The biggest revelation for anyone paying close attention to the first presidential debate on Friday, September 26, was that Barack Obama and John McCain agreed on so much.

Despite Mr. McCain's repeated "he just doesn't get it" retorts, referring to Mr. Obama's relative lack of foreign policy experience, and the reminders that Mr. McCain carries the stigma of a disastrous Republican administration, it was clear that the two candidates share the same basic premises. Both would maintain the Bush-Cheney doctrine of preemptive military action against nations currently at peace with the US, a policy contrary to the Nuremburg principles and other international laws as well as the US Constitution. The differences between the two on Iran, Israel-Palestine, and Russia-Georgia mostly had to do with secondary concerns such as how to approach negotiation. Mr. Obama would send more troops to Afghanistan. He continued to vote for President Bush's requests for more war funding, joining most of his fellow Democrats in approving all war funding bills after his party gained control of Congress in 2006.