"Obama Camp Spotlights Disagreement With Hillary"

Greg Sargent:

Barack Obama's campaign has just sent out a memo to "interested parties" -- read: reporters, pundits, fixers, etc. -- detailing his claim yesterday that the world is more dangerous due to President Bush's policies.

The Obama memo is interesting because it appears designed to call attention (without directly saying so) to a difference at last night's debate between Obama and Hillary on the question of whether the world's a safer place.

The memo observes (without mentioning Hillary's name) that at the debate there was "disagreement over whether or not America is safer since the 9/11 attacks on our nation."

The disagreement between the two Democratic candidates was not spectacularly pronounced. Obama opined that "we live in a more dangerous world, not a less dangerous world, partly as a consequence of this president's actions." Meanwhile, Hillary, in response to a different question, said: "I believe we are safer than we were. We are not yet safe enough." Not a great deal of daylight there between the two, but perhaps noteworthy.

At any rate, the memo suggests that the Obama campaign appears to be happy to highlight Obama's view of things on this question -- and apparently to draw attention to this "disagreement." The memo cites a bunch of documents backing up Obama's claim.

If you're interested, you can read the memo right here.

Update: Ben Smith has some interesting context for this.

Update II: We should clarify our clumsy "not a great deal of daylight" line. What we meant was that the two statements aren't in direct opposition to each other, in the sense that the "world" could be "more dangerous" according to global terrorism stats while America is "safer." We're not endorsing either of those views, just pointing out that they don't necessarily contradict each other.