The Daily News writes:

Neither Giuliani, the 107th mayor of the City of New York, nor Romney, former Massachusetts governor, would deign to explain their positions in writing for publication in this, the paper with America's largest metropolitan readership. They were invited to have their views published verbatim at www.nydailynews.com, but they refused. Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, also of New York, barely escaped such discourtesy. Only after much cajoling, and almost three weeks after the deadline, did Clinton respond to the Daily News Challenge to the Candidates...

Democrats Barack Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson and Republican John McCain responded promptly to our questions. And we thank them for providing information that New Yorkers should find valuable in judging the candidacies. Which is the purpose of this exercise. This presidential race is unprecedented in length, while remaining short on specifics. The campaign's numerous debates have been little more than sound-bite extravaganzas. And that's not good enough.

You can find the full responses by each of the candidates here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007 /07/03/2007-07-03_the_daily_news_candida te_challenge__edit.html

First things first, Guiliani and Romney are pathetic. Reading the replies of the candidates who actually bothered to fill out the questionnaire, Barack Obama and John Edwards clearly have the most substantive and thoughtful responses. Bill Richardson's are fine as well. Hillary Clinton's answers, on the other hand, betray a startling lack of specificity and detail. Indeed, a number of them are transparent soundbites that don't even answer the question asked. On whether immigration is a net plus or net drain to the U.S. economy; on whether she would require employers to provide health care insurance to workers; on how to fund Social Security and Medicaid; on whether she would be willing to raise taxes; on how to raise the nation's standing around the world post-Bush Administration--these are all questions that Clinton skirts with fuzzy language, whereas Obama, Edwards, and Richardson all answer with specifics.

Here's a representative example, on Health Care:

Would you require employers to provide health care insurance to workers as a way of achieving universal coverage? If not, how would you reduce the ranks of America's 47 million uninsured?

CLINTON: I have a lot of experience in trying to cover more Americans, and the scars to show for it. Part of why I'm running for President is to ensure every American has health care and that is why on day one of my campaign, I talked about the need for universal health care. And I've offered three principles that will guide our work: cost, quality and coverage. I began by addressing cost because we will only be able to achieve universal health care if we get these costs under control. I laid out specific ideas to lower costs for everyone by using health information technology, by spurring a new focus on prevention, by promoting chronic care management, and by creating a best practices institute that lowers cots by focusing on the most effective procedures, medicines, and protocols. In the coming months I will lay out my proposals to cover every American.

EDWARDS: Yes. Businesses have a responsibility to help keep their workers healthy. I am proud to have proposed a specific plan to guarantee quality affordable health care for every man, woman and child in America by 2012. My plan is based on the principle of shared responsibility: businesses, families, and governments must each do their part to achieve universal health coverage and a better health care system for all of us.

Under my plan, businesses will be required to either cover their employees or help pay their premiums. The government will make insurance affordable through new tax credits and by leading the way toward more cost-effective care. New "Health Care Markets" will give families and businesses purchasing power and a choice of quality plans, including one public plan based on Medicare. Finally, once these steps have been taken, all American residents will be required to take responsibility and get insurance.
Under my plan, everyone in America will have insurance. Families without insurance will get coverage at an affordable price. Families that have insurance today will pay less and get more security and choices. Businesses and other employers will find it cheaper and easier to insure their workers.

OBAMA: Employers continue to play an important role in the provision of health care coverage in this country. As part of my health care plan, employers who do not offer meaningful coverage to their employees will be required to contribute a percentage of their payroll to help offset the cost of helping uninsured Americans obtain coverage. Some small employers will be exempt from this requirement.
As president, I will sign a universal health care plan into law by the end of my first term in office. I will modernize the U.S. health care system to improve quality and reduce costs and increase investment in public health to prepare and protect Americans against emerging health threats and to reduce rates of preventable diseases. Finally, my plan will mandate health insurance coverage for every child in America.

My plan will not just guarantee coverage for every American, it will bring down the cost of health care and reduce a typical family's premium by as much as $2,500 through five important steps.

First, the federal government will pick up the tab for some of the most expensive illnesses and conditions which means premiums will go down. Second, we'll focus our health care system on preventing costly, debilitating conditions in the first place by requiring coverage of evidence-based, preventative care services, and making sure they are paid for. Third, we'll reduce the cost of our health care by improving the quality of our health care. We'll ask hospitals and providers to collect, track, and publicly report measures of health care quality so that patients can make informed choices about the care that's best for them. Fourth, we'll reduce waste and inefficiency by moving from a 20th century health care industry based on pen and paper to a 21st century industry that's paperless, reducing deadly medical errors, shortening the length of hospital stays, ensuring that nurses can spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients, and saving billions and billions of dollars in the process. Finally, he'll break the stranglehold that a few big drug and insurance companies have on the health care market. Under my plan, we'll make generic drugs more available to consumers and we'll tell the drug companies that their days of forcing affordable prescription drugs out of the market are over. And we'll investigate and prosecute the monopolization of the insurance industry.

RICHARDSON: I'm proud of the progress we've made on health care in New Mexico. We made coverage available for every child under the age of five, got junk food out of schools, and increased immunizations. In my state we've worked hard and are proud of the results. But states can't do it alone.

There's no excuse for 47 million people being uninsured in this country, and I have a health care plan to provide health insurance for every American. My plan is different from all the others - no new bureaucracies are created and no new taxes would be necessary. Every employer would be required to pay some portion of employee health insurance, and every individual would be required to get coverage.

If you like your current coverage you can keep it, but I also would allow working families and small businesses to purchase coverage through the same federal plan provided to the President and members of Congress. Americans between 55 and 65 could buy into Medicare, and the federal government would help Americans who can't afford to pay by offering a refundable tax credit based on a sliding income scale.

We must also help Americans by controlling healthcare costs. At least 75 percent of the $2 trillion the nation spends on health care is due to care for chronic diseases, many of which are preventable. For example, our nation spends at least $97 billion per year on illnesses related to obesity, and over $93 billion per year on smoking-related illnesses. Yet we spend less than 5% of our health care budget on prevention.

There are already many proven strategies for preventing and managing illnesses and injuries, but unfortunately these are not reaching enough Americans. By increasing our focus on prevention, we can not only reduce costs but also dramatically improve the overall health of Americans.

Finally, those who fall victim to a costly illness should not have to pay the same outrageous interest rates or take the same hits to their credit reports as people with regular debt. Bill Richardson will fight for passage of a Medical Borrower's Fairness Act to place limits on interest rates that can be charged for medical debt and prevent credit rating agencies from downgrading the credit scores of Americans due to medical debt.

One of these four responses is perfect for a 30-second soundbite in a debate. The other three, while not very good soundbites, actually answer the question and lay out specific policies that are substantive and show that the candidate has serious considered the topic, empty rhetoric about "experience" and "scars" notwithstanding. Can you guess which is which?  

Look, clearly none of the candidates actually wrote their own answers (Bill Richardson actually refers to himself in the third person at one point). All of them got their policy shops to write the responses for them, drawing on existing speeches and statements by the candidates. But what the Daily News Candidate Challenge represents is how seriously each of these campaigns takes policy. And that is something that is truly telling. The NY Daily News is a major newspaper. It sends out questionnaires to all the major presidential candidates. Obama, Edwards, McCain, and Richardson all turn in long, thoughtful, detail-filled answers, and they turn them in promptly. Hillary Clinton turns in the shortest and least comprehensive response--three weeks after the deadline, and after "much cajoling." Romney and Guiliani don't respond at all.

The implications are pretty clear. The Romney and Guiliani campaigns quite obviously have no policy rationale beyond the fact that they want to be President. Obama, Edwards, McCain, and Richardson all have well-developed policies, and they each have a decent narrative arc to their campaign, though some are better than others. Hillary has poorly-developed policies and a poor narrative arc.  

It's not just the NY Daily News Candidate Challenge that shows this contrast between substance vs. soundbites, either. Look at these Issues pages:

CLINTON: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/
OBAMA: http://origin.barackobama.com/issues/

Obama's Issues section must be at least 10 times longer than Clinton's. This is a joke. Hillary and her campaign are acting like they're incumbents, like they have a proven record of performance, like everyone knows where they stand. But Hillary is not an incumbent, and being the wife of a former President doesn't change that basic fact. Where is Clinton's health care plan? Where is her environmental plan, her energy plan, her plan to combat to poverty, her ethics plan, her foreign policy strategy? Her failure/refusal as a presidential candidate to come up with substantive policies and positions is embarrassing. Hillary is the master of the soundbite. But where's the beef?

The bottom line: Hillary Clinton is self-evidently the least substantive Democratic candidate in this race. Unfortunately, the media doesn't cover the race that way. Clinton gives a good applause line in a debate and all the pundits go wild. But when it comes down to seriously explaining substantive issues, when it comes down to putting your positions out there on the record, Obama, Edwards, and Richardson lead the way--and Clinton is three weeks behind. She might as well have not shown up at all.

This is the difference between soundbites and substance. And we in the blogosphere should be exploiting that difference at every opportunity. Hillary Clinton isn't the most experienced, she doesn't have the best resume, and most especially she isn't the same person as her husband. "I knew Bill Clinton and you, m'am, are no Bill Clinton." These are all false memes created and fanned by the Clinton campaign, who are very good at that kind of thing, as opposed to having real policies. It should be our job in the blogosphere to call both the Clinton campaign and the media on this.

Hey, but at least she's better than Romney and Guiliani...