed on to the neocon cause).

As for the generational gap between GOP realists and neocons, Heilbrunn is probably right that it exists. But when I talk to young Republicans, I get the sense that, thanks to the Iraq war, the problem will be self-correcting. Just because a group of young realists hasn't found a home in the McCain camp doesn't mean they aren't out there. Still, it is unfortunate that they had to come to their thinking based on a botched war instead of being groomed by the old guard.

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Fareed Zakaria rightly notes that while everyone has been beating up on Barack Obama for proposing talks with Chávez and Ahmadinejad, John McCain has quietly espoused some genuine crackpot ideas about foreign policy. Especially wrongheaded is his idea to create a "League of Democracies," which would only antagonize Russia and China, two great powers whose cooperation the United States needs on a host of regional and global issues. (Paul Saunders ably dispatched a similar plan mooted by McCain advisor Robert Kagan and Obama advisor Ivo Daalder last August, but some bad ideas just won't die.)

Still, it's hard to get too worked up about it, since it ain't going to happen. As Reason's Matt Welch put it:

After eight years of a cranky, go-it-alone White House that won re-election in part by bashing limp-wristed Euro-weenies, the chances of another interventionist Republican winning enough good faith among grumbly allies to create a brand spanking new America-defined Club of Winners are something approaching zero.

McCain's other big idea -- excluding Russia from the G8, while formally including India and Brazil but not China -- is more plausible but equally self-defeating.

I can think of many reasons why Russia doesn't really belong in the G8. Its economy is heavily dependent on energy and its political system is trending autocratic, to name just two. Including the Russians was a stretch in the first place. On the other hand, almost everything in the chair's summary from last year's G8 summit in Heiligendamm concerned things that the West wants from Russia (and especially China): "a smooth adjustment of global imbalances," "open and more favorable investment conditions," intellectual property protection, agreement to negotiate a successor to Kyoto, greater transparency, fighting corruption, responsible behavior in Africa, and so on. Excluding them seems so self-evidently silly that I sincerely doubt McCain would go through with it were he elected.

Matt Yglesias complains about the media's campaign coverage, and offers a plausible reason as to why there's such a relentless focus on trivia:

What's driving this, I think, are the dual desires to be "tough" and to be "objective." In particular, being objective is thought to preclude being tough about public policy because that would entail picking sides in ideology-inflicted arguments. And people didn't get into this business in order to provide softball coverage. So instead you ask tough questions about process or about trivia, even though there's little evidence that these are the subjects about which people want to hear.

I don't buy this last bit, because, sadly, I think there is plenty of evidence that more people are actually interested in trivia than they are the issues. Why did the Drudge Report pull in 590 million "page loads" in March? Why has the horserace-centric Politico been such a resounding success? If Yglesias really believed that more people are interested in substance, he should use his book earnings to open a new network devoted to hashing out the issues and see how it fares.

He could call it... "PBS."

Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

Rachel Morris, writing for the Washington Monthly's blog, says that "Hillary Clinton may have gravely insulted" New Zealand in a recent Newsweek interview. Asked if a scrapbook she's been keeping since childhood contains "any good jokes," Clinton came up with this zinger:

Here's a good one. Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand: her opponents have observed that in the event of a nuclear war, the two things that will emerge from the rubble are the cockroaches and Helen Clark. [Laughs]

Ha ha, I guess?

The trouble, as Morris points out, is that "Helen Clark is the current prime minister of New Zealand," and has been since 1999. "[T]he joke doesn't get funnier even if you happen to know something about New Zealand politics," Morris tartly observes.

That's not Clinton's worst New Zealand gaffe, however. In the grand scheme of things, it's hardly a big deal. New Zealand, after all, is a pretty obscure country halfway around the world. This, however, is just plain embarrassing:

Mrs Clinton also once said her parents named her after [New Zealand native] Sir Ed Hillary, a nice line till it was pointed out she was born more than five years before he climbed Everest, when he was still a lesser-known beekeeper.

Among popular baby names in Kenya at the moment: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. No word yet on any infant John McCains.

Anthony Cordesman; Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Yesterday, I attended the Jane's U.S. Defense Conference, an annual gathering bringing together American and European defense industry representatives with national-security officials. The theme of this year's conference was "the outlook for policy and defense business under the next presidency," an appropriate enough subject for the day of the Pennsylvania primary.

There was an overwhelming sense at the conference that despite billions more dollars in defense spending, the United States is not adequately preparing for the threats of the 21st century, nor is it giving the "warfighters" the resources they need to achieve victory. Major General Charles J. Dunlap of the U.S. Air Force, for instance, worried that an overemphasis on counterinsurgency was leading the U.S. to ignore the possibility of warfare with a "peer country" (read: China). Former Under-Secretary for Defense Acquisition Jacques Gansler argued that protectionism and the prioritization of congressional pork projects were causing the misuse of defense resources, necessitating a law stipulating that "Congress should not be making defense-acqisition decisions." The State Department's Deputy Director of Policy Planning Kori Schake lamented the miniscule size of her own agency's budget relative to defense, saying that every one of State's problems could be "traced back to chronic underfunding."

Oddly enough in a discussion of current national-defense priorities, Iraq and Afghanistan hardly came up until near the end of the day, when the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Anthony Cordesman gave a briefing on both conflicts. Given the weakness of both countries' political institutions, Cordesman feels that the term "counterinsurgency" ought to be abandoned altogether in favor of "armed nation-building." Since Cordesman sees far more progress toward this goal in Iraq, I asked him if troop withdrawal there would increase the likelihood of success in Afghanistan:

If we can move forward in Iraq in ways that seem possible, we may be down to 10 brigrades by 2009. You can't suddenly move those brigades to Afghanistan. They require retraining. They will have to be re-equipped and restructed to fight a different kind of war on different terrain, dealing with a different culture with different values.

I also have to say that while troops are important... far more important are the aid teams and advisory teams... rapid turnover of deployments in a country where personal relationships are even more important than they are in Iraq, the inability to take aid workers out into the field where they are really needed... The problem isn't troop levels and it won't be solved by moving out of Iraq."

It seems ironic that the takeaway message of a national-defense conference was that what we traditionally think of as defense can only do so much. The next president's foreign-policy team will need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time if it wants to begin to address the problems left over from the current one.

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Even undeniably "puerile" debates can sometimes cough up interesting tidbits, and, on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton proposed an interesting way to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions: Extend nuclear deterrence to "those countries [in the region] that are willing to go under the security umbrella and forswear their own nuclear [weapons] ambitions." Unfortunately, moderator George Stephanopolous did not ask any follow-up questions, even though Sen. Clinton’s idea certainly merits a closer look.

The concept of a "nuclear umbrella" has been around almost since the Cold War and the nuclear arms race began. At the most basic level, it involves a nuclear- weapons state promising to use its nukes to respond if non-nuclear ally is attacked with nuclear weapons. Cold War strategists hoped that "extending" nuclear deterrence like this would cement important alliances and, crucially, eliminate the need for those countries to develop their own nukes. A nuclear umbrella is thus a tool of both diplomacy and of nonproliferation.

The key question here is credibility. How, for instance, would you convince the Soviets that the United States really would risk New York to defend Paris? During the Cold War, U.S. strategists achieved this credibility in several ways (pdf). First, American troops were deployed heavily in allied territory, placing them in the way of any nuclear attack. Second, U.S. nuclear weapons were often deployed in forward locations and sometimes integrated into allied command structures. Third, the umbrella only got extended to countries with which the United States already had strong alliances.

Unfortunately, even in Gulf regimes that are friendly to America, all of these preconditions are weak or nonexistent (pdf) -- which does not bode well for Sen. Clinton’s proposal. In addition, Iran does not have the ability to project power globally like the Soviet Union did, making any direct threat to U.S. interests unlikely. I should also note that any Iranian nuclear weapon is still a long ways off, and attempting to deter the Iranians is premature at this point.

However, the idea is still worth exploring as a contingency plan, and new ways of establishing credibility and commitment might be possible -- for instance, extending a missile-defense "umbrella," even one that doesn't work very well yet. But although technical measures like these may be part of the solution to U.S. problems in the Middle East, they can't supplant a broader strategy that uses all the diplomatic, political, and economic levers at America's disposal.

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images

I heartily second Blake (and the rest of the country from what I can tell) in feeling infuriated with the questions in last night's debate. In particular, "Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?" was a low point in the history of political journalism.

But in all honesty, I have a hard time imagining that the 21st debate of the primary season could possibly have been useful or informative. After more than a year of campaigning, what new information are we possibly going to learn about these people beyond idiotic non-scandals like "bitter," Wright, Tuzla airport, or last night's underwhelming Bill Ayers bombshell?

Andrew Sullivan writes:

No questions on the environment, none on terror, none on interrogation, none on torture, none on education, none on spending, none on healthcare, none on Iran ... but four separate questions in the first hour about a lapel-pin, Bitter-gate, Wright-gate and Ayers. I'm all for keeping candidates on their toes. But this was ridiculous. And now we have affirmative action? Again, it's not illegitimate as such - but the only reason it is asked is to try and trip these people up and make Gibson and Stephanopoulos look smart."

Amen. But are we really that unsure about Clinton or Obama's positions on the issues he mentions? I fear that extended discussion of these topics would have descended into the pointing out of minor inconsistencies that characterized last night's inane capital-gains tax discussion.

This isn't to say that there aren't issues that are under-addressed. A question about the relationship between biofuels and food prices or intervention in Darfur might have been nice, for instance. But I really can't imagine either candidate going out on a limb by making a firm commitment or even saying anything of substance in response. At this point it's safe to say that Clinton and Obama have made their respective cases. The longer this primary goes on, the more trivial it will become.

Readers, please prove me wrong. What are some substantive, non-gotcha questions that could have spurred some real debate last night?

FILE: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Has there ever been a debate moderator as puerile, as relentlessly focused on trivia, as dogged in his pursuit of the "gotcha" moment as George Stephanopoulos?

I sincerely doubt it.

Aided and abetted by comoderator Charlie Gibson, the host of This Week chewed up nearly an hour of clock time probing, poking, and prodding the Democratic candidates on such nano-topics as "Bittergate," the tired Reverend Wright fracas, why they won't commit to a hypothetical joint ticket, and on and on -- long before the first substantive question, on Iraq. (Of course, it was asked by one Mandy Garber of Pittsburgh, not by either of the moderators.)

Not until 9:04 p.m. ET was there a question about the economy.

Something is very wrong with the priorities of the U.S. television media.

PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP/Getty

When I read today that Hillary Clinton is playing John Mellencamp's "Small Town" at her rallies this week, I had to laugh. Because, seriously? How literal are we going to get here? (Plus, I had to wonder whether Mellencamp, a former Edwards supporter, has endorsed anyone yet. He famously asked John McCain to stop playing his songs at rallies earlier this year.)

And in my 5-minute Google search to find out whether Mellencamp's made a pick, I discovered that Bruce Springsteen has just announced this afternoon that he's backing Obama. Here's what Mr. Working Class America said about Bittergate:

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where '...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.'

Does this mean no more Springsteen songs at Clinton rallies?

UPDATE: A Getty Images search for "Springsteen Obama" brings this result:

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

Raise your hand if you're a campaign junkie but consider Bittergate the least controversial controversy the talking heads have concocted so far. (This is what happens when campaigns go too long.) Well, relief is in sight: Cindy McCain steals recipes.

Until early Tuesday morning, visitors to John McCain’s campaign Web site could find seven of "Cindy's Recipes," among them three elegant and healthful offerings: passion fruit mousse, ahi tuna with Napa cabbage slaw and farfalle pasta with turkey sausage, peas and mushrooms.

Only problem was, all three, listed as favorite family recipes of Cindy McCain, Mr. McCain's wife, were taken verbatim from the Food Network.

And don't worry -- heads are going to roll:

By midmorning, the McCain campaign had taken all seven recipes off the Web site and was pointing a finger at an intern who, tasked several months ago with contacting Mrs. McCain’s staff for favorite McCain recipes, had prowled the Internet instead.

"The intern has been dealt with," said Tucker Bounds, a campaign spokesman, who declined to provide details. Nonetheless, Mr. Bounds said, "we took away his zero pay."

Once again, Hillary's campaign is running up against what may be its most formidable adversary: Bill Clinton.

First, he flubbed big time last week by reviving -- and inaccurately describing -- the Bosnia sniper controversy. And now, just when Hillary wants to be seen as tough on China, comes an LAT piece yesterday that Bill's foundation has taken an undisclosed sum from a Chinese company accused of helping the government censor the Internet and crack down on Tibetan activists.

Alibaba, which owns Yahoo! China, asked Bill to speak at a 2005 executives' conference in China. In lieu of his usual speaking fee, often as high as $400,000, Bill asked for an undisclosed donation to his foundation. Last month, Yahoo! China's homepage ran "Wanted" posters of Tibetan activists the government accused of spreading unrest. Rebecca MacKinnon wrote recently of experiments she ran on Chinese search engines: Yahoo! China's was censored the most.

On the campaign trail, Hillary has gotten out in front of her opponents on the Olympics issue by calling on Bush to boycott the opening ceremony, "absent major changes by the Chinese government." But it certainly doesn't play well for her position when her husband's foundation receives large checks from a company so closely aligned with Beijing.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

There are a lot of interesting tidbits in Elisabeth Bumiller and Larry Rohter's article about how various Republican foreign-policy realists are concerned that the dreaded neocons are winning the battle for John McCain's ear. McCain advisors Randy Scheunemann and Robert Kagan seem eager to downplay any such split, and they point to the fact that Henry Kissinger, a realist par excellence, is a close confidant of the Arizona senator.

I think Bumiller and Rohter missed a chance to point out something about Kissinger. When it comes to subjects such as great-power relations, Kissinger still sounds like his old realist self. He is critical of McCain's recent hard line on Russia, for instance. But on the key foreign-policy issue of the 2008 campaign, Iraq, Henry the K sounds a lot more like Max Boot than he does Brent Scowcroft. As Ron Suskind has reported, Kissinger has been a key voice urging the Bush administration to stay in Iraq for the long haul. He has also sounded extremely skeptical of engagement with Iran. In other words, this list does not really indicate that McCain is consulting a wide range of views:

So far, Mr. McCain has not established a formal foreign policy briefing process within his campaign. If he needs information or perspective on an issue, advisers say he picks up the phone and calls any number of people, among them Mr. Kissinger, Mr. Shultz or Senators Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

What do Russians think about the U.S. electoral campaign? I spoke with two distinguished Russian scholars last night here at the Salzburg seminar I'm attending this week.

The first scholar told me that the hardliners and the security establishment are eager to see John McCain in power. He's more or less a known quantity, and his recent statements about ejecting Russia from the G8 will make it easier for them to make the case that the United States seeks to humiliate and corner Russia. A McCain election would be seen as evidence that Americans want to continue George W. Bush's policies, which are generally unpopular in Russia.

On the other hand, the scholar said, Republican presidents from Nixon to Ford to Reagan have a much better track record in making overtures to Russia, perhaps because they don't fear being painted as weak.

Both scholars, who come from the liberal end of the political spectrum in Russia, seemed intrigued by Barack Obama as someone who could offer a "fresh start" in U.S.-Russia relations. They weren't so comfortable, however, when I told them that Michael McFaul is Obama's main Russia advisor. McFaul, a past FP contributor, is well known in Russian foreign-policy circles for his harsh criticism of Putin's democratic credentials.

Clinton would be more predictable, given that her main Russia advisor is Stephen Sestanovich. His 2006 report for the Council on Foreign Relations was read closely in Russian political circles. But Richard Holbrooke, another Clinton advisor and a potential secretary of state, is seen as hostile to Russian interests for his role in the Balkans during the 1990s. When I told them that it's not inconceviable that Holbrooke would get a top job even under Obama, they weren't too psyched.

Blake Hounshell is Web Editor of ForeignPolicy.com. He has been blogging this week from the Salzburg Global Seminar session on Russia: The 2020 Perspective.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Tune into just about any episode of The Colbert Report, and you'll hear Stephen Colbert extolling the virtues of the "Colbert bump," the phenomenon wherein candidates, authors, and musicians appearing on his show experience an immediate surge in popularity and sales of whatever they happen to be hawking. Among the many bumps for which Colbert has claimed credit, see Toby Keith's #1 album last year, Salman Rushdie's knighthood, and the fact that the names Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee mean something to you.

Now, James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, has just completed a study demonstrating the "first scientific evidence of Stephen Colbert's influence on political campaigns." Yes, Virginia, the Colbert bump is real.

Fowler examined the rate and amount of fundraising done by House candidates who appeared on Colbert's show for his "Better Know a District" segment. Democrats who appear on the show raise 44 percent more money in the 30 days after appearing on the show than Dems that don't appear. But it's bad news for Republicans: No bump. Their donations stay flat.

Advice for Barack and Hillary, given that Colbert is taking his show on the road next week to Pennsylvania in advance of the presidential primary there: Get thee to the Report.

H/T: The Monkey Cage

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

After promising to do so for months, the Clintons have just released their tax returns. And they've made a pretty penny since Bill left office.

Total income since 2000: $109,175,175

Bill's cumulative speech income: $51,855,599

Last year, it was reported that Bill gave more than 350 speeches in 2006, but that only 20 percent (so, 70 speeches) were for personal income. Their 2006 returns show that he made about $10.5 million that year on speeches, or about $150,000 a pop. So, given that he's commanded far more than that for various events (as high as $450K a speech in '06), I'm actually surprised he hasn't made more.

In a speaking engagement today at my alma mater Skidmore College, former Attorney General John Ashcroft confused Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden while talking about the importance of the Patriot Act. The former attorney general then waited patiently as students booed and jeered:

Beware folks, Skidmarks--as the locals in mostly conservative Saratoga County call Skidmore students--are a tough crowd.

FILE: Mark Penn; Win McNamee/Getty Images

I must admit, I'm puzzled as to why it's supposed to be such a big deal that Hillary Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn (right) met with Bogotá's ambassador to Washington about the controversial U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

The key point to remember about this and other FTAs in Latin America is that they're much more about politics than they are about economics. Ninety percent of U.S. imports from Colombia have already been entering the United States without any tariff, thanks to prior agreements. Peterson Institute analyst Jeffrey J. Schott estimated in 2006 that any welfare gains (GDP boost) from a U.S.-Colombia FTA would be positive, but "relatively small" -- roughly half a percentage point for the Colombians, and a negligible amount for the United States. If anything, the agreement is about lowering Colombia's tariff barriers to U.S. goods, solidifying trade relations, and lowering the risk that President Álvaro Uribe's successor will have a different economic philosophy. So, claims by U.S. labor activists that the FTA would be bad for U.S. manufacturers are little more than dishonest fearmongering.

That said, I'm not on board with U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab's hyperbole, either. Can it really be that the dangling FTA, not the drug war, is the root of Latin America's problems today?

Leaders in the hemisphere and Latin America have said that the single most destabilizing factor in Latin America today may be the U.S. Congress's failure to ratify the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. That is more destabilizing today than anything that Colombia's neighbor Venezuela is doing or threatening to do— and that is saying a lot.