Now where a difference does matter is in the power of the Bully Pulpit and executive orders.

And, you know, foreign policy. That thing that still exists even though the economy is the most followed topic of the election.

Hillary Clinton is an unrepentant war hawk and has been wrong on nearly every important foreign policy question she's ever had to deal with. It wasn't just her catastrophically stupid Iraq war vote (or her weak reasoning for it.) She also seriously believes that at one point we could have armed "moderate" Syrian rebels, and she supports a no-fly zone despite there being no evidence that it is helpful. She's closer to a neocon than a Democrat on foreign policy, and I find that very troubling.

Nothing about her foreign policy positions is shrewd, calculating or pragmatic. Obama understanding that the Iranian nuclear issue had to be neutralized in order to combat ISIS was pragmatic. Hillary Clinton inadvertently arming al-Qaeda (as she no doubt would have if she had been president) would not have been pragmatic. I truly believe that if she is elected we're going to get more of the same fealty to the Saudi Arabian Wahhabist terrorism factory that we've had for the past few decades.

I think my position on this is a tough sell because people seem to really like an interventionist America, making me an outlier. Especially with the current mess in Syria; most people seem to hate sitting on the sidelines while Russia gets to strut around with big guns and big explosions. The feeling seems to be that even if we can't do anything to effect the outcome, we should do something just to feel like we're doing something...whereas I think that a truly pragmatic Middle Eastern outlook would acknowledge that we have a difficult time telling friend from foe, that our alliance with the Sunni axis has led us into multiple unwinnable wars, that our efforts tend to cause blowback future presidents end up having to deal with, and that the most optimistic outcome is one in which we hold together a stalemate with our own soldiers and our own funds for a decade or so before we end up giving up and leaving anyway with nothing to show for it.