The lack of campaign chatter about foreign policy

Over at America Abroad, Earnest Wilson tells everyone what he knows about the foreign policy positions of the major Democratic candidates for president: I don?t know. Other bloggers, journalists, policy wonks and usually talkative political pundits don?t know either. We have to assume the candidates know where they stand on the Big Issues. Maybe. But maybe not. They almost certainly don?t know all they really need to know on foreign affairs. (Except Biden. But he probably doesn?t know the other things.) We know where the candidates stand on a small handful of Iraq-related issues ? when to exit; whether they support the Baker/Hamilton report. But sitting in the Oval office requires more than a position on withdrawing American troops from Baghdad. Just doing Iraq isn?t enough.... If the Senators and governors now in the race don?t pay much attention to non-Iraq issues affairs, it?s not their fault. Having done foreign policy with a bunch of campaigns, I know the candidates? handlers are telling them to concentrate on assembling a team that can win, with well-connected communications experts, experienced pollsters, a campaign chief who never sleeps, and so on. They need to get through the primaries where in most years (this one accepted) nobody cares about foreign policy. Even when the senator or governor or former Vice President finally makes it into the general election, there isn?t too much demand from the populace for details about Darfur and the Balkans. The foreign policy team is lucky if they get face time with the candidate, and a paragraph in the next speech. The system is designed to keep the candidate away from sticky issues abroad.... But at some point we begin to reflect on the kind of person who will end up with his or her finger on the launch button. With the authority to declare war and fight to keep American jobs from disappearing abroad. The person who will be America?s face to a disenchanted and skeptical, if not downright hostile, planet. Most of us really don?t care about the details. But we do want some insight into the moral character and basic human instincts that will guide the next president?s tough choices on tough global issues of life and death. We can bet those basic instincts about the world will start to seep out during the campaign, well before the foreign policy ?plan? and the advisory groups and the position papers the candidate?s little foreign policy team will dutifully churn out. If George Bush has taught us anything, it is to look at those basic instincts and take them very seriously, because they tell us a lot more than the details offered up about Africa or global warming. I don't have much objection to the first few paragraphs his post, but I'm not convinced Wilson is correct on his last point. Bush's foreign policy instincts in the 2000 campaign were a mixture of diffidence and indifference -- a far cry from how he has approached foreign policy since then. Tell me, informed readers: which presidential aspirant -- from either party -- seems the most well-grounded on matters of foreign policy?